Poetry Riot!

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[betweenthetimeandsound]

Sakuras in the Rain

Tears from lost girls fold and glisten in pink--I lose what it means to grow as a cloudburst fizzles and I see stars starting to bloom.

[callherwylder]

If your name tastes unfamiliar

on your own tongue,

come home to me.

Not for answers,

not for the weight of what you could have been,

or should have been

Just come as you are,

hands full of broken glass,

heart still beating through the cracks.

I will make room for all of it.

I will hold you

like a harbor holds a storm

without asking it to be calm.

And if every door you find

feels like it might close behind you,

mine won’t.

It’s been open,

a light left on

in a house that still knows your name.

[birchbritches]

Calamity Branches

knocking calamity stands there hands of branches and branching and we listen glisteningly, have sweated all night and know how now we are enamored because calamity has effortfully evidenced its enamorment and we were mirroring, adhering

[cruxymox]

reversed petroglyph

spirits caught in the wood

the red curtain wavers

a mirror, broken

[emphasiskills]

fortune's favourite daughter

conditioned by miracles

habitually optimistic

laughs at causality

nods as providence

wrinkles physics

in tribute

impervious to weather

silver linings circle 

her nimbus clouds

thunder blusters

but does not touch

there is nowhere 

she cannot walk 

there is no offering 

too lofty 

there is nothing 

she wants

[autonomy1]

within-

blurred

placed far inside the heart always

the hopelessness of

suddenly

a vast closeness away

across towards your coastland

of ending echoes

waiting like every distance of soon

[prettylittledrafts]

depression

it begins mid-thought

the center gone

everything collapsing inward

you wake already hollowed

a sentence breaking apart

in your mouth

time snarls

then strangles itself

almost rising

almost speaking

your name erases itself

from your own voice

and beneath it

a pulse

not hope

just

refusing

to die

[takingstockofwhatmattersmost]

hope lay quiet fragile and thin holding on as night devours light

faded…echoes lingered in dark soft shadows carried what was left away

[decembrghost]

To be alive is to be hunted by the hungry. Your pulse is a signal, your heat a map. ​You turn your eyes away from the ancient traps, the well-worn paths of the "old ways." You think you are invisible. ​But the alchemy of existing has left a scent. A perfume of defiance clinging to the quiet. ​They are standing now. Inhaling. Finding the name of their desire in the very air you breathed out.

[definegodliness]

The People Like Flowers

There are people like flowers, too. Heartbreakingly Beautifully blooming:

They are themselves Centerpieces; the bloom of fructiferous Inner realms;

More than Mere products of an outside Environment,

For even the harshest, Most arid grounds do produce The people Like flowers, too.

I need to remind myself, there are people Like flowers, too.

How they radiate Colours that oft remain unseen; Petals that shine mnemonically After a brightened day, Vivid as they May.

How they burst Come spring; boom come summer; Then, even if come winter they fade I can't allow myself to Hide away,

Amid the nourishing quietude Of all that longs to grow, Revivifying a world That slowly Dies off

Whilst the people, like people, rule.

I need to remind myself There are people Like flowers, Too.

--- 31-3-2026, M.A. Tempels ©

[twohousesoftheholy]

The devil never told me

The secret of who you are

Only that your salacity

Remains unsurpassed

It said only that your prurience

Matched only that of your thirst

The angels never related to me

The clever way you navigate

The dragons kept the secrets

Of all your covert flights

Hence my reason

For taking so long to find you

In every slipstream night

A treason I am sure

To never be forgiven

[stolenhead]

i am paralyzed in august growing slender under the plaster of unforgotten summers that knit the bones of us together

[sedehaven]

Telemedicine Appointment, This Afternoon

I wait in the soft breath

of the air conditioner,

cool and recycled, dry.

My own breath as warm

as corn sweat. Nails biting

in the soft flesh of my

palm. Teeth circling each

other in my mouth. Not

grinding, just touching.

Muscles wound tight as

watch springs. Ventricles

thudding like cylinders.

I jitter towards a future,

bitter as morning coffee,

empty as the mug.

[prettylittledrafts]

Beyond his Reach

He had me sever soft, sustaining things:

friends, photographs, the pressed, persistent proof

that I had lived a life beyond his reach.

I gave them up. I gave them up to keep him calm,

and now someone is gone I cannot call,

no picture left to prove our friendship ever was.

He scattered what remained, one picture flung,

a bright, brief past sent skidding out of reach;

his hands could turn from holding into harm,

could make a wall remember me for weeks.

My body, taken, stripped of gentleness,

without the balm of being known.

He wore my wonder down to something small,

made every tender thing feel ill-conceived.

So I go forward, with no one at my side,

into a quieter, unyielding air,

for better this steady, solitary ache

than love that left me less than I was.

[wordrummager]

my eyes won’t stop dancing across a busy horizon the array of sand mandalas, banjo solos, fresh french fries, and umbrellas make perfect sense when a world is falling apart and all we can cling to is what we can reach all we need is love (maybe) and where is that but inside a flower or a comet’s tail or a marshmallow I’ll just wait for my feet to catch up to what my eyes can see

[stolenhead]

you shimmer winter pale and flanneled into the lonesome warmth of the secret anger hiding in the teeth of your good morning

[havingapoemwithyou]

Everything All at Once by Oliver Baez Bendorf