r/OCPoetryFree

I used to think I had finally found my place—

a life full of noise, full rooms, constant motion.

After feeling invisible for so long,

being surrounded felt like belonging.

But time has a way of telling the truth softly.

We weren’t rooted in each other

we were tied together by habit,

by late nights, by distractions,

by a rhythm that never asked us to grow.

And when I changed my pace,

when I chose stillness over chaos,

purpose over escape

the crowd thinned without a fight.

Now it’s quieter.

Not empty—just honest.

My life isn’t loud anymore,

but it’s full in the ways that matter

in love, in intention, in the small, steady moments

that are building something real.

I didn’t lose where I belonged.

I just stopped confusing noise for home

There is more to living of life than money or fame

Though these two can make yours quite a well known name

On the so called ladder to success and achievements they may help you climb far

But they do not tell of the sort of person you are

Such as if you are humble and generous and kind

Or if to to the needs of the self you are only inclined

It is something most people of should be aware

That the most successful of people are those willing to share

Some of their money to help those of helping in need

And in so doing for themselves sow karma's good seed

If with their money some joy to the poor they do bring

This in itself is such a wonderful thing

It is not what you do for yourself but what for others you do

That tells of the good in the one that is you'

Francis Duggan

It’s the kind of sleep
that makes you wish 
you never have to wake,
the kind of dream
that makes you think 
you have lived.

My dreams only come true
in dreams,
and I have felt things there
my waking self would envy.

I wipe her memory clean
and don't let her sleep,
hoping she can finally find some peace
but her ache never leaves.

I don't know the pain

but I understand it.

I could tell by the way

you wear gloves

not to get cut.

and it's sad to think

something precious

was loosely managed.

so let me mend

what got shattered--

even without gloves.

Does the soul outlive bodily death is not for me to say

Only know for us all there is a last night and day

Death does not respect people of money and fame

And as the poorest of the poor does treat as the same

Immortality for human beings is based on a lie

We are born into life to eventually die

And of these places for the soul known as heaven and hell

Any deceased person as of yet has not come back to tell

The president, the billionaire, the queen and the king

Death treats as equal as to poor people and this is a good thing

And since death is natural it is obviously clear

That it is only the fear of it that we do fear

Between the wealthy and the poor it does not differentiate

Equality between people death does create.

Francis Duggan

What do you call

a midnight car

beneath a borrowed streetlight

on a road

that doesn’t know our names,

where your breath catches

every time I get too close

to the center?

Would you call it friendship?

There is panic in your silence,

a twitch I’d hoped to see.

You shift before truth slips.

But I’m not the one

you’re trying to convince.

How can you sit beside me,

pulse bursting through your sleeve,

and pretend

this isn’t

everything

you’re terrified to want?

Tell me, love,

is it fear

that’s got your tongue?

Surely,

it isn’t me.

On the list of memories; All kept as files on my head; Today the drawer opened And I got reminded of you; And …Of course …I got reminded of that taste …In my mouth, …When I tried to taste you. ..I got reminded of How it turned out, You were oranges and apricots, But of course made of plastic;

You make a joke of yourself

When you do not accept

Your uniqueness

And beg others

To be just like you

-Phoenix Hope Dawn

Right now, the only
God is the gash.

How my body
throbs and weeps
at the grit of your name
a red-mapped
trap waiting
to be sprung.

I am wrecked
by this. The heavy
suction of the gut
drawing the hot
ropes 
into the mouth
of the pit. In the muck,

my holy silences
turn to filth.
I swallow the dark
of you. Slick

as a knife in the liver,
then brutal as a
fucking wreck. I don’t
want to be the soul

just the raw,
grinding meat of the fuck.

I’m writing this from a place that hurts to stay,

Where words feel sharp but silence cuts away.

I’m carrying what I never meant to hold,

Still standing here while everything feels cold.

I took the hit because I chose to care,

Straight to the gut then lower, life’s not fair.

I doubled down when I should’ve stepped aside,

Believed in us when doubt was justified.

I need the truth, not something half-assembled,

Don’t make me prove a love that never trembled.

I gave you all of me without a test,

Just tell me now, was I your worst or best?

Was I your home or just a place to land?

Did we have roots or only shifting sand?

We laughed, we built, we shared our daily days

Tell me those moments weren’t just a phase.

Distance shakes me deeper than I show,

My nervous system screams what you don’t know.

When space appears, my body feels the loss,

Like love is gone and I’m the only cost.

I’m angry, yes but missing you the same,

Two truths that burn inside this one flame.

I want what’s gone, I want what can’t be had,

Now I sit here sorting good from bad.

When I fall in love, I lose my sense,

The world grows quiet, my focus turns immense..

I focus in so fully I forget

Then I'm all in my final bet.

I give too much, then they decide to leave,

I stay behind to clean what they relieve.

Still, I’m changing parts that failed me then,

Cutting loose what no longer serves what's been.

Take all of me or let me truly go,

But don’t leave me in a burning slow.

I’m tired of waiting at the in-between,

Of wondering what all your silence really does mean.

I’ve been patient longer than my bones,

Ignored, unseen, unheard, alone.

Now even truth feels slippery and thin,

I question what’s outside and what’s within.

There’s rage in me but fear sits underneath,

And love that never found its relief.

I wanted more because I knew I could,

I just believed you’d meet me where I stood.

My chest is tight, my stomach’s tied in knots,

A lesson learned in places that I fought.

I knew the pattern, still I walked inside,

Fell again with nowhere left to hide.

You took me places I had never been,

Then let me drop and fail back into unseen

It hurts but maybe this was meant to just be,

If I could stay consistent, calm, and me.

So hear this now, no masks, no borrowed tone:

I wasn’t fake in anything I’d shown.

I was real, I stayed, I didn’t flee

I loved you hard, honestly, completely.

If that’s not enough, let it finally end,

But don’t erase the truth we couldn’t bend.

I’ll carry forward, wiser than before,

But know this i was real. Nothing less. Nothing more.

—

I did not begin with gods,
I began with a hand.
Small fingers wrapped around hers,
a world contained in her silence.
My mother - soft, unwavering -
not teaching devotion,
but being something I could not name.
Even then, I did not know
that the sacred had already chosen its form for me.

Years later, I turned not with love,
but with questions sharpened like tools.
I searched where fire lived -
in fierce eyes, severed heads,
in the raw power of a goddess
who did not comfort.
I asked for proof,
and the universe answered,
not gently,
but with a force that left no space
for doubt, or innocence.

And then,
in a silence that did not belong to time,
she came.
Not the one I invoked,
but a child.
Six years old, perhaps.
Sitting beside me
as though she had always been there.
No thunder, no terror,
only a quiet smile
that my mind could not hold.
I left.
Not because she vanished,
but because I did.

Life moved, as it does,
pretending nothing had shifted.
But something had -
subtle, persistent, unyielding.
I wandered back,
thinking I was choosing my path,
searching again for the fierce.
Yet my steps betrayed me,
leading me, again and again,
to her temple.
Not called, not commanded,
just… drawn.

It was only later
that the pattern spoke.
Through voices that felt older than me,
through hands that steadied without holding,
through a force that did not ask,
but claimed.
What I thought was seeking
was only circling.
What I thought was choice
was remembrance unfolding.

Now I see,
she was never distant.
Not in the temple,
not in the vision,
not in the rituals that came later.
She was there
in the first hand I held,
in the silence I could not explain,
in the pull I could not resist.

Nothing taken.
Nothing forced.
Only a quiet returning,
until the one who searched
was no longer separate
from what was found.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1rvcnic/comment/oasjwbz

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1r5jd9u/comment/oaskzun

My gaze could spend
the entire day orbiting around your moonlit eyes.
When you are close, it feels
like my heart is lit up by the Milky Way.
But, even the starlight of the galaxy
pales to your glow.
Your voice is the radiance
that guides me through the black holes.
For you
keep the universe alive.

I remember
when we first met,
I was fumbling in the lightless maze.
Until I noticed
all the lanterns drifting
across the cloudless night.
As if all my hopes had been answered.

Whether our world
is filled with the heat
of a passionate Summer.
Or snowed upon
by a distant Winter.
I know it'll be perfect
as long as the seasons have you.

I'll always embrace
your mistakes
and cherish
your tears.
For you
are the home I long
to return to when we are apart.
Whether you flicker in the shadows or the spotlights,
the pieces just feel right.

As endless as
the promise I placed on your finger,
my love for you in this life
will endure, even when the future
returns to stardust.

We're walking, laughing at something small—

the way the light hits the street wrong,

or how you mispronounce a sign.

The world feels different when you're here.

Not bigger. Truer.

Then it happens the way things do:

a crowded moment, a diverging path,

and suddenly there's space between us.

The kind that lasts three seconds

but feels longer.

I turn, looking for you in the crowd,

and you're already looking back.

What happens in that glance

is not dramatic. There are no words,

no grand gestures reaching across

the distance.

Just your eyes

finding mine, and in them—

a small thing, barely there—

a gentleness that says:

I see you're still here.

I didn't leave.

I'm still choosing this.

It's in the way you smile slightly,

waiting. Not impatient.

In how your shoulders relax

when you see me searching.

In the fact that you didn't scroll your phone,

didn't look away first,

didn't make this casual.

You made it matter✨

And something shifts.

Not in me specifically—

though yes, in me too—

but in the space between us,

which suddenly isn't empty.

It's full of small things:

attention, presence, care

so gentle it almost doesn't count

until you realize

it's the only thing that ever did.

We move closer.

The crowd keeps moving.

The world keeps spinning

its indifferent way.

But you took that moment

and held it open for me.

You didn't let the distance

become real.

And I understand, then,

what it means to matter to someone—

not in the shouty, performative way,

but in the quiet way:

shown up in glances,

whispered through patience,

proven in the choice

to wait.

To see.

To care in such a small way

that it becomes everything💫

Maybe this is what connection really is:

Not the grand adventure,

though those matter.

Not the perfect moments,

though we collect them.

But the tiny gesture

in the space between—

the way you looked back.

That's where I felt it.

That's where I knew.

That I wasn't alone.

And neither were you🤧

I remember the night you swore you’d stay.

You swore-

you’d never walk away.

Your voice didn’t shake,

your hands didn’t budge,

your eyes held mine.

I was safe.

I was safe.

How do I unhear that?

That promise didn’t break clean.

No.

It spidered throughout my veins,

splintering into the marrow.

Peace hasn’t touched me since.