r/PoetryWritingClub

At first glance I was captivated,

attraction running through my veins like a primal instinct.

I was captured,

you had me,

I didn’t know.

You caught my eye with more than looks,

and soon,

unbeknownst,

my heart would follow.

Why is she different,

why is she special?

Why has my mind made perfect from something that is not?

Is it the idea I’m in love with?

It can’t be,

I’ve been hurt before.

Why lust for something just out of reach?

Do I know whom I love,

or do I love whom I’ve created?

Strangely, I feel I’ll love them both.

Does the distance keep me safe,

or am I blaming this as a reason?

Am I scared to love someone

that might not love me back?

Yes, I think I am.

Me, who is learning to love oneself

and scared that I don’t know how.

I search for something missing,

meaning or purpose.

Too many thoughts sometimes,

and yet my mind always comes back to you.

So many choices in life,

but it would feel empty without you.

I play a vision in my mind:

achieving something great,

and I look to you,

your approval is what I desire.

No one else’s, just you,

The room goes quiet.

Sometimes I’m there,

watching you mind your day.

Other times I’m you,

seeing a world different from mine.

I know I’ve met you

in another life, another time, another universe.

There is a feeling, not a thought,

between the heart and chest.

If you are quiet, you can hear it.

If you are still, you can feel it.

It’s the feeling that makes you real,

like an animal reunited with lost love,

that tickle in the throat,

the tears that sneak to your eyes.

You are that feeling for me.

I try to fight it, tell myself no,

but in that past life I made a promise, when I find you again I will never let you go.

the way she smiled so sweetly..

one day, the face is bare,

next time it’s framed by glasses.

the certain kind of confidence had only by

someone who sees the boundaries clearly,

Here am I, you are there, that’s the divide.

With the guard let down for a little bit-

the gaze is direct and the awareness is not subtle.

design by intention.

couple new braids in your hair,

looking back - at me, saying: "Hello, there".

Did you think I would not stare?

There’s no reason to hide that i see you-

And that you see that I see and it becomes

a little dance, and you smile.

With hair of honey, it’s always a fair act.

Ditch the script and tell me something else

What are you thinking about?

I bet it's someones else’ words:

How much of it is serious?

How much of it is play?

Der Starenvogel trarida,

erschallt dem Wandersmann ganz nah,

ist am glänzen und gesprenkelt,

taucht gülden auf so für geplänkel.

So setzt sich Wandr'er eilig nieder-

und schon erklingen Vogels Lieder.

Er zwitschert klar und mit Verstand-

so dieses Gedicht erstand.

Gabriel Träger 04.04.2000

I found you, something shifted,

I love you, something changed,

Truth, a steady march, an easy choice.

I’m here, staying present

I’m listening, full attention

I’m sorry, that happened, you deserved none.

I see you, all the time

I know you, and you know me

I hear you, I’m with you

I agree, that is best, that’s our course.

Do you love me? No do not say goodbye. I have no desire for silence, nor do I wish for this to dissolve into quiet misunderstanding. I would rather you argue with me argue for me, argue against me only then might I glimpse the truth of what resides within your mind.

For I confess, I can scarcely make sense of my own thoughts, as though heaven and earth themselves have collided within me. Yet I would endeavor to understand if only you would let me stand beside you in the storm of it.

When you forget who you are, I shall remind you. When you falter, I shall be there. But do not mistake my devotion for ease if you love me, then fight with me. Speak, challenge, unravel me if you must.

Do you truly believe I do not love you? How could such a notion take root? I have loved you from the very moment my eyes first beheld you. You are, and have always been, everything to me.

And I without you am nothing at all.

I love you.

Most writers say a man is broken like they’re filing a report: clean, polite, dead on arrival.

But broken isn’t a word, it’s the way he lights his last cigarette with shaking hands, misses twice, then laughs like it doesn’t matter.

They don’t show it because they’ve never sat in the room long enough to smell it.

So they tell you he’s drowning:

instead of letting you hear the water fill his lungs.

In the dark of night it watches me

I know its petrifying gaze

Eying what undamaged features remain

It relishes the scars it left upon my face

On moonless nights

When the stars have all fled from the Earth's rage

That one comes near my window

It scratches the glass, threatens to enter my sacred space

It craves the chance to mark me once more

It overtakes me when I am not awake

And just as I lay its memory to rest

The ghost arises from its grave

I cover my eyes

"Do not come near to me!

Why do you torment me so?"

Will I ever ascend this uncanny valley?

My associates see that you have visited me

And I perceive that they know, though they conceal the clue

But their eyes betray them

For your haunting mark is upon them, too

With them I share in this secret

And we swear to silence

We take care to be cautious

For in frames of levity you turn violent

Dark angel of avarice

You never satiate

A berserker's spirit

You pillage what little good I create

You stalk me from afar

Seething as you tarry

With sharpened claws prepared

You ambush me as I am in pleasant moments sharing

Suddenly, I sense you, though you are concealed

You have stricken Prometheus once again

The wounds are refreshed upon my face

And I am evermore something you rend

Your feet are weapons

Depart from me, feckless bird!

Your footprints are etched upon my bleeding eyes

Your cawing is a taunting word

You have again stolen my laughter

But you left your thief's signature

Crow is your name

Cease, cease, black harbinger

You came into my life

like the first rain after heat-

not loud,

not violent,

just enough

to make everything feel alive again.

I didn’t question it.

I stood there,

letting you fall into me,

letting your presence

soak into places

I didn’t know were dry.

And slowly, without noticing-

I rooted myself

in your weather.

You became my season.

The air felt lighter with you.

The sky softer.

Even silence

had a kind of music in it.

I thought-

this is where I stay.

But storms don’t begin

with thunder.

They begin

with a shift in wind.

Something small.

Almost nothing.

A passing current

that feels colder

than it should.

I felt it.

In moments I couldn’t explain.

In skies that no longer

held me the same way.

In the quiet ache of standing

under the same rain

but not feeling chosen by it.

I told myself it was just weather.

That love could endure

a little storm.

So I stood still.

Even as the winds grew sharper.

Even as the clouds

started carrying names

that were not mine.

I stayed.

And slowly,

the ground beneath me

began to erode.

Not all at once-

never all at once-

just enough

for me to lose balance

without realizing

I was already falling.

I lost myself there.

In trying to remain steady

in a storm

I refused to acknowledge.

And when I finally left-

it wasn’t walking away.

It was being carried

by a flood

I had held back

for too long.

I didn’t leave cleanly.

I didn’t leave honestly.

I left like broken branches-

scattered,

directionless,

trying to escape

the weight of everything

I could not hold.

And in that chaos,

I found another sky.

Clearer.

Calmer.

Easier to breathe in.

No storms.

No questions.

No winds that made me doubt

where I stood.

I mistook that stillness

for peace.

I mistook that calm

for love.

But calm is not always home.

Sometimes

it is just the absence

of everything you ran from.

And when that sky shifted,

when its winds returned

to where they truly belonged-

I was left standing alone.

Again.

But this time,

there was no rain.

No storm.

No distraction.

Just silence.

And in that silence,

everything came back-

you,

the storms I ignored,

the pieces of myself I lost

trying to stay.

And the truth settled in

like a sky that refuses to change-

I had something real.

And I didn’t know

how to stand in it

without losing myself.

Now the rain still comes.

But I don’t wait for it anymore.

I don’t chase the clouds.

I don’t beg the wind

to return to me.

I stand-

on ground that is mine again,

under a sky

that no longer belongs to you.

Empty,

but steady.

And for the first time,

I let the storm pass

without trying to become it.

This is not peace.

Not yet.

But it is something else-

the quiet beginning

of a life

where I no longer lose myself

trying to survive

someone else’s weather.

You are everywhere, nowhere,

Somewhere...

Is this some kind of mistake?

I wasn’t meant to wake up to this,

The disbelief that leads me

to mornings that feel like echoes

of something I can’t touch anymore.

I had it once,

soft, simple, whole

the way your eyes held me

like I was already enough.

And I broke it.

I think I did.

Maybe I just wasn’t strong enough

to keep the light from leaking out.

Now I live in the aftermath

where love still breathes

but only in fragments,

you pull me close

like nothing ever happened,

then push me out

like I never mattered at all.

And I keep standing there,

heart in both hands,

asking the same question

no one answers,

Is this real?

Was it me?

How could I let this be?

You say I’m not the man you want,

but you still call me back at night.

You say you’ve moved on,

but your body remembers mine.

I don’t know which truth to believe,

so I believe all of them

and it tears me in half.

Because I still love you,

in the quiet, gentle way

that doesn’t shout or fight,

the kind that just sits there,

aching.

And I hate you for it too,

for how you look at me now,

like I’m something leftover,

something used,

something less.

I asked for the pain to stop.

God, I begged for it,

but instead I wake up again

to the same war inside my chest.

I thought I paid for what I did,

thought I gave enough pieces of myself

to make it right again,

but the debt never clears,

the receipt never burns,

and I’m still standing here

trying to prove I’m worth loving.

You can tear it up,

cut it out,

burn it all and throw it away,

but love…

love grows back.

Just not the same.

Not always soft.

Not always safe.

Sometimes..

It grows back twisted,

roots wrapped around regret,

branches heavy with maybe,

and leaves that fall

every time you let me in again.

The saddest part of life

isn’t that you became a memory,

it’s that you didn’t.

You’re still here,

in every silence,

in every song,

in every version of me

that doesn’t know how to let go.

And I don’t know if I’m holding on to the man I used to be

when you loved me because I was enough,

or I’m just holding on to you

because you were always enough.

Life is just so beautiful to constantly live life dreading on unfortunate circumstances and choices that are out of our control.

Life and people are disappointing. We can be better for each other! But as humans we’re getting worse at social and personal interactions. What happened to just talking. I reminisced the simpler days. Uncomplicated technology. Simple.

If Life gave u lemons well hell fuck make some good ass lemonade and if that shit is still sour then pour a lot of fkn sugar in that mthkfr.

Stop complaining, u don’t like something or someone then change it, stop it with the tantrums, Stop being scared! Stop limiting yourself!

Take risks or u will never experience life.

Don’t run at the first sign of trouble. Face ur fears and strengths head on head high, feet well planted and with a lil humility…. And so life goes on….

And u know what the Heart has a way of rebuilding itself. refilling those ventricles; pumping with warm, viscous blood trying to regenerate itself from every ache; just to find* *itself again broken & In Love Again.

“Life is Beautiful “

Unspoken Kiss

By u/forgotyournameagain

My worries in truth can be dwarfed, covered in shroud— to be eclipsed;
Yet they ring loud enough to eclipse the world, my fears a memory of an unspoken kiss.

They cloud my judgment, blind my eyes, these invisible yet softspoken clouds,
Dense with white and a silent fog, fog that isolates me and the chilling crowds.

But there is no one— no one real; none but me 'neath the dirt, the worm, and the rock,
A morgue that houses none but me, inside the fear, my only lock.

I wonder if I am the only one planning, funerals for a self not yet dead,
Or am I carrying foolish demons, foolishly to a tear smeared bed?

But that doesn't matter, for demons don't, for the love of God— truly exist,
They are the ghosts of my fearful doubt; memories of a man I missed.

This is the tale of a cage I built, the tale of an eternal tryst,
In remembrance of a memory grand; all just for an unspoken kiss.

​

23 years ago, we had just met, my wife and I.

Me with a pen like a cheap switchblade,

her a life I tried to carve my name into.

I didn’t just fall in love.

I crash-landed with poems like wilted roses from a gas station,

words sloppy, wet, starving to be loved:

and she said yes to the man and his love poems,

but not to the rot within him that spawned the writing.

Turns out she never really gave a shit about my writing.

That hurts: she fell in love with a trial lawyer, not a writer.

I guess my writing was just a little hobby to her.

I never wanted to be a fucking lawyer.

Ironically, my writing talent led me there.

Guidance counselors: “Good writers make good lawyers.”

But it wasn’t just my wife and the guidance counselors.

My parents looked at the dream like a dirty habit, too:

it's, hopefully, something you'll outgrow before it embarrasses the whole family.

They never once said,

“You’ll make it. We're on your side.”

Not one goddamn time.

I lied to myself for years:

“real writers crawl out of the dirt alone,

no hands, no voices, just teeth and spite.”

Bullshit!

We need encouragement.

Not permission:

just one voice in the corner when the whole world goes dead quiet,

saying, “Don’t you fucking stop. You can do this. I see the talent in you.”

Maybe that makes me weak for needing that.

Or maybe it’s the only honest part of me left:

I'm still hungry for someone to see the mad desire in my heart

and tell me to keep going.

Where is that person?

Who is that person?

Maybe it's supposed to be me.