It's the 2025 Poem-A-Week Challenge! (This is a *poems only* thread.)

[Lily1011]

Throns and Grace

Aren’t we all beautiful,
Wearing thorns like crowns of sorrow?
Who could love us,
While our wounds bleed daggers
Into the hands that reach for us?

Yet still, we crave love —
So much we’d offer our skin to the blade,
If only for a touch that says, I see you.
We were never made to break —
We just broke,
Soft things shattered by the world’s hard edges.

We hide our scars in velvet silence,
Hoping to be felt, to be held —
But how can we be known
While cloaked in shadows not our own?
Still, we ache to be seen —
Raw, real, whole.

We carry our pain like sacred offerings,
Our pasts folded in reverence.
And in secret prayers,
We dream of souls who will meet us
In kindness, in gentle understanding.

But compassion from others
Can’t bloom
Where our own heart has not been heard.
So today —
Let the heart feel it all.
Let the pain breathe,
Let the need rise,
Let the loss weep,
Let the desire scream.

Let the body rage with fire —
For all that never came to be.
And when the storm settles,
Let me cradle the truth:
That life may not unfold as I wish —
And still, I will grieve it with grace.

 

[Tzara]

Hospital

When, after surgery,
she told me about the nightmare
because, she said, someone should know

and she couldn't tell her husband.
It was about her blood,
how it was plastic, sticky

as if shrink-wrapped in death,
oozing out of her wound
like a tarry oil seep,

ready to capture an errant dinosaur
or the neighbor's idiot cat.
I listened quietly

and held her hand, which Hal would never do,
until she went back to sleep,
before taking her horror with me

to disinfect the room.

Week 24 : Poem 1 : Total 29

 

[Kat90xx]

There once was a woman called Sue
Whose husband had not a clue
She tattooed a sign
Saying here you should dine
But his tongue got caught in her shoe!

 

[NC_Coastal]

Tomorrow

She rises in the night
A harbinger of summer's bounty
We wait for her sign
We must endure what comes first

The sky is bruised yet still blue
Dark clouds gather on the horizon
The wind blows high across the oaks
Long limbs swaying in the gathering breeze

All of nature is bracing for the storm
And waiting for the Strawberry Moon

 

[SpermFactory]

GentleFlower

Dear GentleFlower / when my thoughts
are moving / in your body / our morning
minds bloom / in my bedroom. And oh
how wonderful our whispers were / in
the deep of night / our sexy secret sighs
burned our deepest desires

Dear Gentle Flower / did I leave little
beaded droplets of my pearl essence
in your petals? Did our naked sharing
intertwine our limbs / bodies / minds
across time / and in our special spacial
places / between thighs / in eyes / & ears?

Dear Gentle Flower / last night our truths
went rocking back / and forth across the
distant horizons / of this world our trust
typed hands held interlocking / unlocking
messages in two climaxing minds /
devolving into /

fucking giggles trailing kisses / in questions
down the spine of this poem for you / I have
written / this on your skin in passions ink /
Dear Gentle Flower / these three simple
words I give you /
I like you

(12)

 

[_Land]

Monochrome Memories

for the ones we loved in grayscale

The kitchen
was a charcoal sketch—
steam curling from your coffee like the ghost
of a promise
you were too afraid to make.

You laughed
in black-and-white,
a reel of 1940s cinema
where everything was always almost
enough.
Your hand brushed mine—
sepia-tinted,
like time forgot to color us in.

The bedroom
was a negative
burnt into silver nitrate.
We made love like film developing—
slow,
chemical,
delicate.
Your breath on my neck
was a shutter click.
Your body—
a shadow cast
by the flicker of who we couldn't be
in daylight.

And then that night,
under the stars—
a grainy photograph,
edges torn
by the way we whispered
truths too fragile for morning.
We spoke in static,
kissed in contrast.
You looked up,
said the moon was just
a streetlamp for the lonely.
I said nothing.
I never did when the grayscale
got too loud.

Now I remember
in monochrome.
No color.
Just texture.
Just ache.

Just the echo of you
somewhere between
white silence
and black goodbye.

41/52

 

[Angeline]

Chet

I dreamed you played for me,
steady and sweetly yearning,
sang about an old feeling still
in your heart. A vibraphone
meandered and chimed,

otherworldly. It didn't matter

that I clung to your arm
like so many women have.
You were happy to be lost
and when I awakened
I was too.



Week 24, Poem 1, Total 22

 

[_Land]

Choke the Crown

The sky is blue
because it’s choking.

Every siren
is a scream that got promoted.
Every badge—
a tantrum with funding.

We took to the streets
because no one listened
when we whispered.
Now we bring drums,
we bring screams,
we bring grandmothers in Nikes
who watched MLK get shot
and still have enough spit
to curse the new regime.

The freeway bleeds—
not from traffic
but from truth.
Rubber bullets rain
like God’s failed attempts
at diplomacy.
The cops beat a deaf kid
because silence looked suspicious.

No kings, motherfucker.
No masters.
Just landlords with tanks
and senators shaped like oil spills.

They fence the capitol
but leave the schools hungry.
They wrap a child in zip ties
because her cardboard sign
was spelled too well.
That’s what they fear—
not violence,
but clarity.

We burned flags
because they wouldn’t stop
burning bodies.
We toppled statues
because history
was never meant to be a statue—
it’s meant to be rewritten
with rage,
with red ink,
with the blood of every poet
who refused to pledge allegiance
to a myth.

And still they say
"be civil."
Be civil,
as if we haven’t begged nicely
for 400 fucking years.

So no.
We came to scream.
To paint in broken glass.
To piss on the boot
that’s been kicking our teeth in
and dare it to call us uncivilized.

The chant is not a prayer—
it is war drums
on TikTok.
It is children
learning to aim
with cameras
instead of guns.
It is a funeral
for obedience.

No Kings.
No gods.
Just fire,
and the roar
of a people
who finally stopped asking
to be heard.


42/52

 

[Tzara]

Form Exercise: Rondeau

I wonder why we are still friends.
Relationships so often end
Unhappily, it's sad to say.
But ours, I think, remains okay—
At least, on you I still depend

For good advice, to recommend
When firm is better than to bend
And when it's best to walk away.
I wonder why

That you're the one whom I depend
To keep me stable, apprehend
What I ought do, but come what may
Will never cast me off astray.
I cherish how you don't pretend,
but wonder why.

Week 25 : Poem 1 : Total 30

 

[Kat90xx]

There once was a man named Hunt
Whose language was incredibly blunt
He swore and he screamed
As his wife’s mouth he reamed
Till his cum ran all down her front

 

[_Land]

.Resources

They do not die for flags.
They die for contracts—
oil-slicked and hidden
in the folds of a diplomat’s handshake.

Their helmets catch more dust than glory,
while blood soaks
into soil earmarked
for lithium,
for gold,
for cobalt—
for the next upgrade
in your trembling palm.

Freedom?
No—
that’s the propaganda pillow
they smother the conscience with.

This war is a cashier's drawer
ringing with ribs and femurs,
where bullets are IOUs
for boardroom bonuses.
The dead are just deposits—
interest-bearing.
Profitable.

Watch how they strip a country—
skin it like a goddamn animal.
They name the carcass stability,
then hollow it out
to fill with tanks and silence.

Mothers don’t cry for freedom.
They cry because their children
became spreadsheets.
They cry because the cost of resources
is always human.
Because their babies
became the mortar
in someone else's palace.

This isn’t defense.
It’s consumption.
War as a feeding frenzy—
teeth made of treaties,
appetite baptized
in the blood of the poor.

You want freedom?
Try surviving
when your body
is just a commodity
traded in whispers
between men
in air-conditioned empires
who’ve never seen
the whites of a dying boy’s eyes.

Resources.
That's all they see
when they look
at the land—
and at us.

 

[_Land]

Puppet Strings and Powder Kegs


The hand is American—
not flesh,
but steel wrapped in velvet,
slick with oil,
veins pumping black gold.
It slides inside the ribcage of nations
and strings up their bones like windchimes.

Israel jerks like a marionette
nailed to military aid,
its fingers twitching over the trigger
before thought can form.
Gaza becomes
a sandbox of severed limbs—
doll eyes melted
into the rubble of kindergartens.
Each child’s name
a footnote in someone else’s briefing.

And Iran—
Iran is the fire they keep in a glass cage,
tapping it with a stick,
calling it savage,
as they piss gasoline through sanctions
and call it diplomacy.

This isn’t defense.
It’s a choreographed slaughter—
theatrics spun with copper wire
and teeth ground to shrapnel.

We puppet the carnage.
Our drones don’t hum,
they purr—
like housecats
rubbing up against the corpse
of sovereignty.

Every airstrike
is a sermon.
Every treaty
a noose sewn in cursive.
We hand out bombs like communion—
take, eat,
this is my profit,
broken for you.

In Gaza,
a mother clutches a jawbone
still warm,
still whispering
the bedtime story it never got to finish.

In Tehran,
a boy with ink-stained palms
draws a sun
on the wall of his bomb shelter—
yellow chalk on concrete,
the only god he still believes in.

And here,
in the belly of the empire,
we sip our coffee,
scroll our feeds,
watch live-streamed executions
between cat videos and influencer discounts—
blissful,
bloated,
benumbed.

You want to talk freedom?
Tell it to the smoke
curling from a crater
that used to be a marketplace.

Tell it to the hand
that writes checks with blood,
strings puppets with policy,
and carves the earth
like it owns the bones beneath it.

Because here,
freedom isn’t a right.
It’s a ransom.
And we’ve never paid the price.

44/52

 

[SpermFactory]

Yesterday

I was thinking of you
when the roof fell in

the detritus of years
in aftermath leaving

through the space
between two walls

in a stand off of how
a house isn’t a home.


(13)

 

[Meekly_Anna]

Marriage...

Forever fond, fierce feelings for Seb,
Fervent fire, flickering, fading instead.
Her heart holds him, a haven of peace,
But hunger gnaws, granting no release.

Longing languishes, lightly repressed,
Love lingers, lovely, largely unblessed.
Passionate pulses, profoundly unpaced,
Pleasures postponed, painfully placed.

Soft sighs suppress secrets unspoken,
Sweet solace sought, sadly unbroken.
Warm whispers wane, wanting much more,
While wedded bliss waits, wanting no war.

Desire dissolves, deeply denied,
Dreaming dim deeds, discreetly implied.
Aching, alone, at alluring arms' length,
She yearns, yet yields, with waning strength.

 

[Lily1011]

I am not too much

I am not too much
for wanting to feel safe,
to rest in arms
that don’t let go
when the world gets rough.

I am not too much
for needing love,
not the kind that hides,
but the kind that says —
you matter, you belong.

I am not too much
for asking to be seen,
to be appreciated,
not for what I do,
but for who I am.

I am not too much
for craving connection,
for longing to hear:
I choose you, every day.

I am not too much
for hoping that effort
goes both ways,
that my heart
doesn’t always carry the weight alone.

I am not too much
for needing to know
that I am wanted,
desired,
fought for.

I am human.
And what I ask for
is not too much —
It is just enough
to feel whole.

I AM ENOUGH

 

[42BelowsBack]

What is Death

-but ; a constant pounding on the back of my neck :
What is Death ; a shrouded Goddess in a black dress waiting to call my name :
What is Death but ; a moment, in release from the madness of adrenaline!

A dropping clutch(ed) in the loss of traction of my tongue :
A spinning of wheels undercarriage :
The Guns Go OFF / And in this silence I wonder!

What is Death?
-Answer Me Damn it!
By CROM ;

By the Hawkes ; by the Ravens
and flies walking over
my sightless eyes-

in the Ending of a Warrior
Poet on the battlefield
where Poems are ever alive :

That is Death!

1/52

 

[_Land]

[ ]

no title.
no entry.
no trace.

text deleted
before typed—
an error without message.

cursor blinks
into silence.
the screen forgets
there was ever
an attempt.


*

*

absence
spreads
like a slow fog
without scent
without warning
without
witness.

not lost—
never placed.

not silenced—
unspoken.

not erased—
unrecognized.


*

*

here lies
—

no name
no body
no grief

just the absence
owed
to a presence
that never
was.

**
45/46

 

[_Land]

The One-Minute Wonder

They queued the scene, lights hot with lust,
A boom mic dangling, thrust by thrust.
He strutted in—condom cocky, bold—
Ready to win the fucker’s gold.

But oh, poor lad, he didn't last,
His legacy shot way too fast.
Before she moaned or arched her back,
He'd fired off his final act.

No symphony, no screaming bed,
Just a sigh and drooping head.
Director groaned, “Cut! Again?”
While he searched for blood flow in vain.

Her face? Blank slate, a saint in pain.
She'd memorized her fakes again.
He whispered, “Sorry, it’s the thrill,”
She muttered, “God, just pop a pill.”

Stamina lost to nerves and shame,
In the blooper reel he earns his fame.
A solo act, a flash, a spark—
That barely left a watermark.

The script had called for steamy rage,
Not toddler tantrums on a stage.
No double angles, no slick flip—
Just early exit, half a tip.

So here’s to the films that cut too soon,
To crescendos drowned in a silent tune.
Next time, dear sir, breathe—relax.
Or stick to roles with climax fax.

Because in porn, the cruelest fate,
Is to finishing off before the slate.

46/52

 

[Kat90xx]

There once was a man called Todd
Who had a magnificent rod
When his mast was unfurled
It lured all the girls
Wanting a ride on his tripod

 

[Angeline]

Father's Day, Belated

You said memory is everything
so I gave you memories
knowing they couldn't last.

I fed you chocolate ice cream
and taped pictures of the children
to the hospital bed. You watched

them until your eyes closed.
Later I put them in your pocket
even though you couldn't see them.

Now I have those memories.
I like to think I keep them
for both of us, but I'd trade them

for some new ones with you.



Week 25, Poem 1, Total 23

 

[_Land]

Choir Boy

They said I had the voice of an angel.
So they put me in robes—
white as guilt,
tight at the neck,
a collar meant to silence.

I learned breath control
from the back of my throat,
tongue pressed flat,
lips parted—
not for vowels,
but for virtue’s counterfeit.

He never touched me
in rage.
That would have made it easier.
No,
he was gentle.
The kind of slow that teaches you
how to beg.

I didn’t cry.
Not once.
I thought that made me brave.
But I was just rehearsing
for all the men
who would one day
use me
as a vessel for their apologies.

He called it guidance.
I called it Thursday.
We didn’t speak about it—
only corrected posture,
pitch,
whether the tongue
was too stiff.

I stopped flinching by month three.
By month four,
I leaned in.
Not for him—
but for the stillness.
The quiet hum
between consent and collapse.

I told myself
I was in control.
That I was the one
doing the choosing,
even if all I ever chose
was which part of myself to lose
each time
his belt brushed tile.

Years later,
when men pressed against me
in bathrooms,
offices,
subways—
I gave them the same look
I gave him:
eyelids soft,
jaw slack,
spine arched
into usefulness.

Not seduction.
Not even surrender.
Just a boy
who learned to keep himself alive
by becoming
exactly what they wanted.

I learned to sing
with his cock
against the back of my throat,
notes swallowed,
not sung—
but the echo
remained in my marrow.

I don’t hate him.
That’s the real wound.
I hated the silence more,
the empty space
where no one told me
he was wrong.

Where no one told me
that surviving
shouldn’t feel
so much
like a skill.

I was the soloist.

But no one ever asked
why my voice
was so
goddamn
haunted.

47/52

 

[Melody_Lightdraft2]

The Scent Of You.


The scent of pheromones,
still stirs these old bones.

When a mare is willing,
who am I to refuse?

You stand there,
legs apart, tail bound.

I still have the will,
and the drive.

To service, mount,
till you’re satisfied.

I laugh at those,
puny humans.

My arms reach around,
to grasp your breasts.

My rump thrusts,
balls deep in you.

Once a stallion,
Always a stallion.

Centaur sex with
Centauride.

 

[42BelowsBack]

To pen, a poem; lost in translation on Walter Benjamin’s 1923 essay, The task of the translator. SCRAWLING ALONG DURING RUSH HOUR

To pen, a poem, lost in translation is to place Walter Benjamin in place time and space as a life he lived within me in my momentary thought bubble.

That I attempt so in a single read through Walter Bejamin
is in an evening hour rushing by obscene or absurd?

My face reflected I am outside looking in through the train evening‘s window, seeing myself in Walter Benjamin’s words ‘In appreciation of a work of art or an art form, consideration of the receiver never proves fruitful.’



2/52

 

[42BelowsBack]

As the fly flies and wings a
gruesome garden 3 some
secret.

There is a body in my garden.
We, you, I put the body there.

Legs hidden under the weeds
broad backed rotted shapely

now cracked, toes peel up,
where there were arms we

once linked in ours entwined
and unfurling as delightful as

the words shaping our mouths
in the physicality of that body

beneath us locked lustily with
us in the morning’s breath or

our unclenched teeth, midday
the press of three bodies one

that now lies hidden; behind
you, in my hope that one day

you will reconnect it all, hope,
light, feeling, sound harbinger

of buzzing bees beneath your
knees flowers in our garden

where the third unspoken body
must remain hidden in moments

we three spent connected forever
together momentarily you and I

and that once loving good ol bench
of mine, yours, ours now nobodies.


3/52

 

[goddessofglee]

A Dance with Time
(looking at him who watches me stumble)

You tried to waltz with Time, sweet boy,
All flair, no footwork, full of ploy.
Your words wore silk,
your thoughts wore lace —
But darling,
depth needs more than grace.

You dipped in dreams,
then missed the beat,
Left rhyme half-dressed and incomplete.
Cute try, my love —
but next you climb,
Don’t tease the clock… commit to Time.


№14 of 52