Saccharine Fire - A Poetry Thread

[Kiki]

Every year
With words upon the page
Has never not been a challenge
This year is different

It has been a week
Of flooding
Plains of land filled with water
Sudden laking of river

Aftermath of flooding,
Keeping towns completely cut off

Writing can be both blessing
And curse

Writing can be itself flooding
An escape to the chaos
Writing time to forget
Forgetting everything, processing things

Writing and reading
Make others feel not alone
Even in moments such as these

Isolated from others
Water rushing by a front door

Storytelling is how to make sense of the world
We need them now more than ever

Process or escape
Good or bad times
Fortitude and understanding

These will resonate
With someone
Somewhere

They
You
We are not alone

[Kiki]

August

The realization that your love was never safe, never set in stone, all an illusion that could crumble the next time you leaned on it.

The way you put your heart and soul into a love that was never real.

Thinking back on the short time in which you believed you had love, that it would last forever.

Thinking about how much you relied on your own perception.

It’s an anthem about the pain of memories that shouldn’t have been memories.

It’s a story about falling head over heels and losing it all in a second, about taking for granted everything you have, and thinking it would last forever and you would never lose it.

It’s about looking back and wishing you had said it, made them yours permanently.

It’s about pain and broken trust and confusion.

It’s about wondering how you ever let love like that slip through your fingers.

[Kiki]

A church is just a
Sacred cave
Where there is no echo
Just tepid hopeful silence

[Kiki]

Some days I just want to
Sit and stare at the wall

I can’t be bothered to
Do anything

The malaise of being alive
Is almost so boring

I get unhelpful urges
Wanderlust cravings
To just take off to
Anywhere at all

Why must I be so obstinate,
So contrite to be contrite
The itching burning under feeling
To just get out of dodge

[Kiki]

Prolapsed

I wait and I wait
Minutes are slow in the fall
I listen to rain
Wonder whether to call

I wonder and I wonder
The screen unchanged
I write during
The feeling is strange

I feel and I feel
Just when to give it away
To close the laptop
Or just wait and stay

[Kiki]

I’m not as clever
As I think to be
There are those much cleverer
Than me

I wish I could write
For hours on end
Making words and thematics
Bend

I think to her
Which wrote a poem a day
I try to write just one
And cannot say

Just any good thing
Nor bad, nor subtle
Just not clever,
There’s no rebuttal.

[Kiki]

Nestled into the mountains
Where the fog hangs low

A long new trailed walk
Is a familiar place to go

The trees do not separate
Unsoiled purposeful land

Though haunted are these places
Lives taken by own hand

What once was a secret wood
Now, a resting place for a soul

To be alone in this place,
Lethality, the goal

If only to be told ahead,
Your goal, the deed

Perhaps we could have walked together,
In a trying time, your need

We could have stood together,
Rocking with the trees

I stand alone now,
Often on my knees

[Kiki]

The understory
Of the forest
Is magic

Everything
Is connected
And in it,
We can become

Shadows and light
Daisy drops
Folky flowers

The sun setting
Behind the trees
A woodland collection

Mushrooms
Reflecting lake
Gold mirror
Sunset shrine

Light bottled
A terrarium domed

Forests of my home
A magical walk
Amongst the ferns
Just after a rain

[Kiki]

Hostage

I glimpse off, stare at the horizon
just to avoid your gaze. I doubt my abilities.
I doubt myself because of you. It's what
you've instilled in me: failure.
You sow your ugliness when I think how
far I've come only you nag how far I still
have to go.
I lose faith that I will get there.

You're a hateful bitch. When did the
tenderlings of maternal nature subside?
When did you start to harbor you
jealousy?

I wish I could throw back my head and
laugh at you at your pettiness. But it only
wounds me.
The deception that you invaded me with
that I'm never good enough. I need to do
more. Be more. Say more. More accolades.
More success. More.more.more.

I tout a hefty pile of success, present it to
you, try to hesitantly welcome you into
days celebrating my success
and you only rear back and spit venom in my face.
Tear me down.

What good is a trophy, another medal,
an additional degree to a mother who only
finds her daughter just below par?

[Kiki]

Streetlight painted face
Kaleidoscopic flashes
Red
Then green
Pixelated cell phone screen
A beautiful familiar stranger
City view
Car therapy
A softened chaotic session
Blinking headlights
Shifting, speckled windshield
Raindrops and trauma
Heat piling on the windows,
The warm fervor of telling
The stories of life
Steering wheel confessionals
Gripped
Backlit
In the evening
Of a session