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Guys, I can't believe we only have a week and a half left of NaPo!

I'm loving it so far on my first time around. Still not sure how many of my things are decent, but I'm pretty happy with producing more at the very least. :D 

I have so many favorites I've found from these last few weeks... Just going to drop a few of them here! You should definitely check out all of these guys! :heart: 

butterfly mannow I see
a man emerges from the iron chrysalis 
his skin solid diamond, glistening
like a star 
he stands unwavering before me
though it’s hard to gauge the distance
so I strike
with such strength that quite easily
my bone breaks from within
that horrid smile
now I feel like a hot air balloon
and he alarms me as a needle, custom-made
my folly’s cure
unbearably pure, I fear myself reduced
the disease – am I supposed to be
a new drug
for me to serve in endless death
till life do us part
the star falls
and I am left alone
a drying flower in a field of night
where art thou?
  sum quod sumthis is the color of my energy:
grey like the slate on the sides
of the cliffs in cornwall,
navy like the uniform I didn't wear-
and on the water it is the color
of deep ocean, coral sea tinted
with green, the skies filled with clouds
and the sun in the afternoon,
a premonition of the evening;
not so much the promise of a storm
as the threat of one,
centered on the ground
around me, the grass yellow and flat
from six months of snow - would be dead,
except the sprinklers will turn on at 4AM
in June, and I feel like the futility
of predicting the weather, the side-eye glances
when the sprinklers are on in the rain,
yes, even the blemished irony
of planting trees in all our yards
while picking out the colors of our hardwood floors,
and in the stain I think I will be polished clean.
  

stray doglover, purge all your fear
and doubt that i might hold
it in, that i might cripple myself
for your glory. let me swim
gory and grotesque
through the worst of it,
saddest days and lowest points
battering. ram your dismay
down my throat with abandon,
over the edge of the deadliest
precipice. what did i do
to be left alone, god, to be
passed over by the wry angel
of death? i am no victim,
i stepped in the grave
and chewed through
my own damned ankles.
  SP (=) Short Poemgive me a short poem
a short short poem
make the letters smaller
yes.. like this
keep them small
and give me more words
more lines
with reduced spacial value
write one last stanza
and remember - keep it short
leave it a haiku
  Red LightThe opposite of sleep is disrespect. The light
is yellow; you ran it. If you're early, you're on
time, if you're on time, you're late. If you're late,
please break glass in case of emergency. Work
starts at 9 am, which means you need to wake
at 8:30 to have time to shower, 8 to make
breakfast, 7:30 to wash dishes. 7 for good luck,
6 for the max amount of sleep you can get
tonight. In a darkroom, people are left alone
for hours. The light is red for a reason.
Photographs are developing. You should be, too.
 

XVII. To the things I will never not see again.van Gogh was near sighted so
to him
all the lights were halos and
all the prostitutes angels
with fuzzed out faces and
skirts rucked up like flags
around hips hot from ¡helpme! hands.
He could never tell the color.
(I always knew your sway was
a wide red one.)
Alcohol bottles +
rivers at night +
guns
have halos too.
Light interferes.
Constructively;
destructively.
Sometimes you’re left with nothing.
   cities crumble slower than wordsi.
and you are the jaw-crushing love
i always wanted,
nights spent grinding teeth
against my uncondition;
(isn’t love a way of growing,
don’t i stretch over countries when i'm with you?)
ii.
but this is not a love poem.
i burden time with heaviness,
bending minutes into folds of blankets,
tunneling to sleep;
i once had energy for flying,
arching back against the wind-
when i was braver i might leap,
arms flashing
until my body thumped against the sand.
iii.
i think i want to open hands into steel,
into concrete,
in lieu of words i want to
sweat-strain against limestone:
i have written too much for people
who don’t understand.
vi.
but if i built you cities instead of poems,
could your lighthouse heart burn for me?
the early humans built temples for their gods;
i too believe
i've become so lonely. 
  4.9.18green valleys dip beneath my toes;
i walk the world like it is made solely
of poetry & prose.
stars nestle into my hair,
& the gods stop & stare,
wondering who i am & why the heavens
obey me.
they might have stars,
but i’ve got the galaxy.
life is a secret that i’ve got the key to
& a promise to be kept true.
i bottle up resilience
& take note of my brilliance,
& i kneel to no throne
but my own.
 

  .there’s something about the smell of fat burning:
sweet grease, rendered spit, cast iron hissing back at you.
think surrender. think sacrifice. think stolen breath.
the violence that brings us daily bread.
death, the morning milkman
death, the grace before a meal
oh death, the paper has your name written all over it
  gelousthis time you
drew a dark
red heart on
my thigh,
crossed it out
quickly in
time with
the radio.
moved to blue
spirals on
ankle's either side,
and at the summit
initalized.
if i sigh
i swear i might
lose it all;
don't look up at me,
i'm falling.
make me your canvas
and i swear
i'll feel
a masterpiece.
  (14/30) marrow.sometimes,
when no one’s looking,
i climb up the mountain,
and pull my bones out
to look at them, one
at a time.  and i wish
you could see them.
see how ashamedly white,
how they hold
the stuff keeping me
alive in their walls.  tell
me, have you ever done
something so significant?
or do you sit there
and beat
like the blood in your veins.
 

  Sleeping Aloneresembling a snake, I coil inward,
an ouroboros contained in a blanket
and myself. it's an act of self-love,
or of stubbornness, committing
to a single blanket because the other
needs to be set aside for you. the
blankets are mine, the bed
mine, the frame and room containing
mine, but I am yours, so I will
consume myself in softness,
the ouroboros feasting
on the heat of its own heart,
for now
  to an unknown nowin getting there
I stowed words of fever
in a green field, beneath some stones
a place so peaceful
unlikely anyone had gone
and life was piecemeal, debris
gathered on footstep dawn
treading less softly each day
where everyone is drowning
*
in getting there,
to hilly lands and quiet
little porch creaks
under shifting momentary weight
I rode the color line,
passing red skies, blue skies
between here and then- that time
when everything was more alive
 

great white shark.i.
you dream of another springtime
at the bottom of a swimming pool,
watching the sun-ripples dazzle
across your skin. they cast rose
petals into your fishpond, crimson
and sweet. it is not enough. you
thirst for the world, for salt and
deep water off the African cape
and this aquarium cage they've
made for you is far too bright,
too shallow. you suffocate in
slow motion, day by day, and
your heart grows quiet and still.
ii.
find the words, say them aloud. 
i am the ocean and i cannot be kept.
iii.
tomorrow you will drown. tomorrow
your starved carcass will stink of
chlorine when at last they pull you
from the depths - but don't think of
that now. today, think of the wild
home they stole from you. think of
the stormwinds, the delirious taste
of seal blood, the full moon tide on
the lonely Pacific coast. remember
that once, you were beautiful and
whole and free. remember that you
would rather die than be broken.
say it again,
again, 
again -
iv.
today the po
  xi. petered outi am crumbling edges off the cliff-side like stale bread,
like i'm gretel forecasting to be misled,
like i don't know i am expediting my own death.
very soon, quicker than soon,
there will be nothing left
for me to stand on.
i slice my skin open and
retire my bones;
leave them there on the mountain to
bleach in the sunlight and wonder
who will find them.
but i think by the time
day breaks they will have been ground into
a powder and the night-winds will
blow them away and
they will never betray me again.
ever since i was twelve that's how
i've envisioned my own death:
sudden, silent, unnoticed.
  the things history has taught youhooded heart:
history has taught you
that men who hide their truths
are wolves who stray behind turned backs;
that leashes are only effective
when they don't hold knives to cut thin ties;
that whispered words and heavy gestures
mean more in dark corners
and you can't keep a wolf from hunting
when you're too hopeful to lure a snare
and trap them in their place.
past hurts dictate present fears--
you are cowed by the teeth memory flashes,
weak-tongued and vein-tied
in the face of seeding saplings:
an erasure of courage
more biting than the bruises of phantoms passed.
broken spirit,
history has taught you
that men who hit use words more than fists;
that bent backs shield open hearts
from the hardest blows;
that the only person people want
is the one they can mold you into
so you've forgotten--
or maybe you never learned--
how to let yourself just breathe.
just breathe, warrior woman--
history has shown you wrong,
but don't you let it keep you there.
 

Can't wait to read more from everyone! :heart: 
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