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• Poetry > Free Verse
  Let's Go

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  The world was not made for us, was not made at all but I think it was, or I used to. I admit now that I don’t know and talk of God bothers me. Church bothers me. I don’t know why we pretend we know all this stuff that is only tradition, that has changed so ...
• Nonfiction > Personal Experience
  On the T

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  I was on the T with a friend and we were going to Chinatown. “You’re gonna laugh at me,” I told my friend as the automated doors expelled us into the current of bustling bodies, “but that was one of the best moments of my life!” “Huh?” “It was like every person was a poem!” Th...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Prison Walls

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  A too well-behaved outsider, I gaze at prison walls, longing to be one with the caged souls within A mistake, and they are gone-- escaped into choicelessness, the bliss of certainty that all is lost, ended And so they sit, walk about when instructed and know what it is to be a dog while ...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Forever

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  I have only twice truly experienced Truth’s panic The knowing that life will go on, after death, after all, into Eternity Maybe this was a curse, this mind, this knowing, that humanity earned by ravaging their dominion, their fellows, themselves Our curse is the Soul We are divine, but...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Sitting, Silent

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  I love the poetry, the reality of your voice Low and desperate, but slow, amused, kind, and scared maybe— Yes, scared I think— and maybe that’s the beauty, the key of it, of you— fear— so viscerally true, so honest, façadeless that I fall, tumble, plunge to my demise, barely ...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Freedom

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  I love but need solitude much of the time to rest, to read, to think— or perhaps only to escape the confines of this reality in which I am unreal, a mere bundle of luminous thoughts that have no home here in society where all is order— insanity, yes, but orderly insanity And so ...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Thinking

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  Fraud, she sits there because it’s easier to be a part than an individual Doubt is her chosen path to Truth and yet she still follows even as her conscience objects overtly, secretly, confusedly Follower of no path but the one her conscience leads her to create she’s tortured by ...
• Poetry > All Poetry
  Villanelle

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  Now deeply rooted in my head they haunt me those ideas I was fed Now overcome by dread of what I learned to accept, if not to love now deeply rooted in my head But despite their matured shells my teachers were aught but well-read They knew no more than the conventional doctrine: those id...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Oppressed by Freedom

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  Yesterday I was thinking about how we strive for peace and justice how we struggle through our striving with gritty enjoyment with grimly grinning determination I would be happier under an oppressive regime because then I would have something to push against ideals to strive for I would b...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Fleeting Fun

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  “That’s mad awk” she chortled as if she were texting out loud “Stay over! C’mon it’s the only way I can get out to meet Eli” “I guess I could go too” she pondered frowningly “but that would be mad awk” “So? Please! Text Joe. Maybe he’ll come” “Well...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Sisters

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  She asked me a question I declined to answer As it was more like an order like some awful, parasitic demand than a query As I did not come up with some proper, correct reply I was punished with brutality of tongue and hate of heart Sickened with sadness for the one I could not chan...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Under the Rain

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  Drowning into the sky with violent, desperate affection One with a wet, blurred universe propriety plops into puddles and only our souls remain harmoniously wandering dreaming of and searching for something more just as before...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  My Wuthering Heights

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  We are the same person I know it, I feel it That oneness of our minds Of our souls Cowardly, I remain in my “fantasy world” As my mom used to call it When, an introverted middle-schooler, I retreated into the fabulous world Confined within paper pages While he ejaculates his though...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Appearances

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  The problem with people is— They think I’m nice But I am not a kind teller of falsehoods, A passive smiler, a dully encouraging nodder, But a confused, not-quite-sure-enough-to-be-righteous, believer In honesty What I say, all I say, is true....
• Poetry > Free Verse
  November

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  I jogged with optimistic torpor, unusually, wonderfully aware of the gravity holding me down to this earth My eyes leaked a sad sort of joy The trees were naked having disposed of their garments which crunched beneath my plodding I didn’t mind the imperfection then It seemed right,...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  The Paranoid Woman

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  I watch a paranoid woman from the corner of my eye I’ve seen her before She smells but I have a cold today, so the stench doesn’t permeate me The fumes bounce off my face as I sit here, smiling I don’t mean to be rude but I’m curious about people about other ways of living So...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Love?

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  We are twin souls. Of that I am convinced. but he exudes brilliance, while I don’t. In my shy introversion, I listen as he speaks my poems —though he has never read them— so eloquently, so passionately —but those aren’t even the right words to encompass the perfection of his spe...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Convoluted Freedom

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  The hedonistic hue of your vermilion gaze spurns me onwards, backwards, into nowhere, beyond the bounds of competition where thought is imposed on my mindless spirit Here, I question, ponder, contemplate, one mystery-- Why am I running?...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Tired

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  Seated, cross-legged on my mattress, I listen to the Beatles, And wonder where all that brilliance has gone Where are my heroes? Brutus Of Julius Caesar, St. Clare Of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Rod Serling Of the Twilight Zone Are we, the Youth, Encumbered by potential, Brilliant or brainw...
• Fiction > Realistic Fiction
  Snapshot

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  You see me as intelligent. Smiling at your ingenuity, I ask about your dog. “Oh, Holly’s doing well,” you reply, chuckling. “Fatter than ever though.” At the other table, they’re discussing Facebook and the stalkeresque symptoms the site has evoked within them. “Yeah, I know, right? ...
• Poetry > All Poetry
  Fly

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  Compelled by stupidity, Your anguish is ignorance. Your fears, mindless. Your sight, dissimilar from mine. Go away. Leave me in peace, Oh Annoying One!...
• Fiction > Realistic Fiction
  Dialogue

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  “Why do we conform, obey so willingly,” she pondered, eyes lowered so as to forget the momentarily mute listener before her, to relinquish the thoughts that troubled her too frequently, “to an oppressive, higher power? Because we’re scared, or because, secretly, we really want to hurt others...
• Opinion > Social Issues / Civics
  Vegetarian

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  “Now, why would you do that?” she asked her granddaughter, wondering if the girl had been influenced by mob psychology, peer pressure, or was merely inflicted by a temporary, ephemeral insanity. “I just…” the girl mused, attempting to organize her chaotic thoughts into some semblance of...
• Fiction > Realistic Fiction
  Shadowed Truths

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  “Why do we trust blindly?” he mused, confusedly bitter, “Because we’ve been taught that such an act, a leap of faith, is beautiful, noble. But is it really?” “Yes,” she replied, instinctively defensive. Raising an eyebrow, skeptical, he sighed, “Right.” “Because,” she co...
• Poetry > All Poetry
  Internal Warfare

  

  By wanderer23, Watertown, MA

  Refusing to exist meaninglessly, she searched for answers, thinking, thinking, pondering on the point of creation. Who was she? Nervous, intense, always so serious, no one quite understood her. In truth, she only had a vague idea of her own character. With a sense of depressed despera...