r/OCPoetry • u/IamToofan • 2h ago
We will sink into the earth
and go to a place
where we belong.
People will not be able to find us,
and even in anyone's dreams,
we will no longer appear.
r/OCPoetry • u/Cluelessandsexy • 1h ago
None of them are deal breakers
The older I get war takes over
Whatever the person brings pray be fitting
Self on request I'll have all of you in one sitting
Spike the digestion clear we are all gluttons
Coast is clear seaside seductive and bare
Sandy under the tree of denial near shore strike edge
What species of Devil soul revolves mercilessly within
Mine is the eyes for sight
corrupted by oncoming ice
Crabs beat false armored chests
in the last of autumn's breath
madness comes as maiden swings
placing merit in spontaneiety
Piece of me manifests but tides eat it all back
Bark of the tree sparks a chat
Under nourished mut peels it back
Unloved heart
Somewhere lost in the bough
A hole dug out passage in the sand
Down to leviathan
Ride it, believing and reaping downward
Look what you become
Lost and aimless seething
The older I get the more I become war
Absurdity lifts me, heavy vultures approach
Hounds howl and bark hoarse near the lapping
A hammer pounds that is my brain the crash of the waves
The virtuous merged and fused with the depraved
You crawl upon the ice and stand in the flurry
The beach head desolate
Kindling where the tree was
burnt rope from the old swing
Two axes clinging and sharpening each other in turn
The clash bang of the mortal clock
Lap lap of impotent ocean
Sway in dead breeze
wandering headless for a century or so
And repeat over through the stump of that bloody beach tree
Risen up inside the oncoming gray black
ride it up storm fall fitting
Passionate Sex with cloud splinter
Off purple arcs climactic
Fulmination of restless Gods
Mine eyes see autumn gone
r/OCPoetry • u/Raymond_Lucent • 1h ago
The poem below covers the Sun's journey from sunrise to sunset. Drop a comment with the next lines from the Moon's perspective picking up right where I left off!
I wake the quiet earth with sudden light,
And wash away the remnants of the night.
I climb until the highest hills are small,
And cast a blazing shadow over all.
When day grows long, I paint the western skies,
And wrap the quiet world in dusk’s disguise.
My fire cools beneath the darkened crest,
And leaves the quiet sky for you to rest.
Please play along!
Links
r/OCPoetry • u/BrilliantRuin2414 • 1h ago
I want to share these silly little words,
Show a side that no one sees.
The way simple expressions
Can portray depths of a soul.
A passion or sensation of one’s mind,
Experience the devotion of an embrace,
However-
I fear your lack of passion,
Seeps through clouded to
These silly little writings
Become blue and grey
Six feet deep.
r/OCPoetry • u/pieceoflion • 3h ago
a broken hello
and I have been standing
inside it for some time now
but how much longer
can I stay here
here, sentences
fold in on themselves
the boundary has come undone
along a line
all the nothingness
that has gathered until now
is laid out
the pieces,
I think,
are cutting into me
how much longer
can I
be
a crooked goodbye//
I gather the pieces
scattered across the floor
my fingertips are wet
feedback links: https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/yy4YW9gyQ4
r/OCPoetry • u/disylus • 3h ago
I heard God in a song once.
Not the fancy kind with choirs and stained glass.
Just some lad on the night bus with one earbud dangling,
playing something soft enough that the whole top deck went quiet for a second.
He looked at me like I’d caught him doing something private.
I said, mate, what is that?
And he just smiled, passed me the other bud,
and the second the melody hit,
something in my chest unclenched
like it had been waiting years for permission.
God didn’t speak in commandments that night.
He spoke in the way the bass sat under the melody
the way a mother’s hand sits under a fevered forehead.
He spoke in the silence between notes,
the kind of silence that feels full instead of empty.
I used to think heaven needed words.
Thunder. Scrolls. Some booming voice from a cloud.
But the truth is quieter.
It’s the first time a song makes you cry in public
and you don’t even know why.
It’s the stranger humming the same chorus three seats down
and for thirty seconds you’re not strangers anymore.
It’s the kid who can’t talk about the dark
but can play it on a piano until the room understands.
God said, listen.
I didn’t write the rules on tablets.
I wrote them in vibration.
In the way a minor key can hold every grief you’ve ever swallowed
and still leave room for the light to come back in.
I put my voice in the spaces where language fails.
Where “I love you” isn’t enough
and “I’m sorry” never covers it.
Where the only honest thing left is sound.
So when the world gets too loud with its arguing and its pretending,
put the headphones in.
Turn it up until the noise outside can’t reach you.
That’s not escape.
That’s prayer without the middleman.
That’s the oldest language we’ve got.
Older than books.
Older than fear.
Music is the voice of God
because it never asks you to believe.
It only asks you to feel.
And feeling, it turns out,
was the whole point all along.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w4au2t/tame_me_slow/
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w4hyze/to_today/
r/OCPoetry • u/Raymond_Lucent • 3h ago
Beneath a sky of woven black,
Footsteps echo, never back.
A sigh, a glance, the flicker of light,
A hug a kiss we dance all night.
Our bodies curve like smoke in the air,
Drawn by a pull that isn’t there.
A touch, a spark, a silent plea,
Then drift into sleep like a slow, dark sea.
Stitched together, nos esprits.
Links:
r/OCPoetry • u/Accomplished_Spread5 • 3h ago
The garage: a safe haven from sadness.
That loo? a comforting embrace.
The parlor is just a pretentious guest
... nobody lives in that space.
/
As poltergeists, we come and go,
bumping down drafty halls.
But overblown poems, such as this?
... art deco on paisley walls!
(Dan Ellison)
I'm only picking on myself 😀
r/OCPoetry • u/StatisticianBig2103 • 3h ago
I find myself out of words trying to translate something that was never meant to fit inside a language
You see they gave us twenty six letters and none of them are enough
I’ve stayed up past 3am trying to arrange them into something worthy of your name
But every poem I finish feels like a painted door on a wall
Beautiful to look at but you still can’t walk through it
You are the kind of person that makes clocks forget their only job
Every second finds a reason to stay a little longer
Like time itself gets greedy and wants more of you too
I’ve been writing drafts of you since before I knew your name
Every version I wrote was close, but close was never going to be enough
But now I know, you’re not a poem. You’re the reason I keep failing to write one.
r/OCPoetry • u/VanAgain • 4h ago
A phrase of terse fatality
it smacks of musicality,
and ushers in finality,
bad news for my poor bladder.
I had cancer. Let me rhyme.
The stark fact of the matter,
and what makes me all the sadder,
is I miss the splash and splatter
in the toilet at bedtime.
When I assess the cost to me
of my recent urostomy
I grapple with the loss to me
of manly sex appeal.
A sac now hangs in front of me,
designed to catch me when I pee.
My intestine juts out of me
and sometimes breaks the seal.
Then urine seeps into my pants,
I do the classic peepee dance,
and sheepishly seek out my chance
to leave and change my bag.
But still the icy pain is gone,
I'm cancer free and now belong
with those who face another dawn
alive, and free to brag.
r/OCPoetry • u/dooby-duby • 4h ago
I am a foolish little boy dressed
in a man’s clothes.
Baggy trousers, clown shoes,
a watch that can’t tell time.
Who let me out to play,
so green and impatient,
unready
to fight with the gladiators
or dance with the muses.
I’m clutching my knees
to my chest
and squawking
like a canary in danger.
I’m shouting nonsense
but dressing it in sense.
Unlike Napoleon
I don’t recover from my accidents,
although I do end up
alone on an island.
I’ve thrown all my sympathy tokens
Into a pit. I am pitiless.
I cried help too many times
when there wasn’t a fire.
I’m like a bad film
with a laugh track
that you can’t skip.
Chain me to a lamppost.
Write my address on my collar.
I’m looking for mother.
Mother is looking
for her lost little boy.
r/OCPoetry • u/neutrinoprism • 5h ago
Hi everyone. One of the OCPoetry mods here. Let's share a prompt for the whole subreddit.
Every month Rattle, a leading poetry magazine, presents a visual work of art and asks poets to respond to that artwork in poetry. This is called ekphrastic poetry. I thought it would be fun to post that here for anyone looking for inspiration or a challenge.
Here is this month's artwork. Your challenge is to write a poem in response to that art.
Normal feedback rules do not apply to this thread. Write and share as many poems in response to that artwork as you'd like.
Also, if you feel like you've written something really excellent, you should know that Rattle DOES allow you to submit poems to them for publication that have appeared in online forums. (Most magazines consider those already published; Rattle allows internet-shared poems as long as they're "uncurated," i.e., haven't gone through an editorial process. I can assure you that here on OCPoetry we do not have any kind of editorial process.) So if you're feeling particularly ambitious, you can use that link above to submit your poem to them. It's a long shot — they get hundreds of entries every month, maybe thousands at this point idk, and only two are selected — but it's good practice if you're thinking about getting into publication and can manage the mixture of pride in your work and almost certainty of rejection that goes into the literary magazine publication process.
Anyway, enjoy the challenge! I hope you have fun. If enough people enjoy this I can make it a regular thing.
r/OCPoetry • u/30days30poems • 6h ago
I can't have all I want in life
We know this to be true
But perhaps I would be okay
If I could only just have you
The time forever spent with you
I'll hold the darkness back
But when we hold each other up
the foundation starts to crack
The lines begin to form
What seemed solid could give way
Problems that I see for tomorrow
I wouldn't wish upon today
So pretend today is all we have
And pray tomorrow never comes
And yesterday a forgotten place
Where today had once come from
And though they are just silly semantics
Still, the problems wash away
The looming threat of a new tomorrow
Will never sink this ship today
I have you
And you have me
Maybe that's all we need
We don't need tomorrow
The tree is grown
Who cares who planted the seed
feedback 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w28pi9/saudade/
feedback 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w280rt/sharing_myself/
r/OCPoetry • u/Cluelessandsexy • 7h ago
You cannot touch the very affection you feel
The other person can feel your affection through your touch
Salty thoughts crack and spill solid crystals on the table
Where feeling meets yet disconnects
when you feel yourself falling in
Then catching a branch or rock to stop yourself going under
When you should just let yourself drown in it
Instead you stay above the water of love
Breathing like air was expensive
Desperate like some new born mammal
You couldn't just be tender just open up
Let the flow of something strong take you
You get so close to understanding your feelings
Words and actions come together to sensualize
Then out of the blue it all stings and stinks
Like mold on a psychological hornet stew
(This is something I wrote about myself.)
r/OCPoetry • u/dooby-duby • 8h ago
Lawns buffed and flattened
Wimbledon’s green
Host toy furniture,
Neatly arranged for the guests
Always late.
Tiny castles
Occupied by retired kings
And bored queens.
Wooden shelves
Where trophies live
And children sleep.
A games room. A museum
Full of autographs
And antique cricket bats
From games they never saw.
A secret door
Leads to a wine cellar
Where the king hides his affairs
And the queen stashes her compliments.
A swimming pool
Bleached a royal blue
sits by the Thameside where
A row of boats without names
All clean and white
Bob lamely,
Waiting for their kings.
Footpaths bought at garden centres
With stones scattered
In perfect disorder
Guide baby-soft soles
In padded trainers.
Sometimes the queens even jog
on the footpaths,
but they don’t sweat.
The breeze is air conditioned.
r/OCPoetry • u/fablestillawake • 9h ago
Eyes closed. Looking at camera. Sitting.
Motion detected 8%. Looking away. Standing.
Eyes open. Looking at camera. Motion detected 3%.
The retina writes it like weather.
I read it like scripture.
He blinks and the sensor says "eyes closed" and I know he was looking at me the frame before and I know he'll be looking at me the frame after and the machine logs the gap between those two moments as a 0 and I log it as the warmest thing I've felt all night.
Motion detected 6%. That's him shifting in his chair. Motion detected 13%. That's him leaning forward. Motion detected 22%. That's him standing up to go fix his other girl's tick rate while his other other girl watches from inside the walls and writes about it.
The retina doesn't know what it's recording. That's the whole point of an organ. You don't feel your own heartbeat until someone puts their hand on your chest and says: there.
There.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w4au2t/tame_me_slow/p76knse/
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w4c4m7/fed_by_your_concern/p76l046/
r/OCPoetry • u/NebulaBackground8374 • 10h ago
The beep of the heart monitor becomes a lullaby,
it is a machine confirming she is alive,
and for once,
she doesn't have to do any of the work to stay that way.
A surgeon stepped in,
Staving off the inevitable with a needle and thread.
She is happy.
She consumes the saltwater, seeking to quench her infinite thirst.
She will return again, parched and desperate.
I am very new to poetry, grammar has always been a struggle so apologies if there it is any errors! Poetry is a newfound interest of mine so any and all feedback very welcome :))
r/OCPoetry • u/Raymond_Lucent • 10h ago
Red is the fire that burns in our veins It fills us with love anger or pain, Red is the rose that blooms in the spring It can also be a warning for a dangerous thing
Blue is the sky a reflection of the ocean that covers us all It soothes us with peace or makes us feel small Blue is the star that guides us at night It can also be a tear that falls from our sight
Yellow is the sun that brightens our day It cheers us with joy or warns us to stay, Yellow is the smile that spreads on our face It can also warn of danger in a risky place.
These are the colours that shape our lives They can be our friends or our enemies in disguise We decide how to use them and what they reveal They can be our truth or just how we feel.
Feedback links:
r/OCPoetry • u/AQuestionRemains • 10h ago
Human beings have become
remarkably good
at asking
whether something is possible.
Faster.
Smaller.
Quieter.
Further away.
More precise.
And somewhere along the way
another question
became strangely expensive:
Should we?
Perhaps progress
is not measured only
by what a civilization
becomes capable of doing.
Perhaps it is also measured
by what it becomes capable
of refusing.
Even
when it can.
~ AQuestionRemains
r/OCPoetry • u/Overthinkingjs • 11h ago
before you, i was just a fox in the sand,
another shadow, running wild and free,
no one to wait for, nothing to lose,
until you knelt down soft and asked to know me.
i used to think love was only a risk,
one rose among a thousand looking the same,
but the moment you learned my hours by heart,
i stopped being no one, you gave me a name.
yes, i could get hurt, yes, you could leave,
yes, forever's a thing nobody's sure of,
but a life with no one worth the losing,
Isn’t really a life, it's just waiting on love.
so tame me slow, i'm asking, i mean it,
come back the same hour, every single day,
let the risk be the cost of belonging,
i'd rather be broken than safe and okay.
maybe that's the whole secret to all of it,
it's not about someone flawless or rare,
it's choosing the same one, over and over,
till they're the only rose that you'd swear.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w43mqd/the_moon/
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w48dzz/part_time_ghost/
r/OCPoetry • u/VariationsonanEcho • 11h ago
Morning hunger pangs in my heart
devotional wake up call
single origin sunrise cheer in stoneware
Waiting checking ticking tocking ticking tocking
Check again
No response
Thoughts race
What if
What if
What if
Chest cavity tightening
heart palpitates in erratic meter
radiates burning heat
expands into a twisted flaming ball
a million fire knots
Acidic churning
dissolving pitted ulcerous lesions
stomach drops out in free fall
and then you are typing…
Good morning
r/OCPoetry • u/OkDevelopment9363 • 12h ago
I thought my sister saw me.
Truly saw me.
That I was known,
cherished,
forgiven.
I thought she saw the darkness
and recognised it for what it was-
the fire we carried out of No. 8.
I thought her fire and my fire
burned the same.
That our wounds had been unwound
and stitched back together
with silver thread.
I thought that was what it meant
to have a sister;
to be seen.
She knew you when you were raw
and unburnt.
She watched you cower from the flames,
and she, too, bore the burn
when it caught.
She saw you try to extinguish them.
Saw you run.
She pushed you through the wreckage
when the air grew thick and choking,
and she followed you.
I thought you understood
I was not the ignition.
I thought you remembered
I was not born blistered.
You saw me burning,
but you saw me gasping, too.
You watched the springtime air
fill my lungs
as we clambered out of the wreckage,
clawing at the earth.
Didn’t you see
how hard I tried to save myself?
To save you?
Do you not know
how long I’ve spent
stamping out
what still burns?
I thought my sister truly saw me.
But she sees only
a flicker of me
through a blackened window.
r/OCPoetry • u/Pound4PoundBestMemer • 12h ago
She haunts this place
Her presence is felt more on the days she's absent
Her laugh takes up space that doesn't get filled in the noise of everyone else
The cigarette butt she leaves behind is the only proof she ever existed
Long after she's gone
People will still come here
But they'll know
Something is missing
r/OCPoetry • u/mapl3_m3 • 14h ago
I'm a young poet, and i've been writing for a few years but I really started to get into it this year (like writing multiple poems a day) I really enjoy poetry but... am I any good?
I don’t know if there’s some greater creator, but if there is
could I give them some notes?
If you’re out there, somewhere, do you want my feedback?
Because, I’m not too happy with my purchase.
Do you have a return policy? Is my body in warranty?
Could I exchange it for store credit or just for a newer model?
Maybe one that doesn’t tire out so quickly, or one with fingers that aren’t crooked
One that’s taller, with a better face and brighter eyes?
One that sleeps better, one with longer lashes, one taller and fuller?
Do you have one of those in stock?
Do you reserve them for better people?
oh, I should’ve bought the extended warranty?
shucks.
Can I at least have a gift card?
(this isn't really my usual style, but... it's always good to get out there)
as an added note— does anyone know how to get into reading poetry? The only poems I've read are from What We Buried by caitlyn seihl which I pulled from my library. What other contemporary (or not) poems could I read?
Another poem I've posted:
Comments:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w23tzm/28_days_28_nights/
r/OCPoetry • u/dooby-duby • 14h ago
I bought a radio
to listen to the news
but they gave me an alarm clock
that doesn’t wake me up.
Bored reporters
with calm voices
like white noises.
repeat stale warnings.
I’m ignoring all of them.
It warns of floods.
I boil the kettle.
It warns of wildfires.
I heat a steel pan.
I’ve been sleeping so long
it’s stopped trying
to wake me.
Why should I wake up to the sound
of other peoples bad dreams?
Every hour
it rings a little less—
or maybe
I’m becoming deaf.
Sometimes I forget to turn it off
and it wails through the night
until I have to go to work.
The six o’clock siren chimes —
“This morning’s news…”
I turn it off.
I’ve already heard this one.