Inside The Hearts' Walls

You lived so much of your life without telling anyone,
until one day when you couldn’t keep it in any longer,
and then your world turned upside down.
Oh well. Right side up is highly over-rated.

By rk

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Another poem on the "We live so much of our lives without telling anyone" prompt.  This one was also the club's submission to the Commuter this week.

The club today voted to send Dan Simmon's poem as our submission to the Commuter this week.


Can You Tell?

by Danny Earl Simmons

I could tell you
but you
might have to kill
me
if I told you

I am one
flinch
after another
flinch
all day long

Why do I squint?

I am from space
I am from the between of things
jobs(I am)jobs
girlfriends(I am)girlfriends
apartments(I am)apartments
doctors(I am)doctors
rocks(I am)and hard places

I need
to tell
someone
I need
a gun.

So much of our lives we spend with
an internal monologue our only company
grinding at the loneliness inside.
But don't worry, it's not just you.
This is how everyone feels sometimes.

So you're not alone those hours every day,
when you're so very alone
and nobody cares.
We do care. We all know what it's like,
feeling lonely. We're just busy,
worrying about our own loneliness, just like you.

We're each all too familiar
with the dark pit of despair.
It'd be easy enough to climb out of,
if only someone out there, would lend you a hand up;
which they'd surely do,
if they'd ever just see you there in it.

Nobody's ever interested in you,
physically or intellectually,
it's what you want more than anything
what we all do,
but you're just another cog to them,
one more human obstacle
to be dealt with or avoided.

When you are stabbed again and again,
by the frustration and pain,
despair and hate,
We all know how that feels.

We all know the fantasies that bloom,
your mind shying away from the dangerously possible,
sliding to the bigger ideas, the better catharsis.
Dream of rending the planet,
ripping the whole thing to shreds with your hands,
tearing civilization till it pops at the seams,
smooshing all the little bits that fall off,
crushing everyone and everything,
and bringing an end to the worthless world that has no time or patience
for someone like you, and your pathetic loneliness.

The loathing and rage
shrieking and screaming inside
while outside you're ever more civil, more quiet and numb.
madness and chaos,
venom and bile,
fiery and fury,
fatigue, and exhaustion.

Don't worry, it isn't just you.
I feel that way too sometimes. We all do.
Even if you never tell anyone,
We all still understand.

By Turtle Shell

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One of 2-1-11's "We live so much of our lives without telling anyone." poems.

Telephone Repairman
by Joseph Millar


All morning in the February light
he has been mending cable,
splicing the pairs of wires together
according to their colors,
white-blue to white-blue
violet-slate to violet-slate,
in the warehouse attic by the river.

When he is finished
the messages will flow along the line:
thank you for the gift,
please come to the baptism,
the bill is now past due :
voices that flicker and gleam back and forth
across the tracer-colored wires.

We live so much of our lives
without telling anyone,
going out before dawn,
working all day by ourselves,
shaking our heads in silence
at the news on the radio.
He thinks of the many signals
flying in the air around him
the syllables fluttering,
saying please love me,
from continent to continent
over the curve of the earth.

-------------------------

The prompt for next week is: "We live so much of our lives without telling anyone".

Also, at next week's club meeting we will be viewing photos taken by students in the photography department (I think), and we will each get to choose one to write a poem on. After the club's loyal members show up to take their pick next Tuesday, I'll try to post the pictures or links to them online so that everyone else can pick at our scraps perhaps choose one to write about as well.