#Introspective Verse

[wickedzeevyln]

 ⋆. ˚✮ Opposites ✮˚.⋆

⋆. ˚✮ Vulture ✮˚.⋆ This particular buzzard, smacking its beak, not over carrion, flitting overhead, imprinting itself into the stream of air, savoring silent applauds from an ethereal audience.“Hooray!” An imponderable ringing in his ear. And how he detests anything under his clawed toes.Thinks of himself an eagle,wise beyond his years,a dark wing circling the skyline,eyes tattooed on his…

[zsoltzsemba]

Through a Storefront Window.

Through a Storefront Window. https://wp.me/p84YjG-3KC #poetry #RomanticGlimpse #BeautyInReflection #Poem #MysteriousStranger #Poetic #zsoltzsemba #daydream #romance #FleetingConnection #IntrospectiveVerse #love #puisi #LoveAtFirstSightPoem

I see a girl through a storefront window…She has beautiful blonde hair.A wonderful smile, that melts my heart.With sparkling blue eyes to match.A glow about her that makes me smile.She is in front of a mirror trying on some clothes.I ask myself.Is she seeing who she wants to see?Does the mirror reflect the secrets of her past?She reaches for another shirt…This time it’s a white one.Will her…

[kikinoir777]

Gaslight Glow

Your charisma ignited something within me— warmth and safety, something I'd never had. Love, I called it. But nothing lasts forever, not even a polished facade. You had me there— your glow a lie, a mask, a deceptive cloak. A flicker of cloaked anger creeping in with every word of disdain, fear taking hold in my mind. Each whispered doubt echoed louder, twisting the truth I once knew. Your words are barbed wire, tangling in my mind, leaving scars not even I can see. Unseen wounds whisper in the dark, shaping silhouettes into doubts. The mirror reflects a cloaked figure, cracks weaving lies through its fractured face. When I reach out, the mirror shatters into murmurs, each shard holding a different truth. Ghastly visions waver, dancing in the reflections of each broken fragment. Effortless whispers drift through my reflection, reshaping my reality. My soul’s light glimmers, about to dim. You’ve tried to snuff it out, deepening the darkness I fought so hard to crawl out of. But my soul’s light refuses to fade, flickering defiantly against the darkness you cast. But I endure— hope rising within me, evoking courage amidst your malevolent phantoms. I emerge from that darkness. I pick up a shard of that broken mirror. My soul shines through, radiating strength and resilience. Your influence begins to wither. Clarity deepens, truth taking root. I reclaim my narrative— verity anchoring the foundation I fought for. I stand unbroken, a warrior, shattering your facade and reclaiming truth.

[spiralsinshadows]

To be a sunrise

is to interrupt

to know the tone of Night

—his voice like a father

despairing the light—

and speak up

to open your eyes

— Nikola Sojka

[hedomasochistnist]

Cracks in the corners of the wall

At the auditorium of the suffering of it all

I'm sat, cornered and small

Fists raised but even summer falls

And my wintering mind can't spring to happier thoughts

Seasons lapse like any wimpering dog

And i tell my dog days to sit, cornered and small

At the auditorium of life and more pitfalls

I slip and let repetitive thoughts win

The ace up their sleeve shaped like coffins

Double deal debt turned to million margins

So i keep my ears perked like marshall

And so every single mistake reverberates in this hall

At the auditorium of my whole existence

And the suffering of it all

I'm sat, cornered and small

Fists balled but I can only chew on bone

Wait until it cracks

My only hope that when my life ends, I don't have time to react

#115

[canmom]

choosing the treasure that eats you

the gods in narrative podcast The Silt Verses cover an enormous variety of motifs and subjects - and indeed, we are told how new gods are invented all the time, researched and tested by the government, competing to be the patron of companies and individuals, broken down and dumped when they're no longer needed. but they are all unified by two things: they all demand human sacrifices ('a god must feed' as Carpenter puts it in the opening episode) and they all inflict dramatic body-horror transformations (a process known as 'hallowing'), associated with their theme.

nevertheless, the idea of not following a god seems to be pretty alien to the people of this world. and you don't really get much choice: if, as in episode 7, your advertising company's restructuring decides that the weakest performers need to be sacrificed to their new 'sponsor', you don't get to opt out, it's in your contract and no doubt the police will catch you if you run. we see over and over how the gods (and their chief devotees) pick out the vulnerable, drive their believers to spiral down into life-defining obsession - by stringing them along with vague promises of some kind of final answer or fulfilment, then turn away and discard them as soon as they've served their purpose.

it is a very, very productive theme, and the writers have a gift for furnishing it with evocative words and nasty details so it doesn't get stale. so of course I reflect on the metaphor.

in nier automata, the childlike machine lifeforms search for purpose in a world that doesn't seem to offer any. the answers they find are their 'treasures': small, seemingly insignificant objects which individual machines devote themselves to protecting.

for example, one machine may devote itself to cultivating a flower (as in the second episode of the anime), or looking after a broken doll (as in the story of pathetic failmachine Plato 1728 seen in the DLC/the Deserving of Life single by Amazarashi). other sidequests lead you to encounter machines who obsess over fighting, or travelling fast (easy challenges to implement in a game engine).

the machines' behaviour seems inexplicable and even random to others, but the pointlessness is kind of the point: somewhere the chain of 'why' has to terminate. i choose this one.

sometimes i think about 'art' in the sense of a set of behaviours exhibited by humans. i don't have any interest in demarcating art vs non-art, just to understand what this phenomenon is, why it should be so compelling.

one definition that keeps sticking around in here, despite it not really working, is that 'art' is a word for the thing we devote ourselves for no other reason. you could spend your time drawing, but equally you could spend it speed cubing. we are obsessively optimising creatures so, presented with a defined scope of an activity - something like the rules of a game - we refine our skills within it, pushing the bar further and further, changing the rules as we go to keep it interesting. the art forms that stick around tend to be the ones that continue to be productive and evolve. but it's all, in a sense, pointless - and that's why it's the most important thing, because it's done for itself, not in service of some other goal.

this is not actually a good description of the thing it claims to describe. many things we celebrate as 'art' are done for extrinsic, not intrinsic motivations, like commissioned paintings. indeed, far from being purely intrinsically motivated, there are many extrinsic functions that the various activities we call 'art' perform: communication, entertainment, distraction, a tool to reason with, a safe zone to explore emotions, ideological propaganda, historical memory.

nevertheless, the idea of a thing done for its own sake, defying justification, continues to compel somehow.

art does not escape the logic of sacrifice. if you sacrifice your time, your health, your social connections in pursuit of your art - why, does that not prove the art is more important than your time, your health, your friendships? there's a romance in the narrative about burning up in pursuit of something 'great' - and if you want to undercut that narrative, you likely claim that the object is not particularly worth the effort. it's just videogames. it's just cartoons.

the slogan of The Silt Verses is the sarcastic line of Carpenter (originally her friend Vaughan, part of episode 7's corporate hecatomb): "you get to choose the thing that eats you". a very succinct statement! don't we, indeed.

not that sacrifice is always for some abstract intrinsic goal. in the story, the feeding is often done in exchange for some straightforward, material advantage - and in a sense that is the same in our world, with the threshold adjusted so you have to sacrifice a certain amount to just stay alive.

here's a calculation, because i'm fond of numbers: if you start working full-time at, say, age 21 (a conservative assumption, most people start earlier) up until the UK retirement age of 66 (currently, set to rise), working 40 hours a week (conservative, but then again most people don't actually work the hours they're paid for), the current price of a full human life is 114,793 hours to the gods of capital - pick your fave. if you sleep eight hours a night, the god of sleep gets 160,710 during that same period. harder to fit parameters on the demands of the gods of food, cleaning, caring for others, travelling to and fro, and 'being too tired to do much of anything', which certainly have their own demands.

that leaves you with a certain number to use for your own arbitrary ends. in theory, you get to choose what will eat those ones. in practice? a unified will? consistent intentions? ya joking mate. how many hours go to the god of 'responding to the thing in front of me', known by its sacred name, Aydeeaitchdee?

i used to feel jealous of people, some of them my friends, who seem to have some kind of unique vision, some sort of captivating identity to the creations that they express. the 'spark' that makes that special. i wondered - still wonder - if i will finally find my spark, a reason i'm here, a unique contribution i'm poised to make to the world, the value over replacement - the thing that all this mess was building towards all along, the thing that will make all the efforts so far feel less faltering and haphazard. but why should there be such a thing? if one day i live long enough to, by chance, find something that feels like it's an answer, it's just a retroactive reframing of the chaos - because that's what brains do. convince someone they made a decision they didn't, and they will justify it to you.

there is a song by Sassafrass, an incredibly nerdy a capella band who otherwise largely sing about norse mythology, called 'somebody will'. when i first heard this song i honestly kind of hated it (you can probably find that post if you dig hard enough). it felt like a tragic cope: facing the blatant reality that you will never be an astronaut as you (apparently) desire, to insist on narrativising your life as being part of the great project space colonisation - even if it's so remote as clerking a funding organisation or working at a scifi bookstore or attending a convention (it's from quite a specific milieu), you can claim to be one of the 'sailors' helping to 'conquer' that 'ocean'. i hated it, because why should the space program be all that? somebody will walk on mars someday - so fucking what? what then? job's a good 'un, everybody? is that really worth sacrificing shit ('sacrifice something i don't have for something i won't have') for, here and now? surely your life is about more than putting 'somebody' on Mars one day?

but considering it again today - i mean it might as well be the space program as anything else, right. you need a direction to move in. it doesn't matter what the direction, as long as it keeps you moving. change is life and stillness is death, don't you know. perhaps you drag others along with you and you get a current flowing that way for a while, until the energy driving it runs out, or it runs up against the overpressure around an as-yet uneroded bank. so we all move around and the dynamics of it all, invisible to us, build a delta, which becomes a rock, and against that flows another river one day, grinding down the rock to move it to another delta, all by the nearly-random movements of the water molecules. shit i think i lost the thread of the metaphor and now i'm just talking about geophysics

it seems... almost laughably tedious to be circling this existential drain still. in my milieu: douglas adams cracked his joke about 'the ultimate question of life the universe and everything' 30 years earlier in 1977. randall munroe uploaded 'i'll get the super soaker' in 2007. but navel-gazing has been a joke for much longer, surely at least as long as there have been people to question what the point is.

funny how it always comes back to water metaphors.

[mortal-maebh]

hello?

hello.

are you god?

do you want me to be god?

people have almost died and said they talked to god. if i was wrong, this is where i find out.

what would you want god to say to you?

if i tell you, is that what you're going to say?

is that what you want me to say to you?

it doesn't matter. i wasn't always this far down the slope. i'm too far down to get back up now - I'm on my way to you. should have climbed up when i had the chance.

why did you let it go so far?

because i thought it was too late to climb back up.

so nothing has changed?

i got further down.

that's not changing. you can say that anywhere, as long as you're not at the top.

sorry - it's a bad habit. i keep doing that -

i sit down and because i'm sitting, i stay sitting. and then when I stand up, i think, I could have just done that from the start.

when was the start?

when i wasn't at the top any more, i guess.

where is the top?

am i not supposed to be the one asking the questions?

yes.

are you god, then?

what is a god, to you?

same as it is to everyone else. a power you can't see. something omnipresent.

and?

it answers your questions.

so you don't have to answer them yourself.

no, because it knows better.

it makes the decision for you. does the prospect of being responsible for those kinds of decisions scare you?

what kind of decisions?

the kind you need to blame on an omnipresent being.

you're not really helping, you know.

do you want me to help?

I want you stop asking me what I want.

alright. have you started climbing back up yet?

i told you - I'm too far down. i missed my chance to start climbing up. that's why I'm talking to you.

how far away is the top?

I don't know - I can't see it.

how far away is the bottom?

I haven't looked down yet. what if i slip further?

according to you, it's too late anyway. why delay the inevitable?

I don't know. because I'm still on the slope, I guess.

so you do still think you have a chance?

no - that's not what I said. just because I have to fall doesn't mean I'm ready.

so, just because you know you're going to fall down doesn't mean you're going to try to fall down.

yeah, I guess.

just because you can climb, doesn't mean you will make it if you try.

it won't be about how hard i try. it will be about how far down I am.

was it about how long you were sitting down for?

no, because the amount of time I was sitting down for didn't impact my chances of being able to stand up.

and yet, the longer you stayed sitting, the longer you stayed sitting. until you stood up. the time was irrelevant, right? that's what you said.

I don't like you.

the time was irrelevant. you sat down, you stayed down, and then you stood up. start, middle, end. I don't see how this is any different.

because i'm moving down?

time, space - they're all just dimensions. the body doesn't matter. it's about when you start it, and when you decide to end it - and how you respond to the space in between.

you think i can still make it back up to the top.

i think you can try to make it back up, but you're right - it's too high, and you've fallen too far. you will fail.

what are doing, then? what was that whole speech about?

you could just let yourself fall. who says it's not the same thing?

The top is behind me. it's up there. the bottom is below me. do I really need to explain this to you?

why are you obsessed with the futility of trying to undo it all? that's what we're talking about. you can't go back. why do you let that fact stop you from going forward?

going down.

let me ask you something.

i haven't been able to stop you so far.

when you sat, and you were sitting - the longer you were sitting, the more you wished you would have gotten up earlier?

yeah, I guess.

you didn't stand up, because you were too busy trying to un-sit. trying to erase it all. but none of it made a difference - the time you spend, the space you cover. you could have just stood up at any time. it still ended the same. you still finished in the same place you started.

are you telling me if I fall, I'll end up in the same place I started?

irrelevant. it doesn't matter. where are you now?

somewhere down the slope - I can't tell.

the slope. it's a single answer. either you're on the slope, or you're not. you can finish this whenever you want. wherever you want.

thank you.

yes.

so - before I leave - are you god, then?

do you think I'm god?

I don't know. I think you're a bit annoying to be god.

who says god isn't annoying? let's say there is an all-knowing, omnipresent being out there. why does he owe you kindness? what have you done to deserve it? where are the rules that dictate this?

most people have the same rough idea of it. be good. do good things. make the world a better place.

and who says those are god's rules? who says god's rules don't require you to be cruel, and cause pain?

I don't think that's a version of god that people would want to follow. that's not my mother's version of god.

because he is what you want him to be? I thought he was omnipresent?

everyone has different rules about who they want god to be.

does that scare you? the idea that your image of an omnipresent god is the version that you want him to be? the version you want to emulate?

are you saying my version of god is just the version of me that i want to be? that god is just me, where i want to end up?

I didn't say that. you did.

which would mean that the decisions are mine - that they are my responsibility. those aren't my words, those are yours.

are they mine? or are they god's?

are you god?

I'm you.

so you are, then. god.

I didn't say that. those are your words.

so, mine. ergo, god's.

ergo, yours.

whatever. thank you anyway, but i'm going now. I've already wasted too much time.

no such thing, remember? time is only a dimension. the only thing that exists now is the moment that you move on.

goodbye.

yes.

[bryon-slack]

Pen Sieve

Pen Sieve by Bryon Slack

Pensive, I sit as I sieve with my pen— words that fall from my mind and the tracing of old hurts.

Some drip slow, like nearly closed wounds, thick with ache and fresh memory. Others rattle loose— sharp, unclean, newly fresh in their aged fermentation— shards I thought long buried beneath.

My inkwell is filled with what’s dug from beneath root and topsoil, dumped into the agitated troughs in the tracks of my recollection.

I sift them gently with the tip of my quill— gold from grit and old suffering— probing what’s caught for nuggets of still-held truths.

A Truth in fragments, a voice once lost, sluiced in sorrow, panned from pain, from old scars covered in frost.

I draw the ink of these distilled sorrows in the outline of beauty— on the page pinned beneath my gaze and off hand.

Pensive, I sit, as I sieve with my pen— gilded shades of past selfs across a waiting canvas.

[voiidliing]

THE VOID TAGS.

/ Darkness is not ordinary. / (The void introspection)

/Cloaked in silk and velvet./ (The void wardrobe.)

/ Lost in a world of ghost stories and rainy days / (The void aesthetics)

/ My mind is like a deadly disease./ (Musings of the void.)

/ I have a void to fill./ (The void dash game)

/I can't help this awful energy./ (The void open starter)

/Damn right you should be scared of me./ (The void in character)

/Darkness falls across the land./ (Prompts)

/ The void invaded me, and I became it./ (The void vessel)

/ What if I say I am not like the others? / (Main verse)

/ I fear no evil, for the shadow is mine./ (Supernatural verse)

/Only a monster can deal with another monster./ (Supernatural demon void hybrid verse)

/The darkness calls to me./ (Star Wars AU)

/ Walking the witches road./ (Marvel verse)

/ You are a weapon, and weapons don't weep. / (Wolverine variant AU verse)

/Two voids don't make a light./ (Answered ask)

/ Whispers lost in the endless void./ (Queue)

[vanlegion]

TUCKER IS -

Teal! He's Teal. Hands down. I have solved it. How you ask? I'm obsessed with a certain Maroon Nerd and on a filter in my art program I hit Difference and was like 'Huh... OH!' Also this:

HA! Which makes Caroline Cyan. And then I did this for Shits and Giggles:

Hehhahaha~ I love how the show joked about first Grifs colors then Tuckers colors. X3 Hehe. And then for some more fun Sarge Red FF0000 vs Caboose Blue 0000FF Maroons hex is 800000 and is seared into my brain now along with FFA500 which is "FUCKING ORANGE" (A very bright orange) Random - I always thought York was Gold.

[m808vibe]

🖤 The Ironies of Life

We chase the sun, then beg for rain,

Build up walls, then cry in pain.

We long for love, then run from touch,

Say we want peace, but talk too much.

We wish for youth when we grow old,

Then waste our youth to chase pure gold.

We laugh the loudest through our ache,

Pretend we’re fine for others’ sake.

We seek the truth, but fear it raw,

Hide our flaws, then beg for awe.

We dream of freedom, yet fear the fall,

Climb our ladders just to feel small.

We crave the calm, yet spark the storm,

Swear we’re unique, then conform.

We want to speak, but hold it in—

Let silence lose, so pride can win.

And maybe that’s the way it goes—

Life writes in riddles, not in prose.

But still, we live, we try, we learn—

We crash, we burn, and still return.

truth wrapped in contradictions.

a poem about being human in a world that never makes sense.

[arachnaphobic]

It's a headcanon of mine that Miguel uses language as a sort of barrier against what he considers to be displays of personal weakness or vulnerability.

For example, I believe that Miguel naturally slips into Spanish when he's being more open and honest or when his more paternal side kicks in (instincts he still has but isn't quite so in touch with anymore, almost like finding an old letterman jacket from your high school days only to find that it still fits, though it still feels odd when you put it on because you're not the same person you were when you wore it last). So anytime Miguel is feeling a bit overwhelmed emotionally or finds himself wanting to offer words of comfort or encouragement to someone, the only way he can make himself do so is with the added safety net of his mother tongue so he can still distance himself from them.

And I could go on and on about how the reason that Miguel speaks Spanish so much when with Miles in particular is because of his innate desire to connect with Miles (cause let's face it, the man is lonely) as well as the fact that using Spanish as an emotional barrier against someone who also speaks the language (if a bit clumsily on Miles' part) would be a bit redundant... but then we'd probably be here awhile, lol.

[vesperofskin]

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom

[kopi0972]

because they would.

Is there anyone

Who could love me

Not for what I want to be-

But for all that i am

For all that I'm not

And for all that I'll never be.

Is it possible-

To fall for the way I look

The way I speak

The way I think

The way I feel

The way i am.

Someone who'd choose me

Not because they could

Because they'd want to-

Because they would.

[hedomasochistnist]

I don't go outside as much as I'm used to I still have a scraped knee from the time I tripped on the vine Around the corner of my living room, the one that's growing thick Along the wall all the way to the door and the thorns are coming in quick I don't move like I used to I stumble everywhere I go Going sounds weird when I feel froze Truthfully I slipped backwards a while ago I don't heal like I used to At least it's not me that grows But a lurking presence that doesn't touch me but has me in a chokehold So I don't blink like I used to But I can lick my lips I don't think like I did but I'm used to thinking, "shit… All comes too late" It did

#86

[putrefacion]

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