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Apostrophes

My apostrophe's possessed!
It's causing me distress!
It's jumping back and forth around
that pesky letter s!

When I try to splice a word,
the result is something quite abserd
where the letters lost would be
I find instead an apostrophe!

So when it's time to say "I will"
there comes a little space to fill
This tiny mark, to help in style
jumps in between, to help form "I'll"

And if I were to look at home
and pick up something my mum owns
That mark is there in just a tick
to say "That is Mother's walking stick!"

Possession power cannot be used
without a noun, don't get confused!
"it's" can never own a thing
in this case, "its" is more fitting.

Such disarray is all around
if multiple owners should found
my two brothers have a bed they share,
so my brothers' bunk-bed has the apostrophe there.

More rules exist, not mentioned here
but that is quite enough, I fear!
Most other cases are strange and rare
English is weird, so just take care.

Under the Bridge
There once was a cave troll online
Who wrote words that were less than sublime
A poet reached out
To stamp on its clout
A creative clean-out of its grime.

I found out that an artist fights trolls by replying with poetry. Here is my small contribution.

his arms around my waist
sliding down with purpose
pushed off in an instant
through the earth, if fury lent force
but at work you cant put up a fight
in all things, the customer is always right

I repeated no
He just said why
my rebuttal firmly seeking
to sway a mind set in stone
a trust quick broken beyond repair
Sure as hell I'm not going back there

Calls and whistles
from stranger throats
sour the air I breath
sick perfume of "flattery"
Should I be proud of being shamed?
Dare not look nice, yet still I am blamed?

"cheer up" to my resting face
never seen before or since
felt his world not bright enough
My expression too sour for his taste
Felt a smile should be the norm
had the gall to demand I perform

I reject this blushing act
I spurn this call to be your desire
No more am I purpose-build for your eye
than I am made to rip stars down
I consent to only my own design
I am always wholly, fully mine

I scrub my skin of each of you
that dares to smudge the lines of me
I wither each scalding seed of fear
Not all men in memory are poisoned
but each barbed moment in bloodied pricks
reminds me that some men are -----

A ghost stalks these simple streets
A troubled spirit of simple grief
Fear, a dog that strides beside
we cower in solitude, shrink and hide
Black X marks the fateful door
swallowing whole the old and poor
a shade with hunting bow and knife
snuffing out each candle life
beneath the moon, they stalk their prey
gnawing, growing, barely at bay
each surface marked a deadly trace
slinking through shadows to indulge in the chase
The youth feel no fear, immortal young souls
selfish desires crush duty roles
defenders against the home decay
instead, find the need to frolic and play
The merchants of living shine lamps in the dark
though flicker when failed by the odious oligarch
With helmet and hauberk, halberd and lance
The front lines move forward, they lead our advance
dust-carts and wagons form a safe supply line
and pray to all gods that they make it on time
squires ration food to avoid the defeat
of ten thousand knights fighting, dead on their feet
we curse at the spectres that wrench away air
watch solitude looming with growing despair
A war between worlds, though not come from Mars
We dream to blame demons but these shadows are ours.

8PM

We place our hands together
To support your battle cry
Against the moans and wheezes
Of those that suffering lie

Foghorns on the Mersey
A hundred waterborne throats
To echo across this island
From Land's End to John o' Groats

Palm to palm we signal
On doorsteps, we all stand
Though small in its expression
We want to lend a hand

Wirral were first fighters
Now Broadgreen and Royal too
To all the wards of Britain
We pass our thanks to you

We each have known your kindness
Lived sheltered by your care
Not just in this crisis
But the whole time you've been there

So hear our marks of gratitude
As our heads we humbly bow
In remembrance of your fallen
And the heroes who save us now

Footsteps echo from weary feet
to match the city's slowed heartbeat
windows glare at passers-by
the breeze sings a mourning lullaby

the chords that link two hearts are there
hanging in the summer air
to transfer thoughts of loneliness
of lost caresses, all they miss

as pots and pans clash in the dark
and glasses paned with rainbow mark
with no firm grasp of certainties
we long for our emerge-ency

the fascets of our diamond fears
are crystals in our panic tears
we stand alone, united now
giving aid in the ways these times allow.

Abyssal sand

The sand-man over looks my door
He doesn't visit any more
Salt and sand are in my eyes
Tears and nightmares, that is all

The grain of night that fills the room
Creates four walls of waking gloom
My weariness weighs my limbs
But I am conscious still

Each scuttled sound, the tick of time
Calls me from sleep, and so still I'm
Not asleep, my eyes still open
Diurnal and living in the dark

Heavy shutters tremble down
One last train to sleepy town
I drift away to sweet abyss
Restless thoughts silenced at last.

Except I'm still awake.

I am watching my sector dissolve
In the acid of Tory disinterest
Despite having evolved
On stage, street and screen
In pride into this Globe's finest
I see my craft dismissed
As low skilled, low brow
Lower class and worthless
And rage builds at this leader's remiss
At his sheer gall and callousness

From circus and film
To radio stations
We are the lifeblood,
the soul of your nation
This is our culture
My source of frustration
Is you value this less
Than soulless corporations

Our sector earns more than all sport combined
To be as famous as them isnt what I have in mind
Just be given my due,
as a part of the heart
Of what makes up our culture,
Not buisness, but art.

Where do you turn when your home is a cage?
To TV and music, to games and the stage
And when you yourself fell to this phage
You relied on our healers, far underpaid.
I await your downfall with unbridled glee
When the ground tips out from under your feet
From the holes in the foundations you mined at in greed
The concrete supports you thought you didn't need
My only regret at this lack of stability
Caused by your lack of leading ability
Is the fallout and rubble that crushes your crown
Will fall and crush others who live further down

Fifty Shades of "None of your Buisness"

In a black and white printer exists shades of gray
I'm the anomalous gradient you insist is not there
I decide that I slide
Between your ones and zeros, I choose 0.5
As my state of existence
And I am in love with my awkwardness
My refusal to sit in the boxes that I have to tick
To say how my body was defined at my birth
I dont care that you cant be bothered
To make an allowance for my preferred gender
I was not made to make your life simple
I was made as a being with though and intention
And I am not yours,
by the way, did I mention
That my kind's existence predates your insistence that my reality is beyond comprehension of modern intelligence.
I exist in my own dimension, as such it is my sole intention to devote my life to my own aims
I dont happen to care what you think of my name.
To put stock in strangers dissenting opinion of my own reality is to destroy the dominion of my own boundaries,
A spanner in the foundry that creates my being
Being able to distance myself from schemes and opinions of those who are nothing to me but puppets and minions with nothing to drive them but their own burning hate and drive to create nothing but chasms and friction, to start fires that burn invention, social luddites that eschew new ideas in favour of fighting for stationary life. Change is scary, difference is scary. But from ventablack to white 2.0, is a rainbow of grayscale beauty and it's our moral duty to make art with the variety we hold as a race, to progress and create, not stay stuck in place. We should paint a fine portrait, and marvel in the details that grays can create.

I see a clock that marks my time
It calls two seconds fast
It passes trial above my head
Turning yearning hope to dread
The shadow hands glide past

love poetry too

@hayboyers what do you mean? That you love poetry, that you like love poems in particular, or that you want me to write a love poem?

The waiting is the worst of it
When presentation of self
Is brought to an end
And there is nothing to do
But wait for the bud to bloom or wither.
Nothing to do but watch and see if the seed thrown far have landed on fertile soil
Or scattered on the road to be trampled by more worthy feet.
I am not within reach of the richest earth
But still I hope to balance the rocky start with patience, until the stones that lie in wait to rot my roots are weathered down by the water of steadfast patience.
I scatter my grain far and wide with hope, into the vast waste crowded by so many other yearning shoots
The waiting is always the worst of it.

For the Joy of Climbing

Looking back on this ladder I've climbed,
To see the ground stretching, miles behind
I wonder at how each minuscule rung
Has lead me to be what I have become today

Why are the stars so much clearer to see
When they, a decade before, were hidden from me?
Because for every time a rung snapped and I fell,
I caught and fought through this strange twisting hellscape

But how can I hate what I've built, stretching tall?
Bad luck or bad grace triggered each fall.
This fragile frame of woodchips and work
Has pulled me, pushed me up from such murky waters.

The summit, the climb, the view and the terror
Are glorious thrills that twist me together
Pride of past efforts and desire to see stars
Call me forth always, to reach the next bar.

Why are you not here?

as I take my earned applause
in my hand the embodied history
of three years' labour
Why would you remember I'm leaving
I'm only number 4
The backup
the spare
Why should you be there?

Why should I hope for different?
Most boardwalks have been bereft of your eyes
your smile
your palm to palm fanfare.
Why should I have dreamed
history would have learned its lesson
and halted the reprise
So when you see the shots
Of a proud and tall figure
grown from the creature you cast aside
I will take heart in knowing that nothing I am came from you
no matter your claims

those were lessons abandoned as lies
when I found the world through your eyes
a manipulation of reality
warped into worship of an entity
that would be the villain in any other tale
you are no mastermind,
No schemer or trickster or knave,
though sometimes you wear their stripes
the benefits you brought me are uncounted
to be sure
yet here I stand still, refusing to be yours

A Parental Prerequisite
an assumed affirmative
unrequited requirement
forgiveness eternal and unconditional
and yet
I find myself bereft.

when I look at that contract you signed at conception
to be what my birth named you,
I find just an x
to mark me yours, nothing more
all I am worth to you is that fourth mark
in a tally you decided should grow yet further
to steal limelight and pride
and vicarious delight
but I refuse to split my spotlight
for What I am is finally mine