peace is in the crinkles at the edges of the old man's eyes

as he sits on the beach chair in the middle of the sidewalk

watching the Mediterranean

peace is in the fluttering of the white linen on the clothesline

the lacy dress a woman wears when she's found her perfect life

dipping your face in the water with no goggles on and feeling the cool space on your eyelids

peace is almost suffocating in the Baroque church

candles flickering under the statue of St. Sophia, with perfect innocence in her eyes

the quiet in my soul making it easy to be open

peace is in the fluid movements of a person who knows they've made it

to where they wanted to be

Due to confusion on my part and going to my grandparents' house for a day, I didn't write any poetry until yesterday! I'll try to write some more poetry to make up for it. But anyways, I have two right now...

For peace--

closed eyes

the grass grows thick and green here

in the middle of somewhere that's not important

where there are deep blue skies and nothing has borders

lie on your back. shut your eyes and breath in deep

smell the fresh-cut grass that everyone loves and

keep your eyes closed, listen because

there are memories here--forget the patterns

that the grass is making on your skin,

stay still and breathe, and smile

------- 

she uses noise-cancelling headphones to calm herself

and drown out the world until she

can hear herself think

in the empty space left behind--

a void of no background sound

riding on the subway to the tune of silence

only the air conditioners humming and the tunnel flashing by give any semblance of noise

the car is almost empty

like a giant fishtank with only 3 fish

i look around 

the muscular man across from me

the women in work clothes

how many of you are in love?

how many worried about tomorrow?

i think this is peaceful but

how many of you have storms in your minds?

my senses have been stripped

faceless, nameless, titanium, monochromacy

this prayer is for everyone who died young

all i want to know is this-

do you feel things

deep in your soul?

sometimes i

feel more alone than i can put into words

but i promise

never to sink so deep i can't resurface

and to fight

until all life leaves my

body

I'm not involved on this thread, but I decided to pop in and read some poems and I was not disappointed. You all are wonderful poets, full of moving words and emotion filled lines. I'm still a bit speechless from a few of them that stuck a chord with me. I'm not really sure what the appropriate thing to say here is. Bravo? Good job? Thank you? I don't know. What I do know is that I will revisit the poems on this thread many times. Thank you. 

I feel like that was slightly more dramatic than I intended... XD 

and take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind

so i'll stay up all night

trying to find purpose in the things i create

i want to paint all the cacophonies of my psyche,

the colors of my mind

to sing melodies of my fears

and weave tapestries of my dreams

there is a quiet longing in all of our hearts

to be understood

and peace

when we finally are 

Agh, I keep forgetting about this! I haven’t written poetry in forever, and I suppose I didn’t know where to start. I did finally write something, though, for the peace prompt.

untitled

let’s

look up at the sky

close our 

eyes

breath in the rain air

delicious and refreshing

let the cold jade droplets kiss our

faces

stand still while the wind ruffles our

hair

and raises chill bumps on our 

arms

don’t mind the thunder

or the way the trees bend

we always enjoyed

summer thunderstorms

I'm going to be camping from tomorrow to Wednesday or Thursday, so I won't be able to post after today or tomorrow. But here are two more poems:

wishes (for the peace theme)

to write about peace

i could put myself into someone else's world

someone who feels that sometimes

because i

don't

----

pain beneath the surface--(for the beauty is only skin deep prompt)

i've heard that it's 

what's inside that is the real beauty

but i still can't help envying girls with 

prettier faces than mine and deeper

hearts 

----

Hazel sayd kfkf. I don't know what that means.  

one day I will find peace

but right now,

stuck between the sunshiny, stupid, lovely innocence of childhood

and the stability of adulthood, 

it seems like I'll never find it. 

how do you grow up?

do you become like one of my friends

numbing yourself so that at the age of ten

you can recite curse words without recoiling

or do you become like another

13 years old and already responsible

never experimenting with clothes

and especially not with your morals

or do you give up trying

just stay a kid and let your body and mind do their own thing

while you suck 7 sticks of cotton candy at a carnival

how does a stressed out teenager best find peace?

to dance beneath the diamond sky, with one hand waving free

i'll rise with the new day

with the red sun

and the mourning doves, singing sorrows

to leave the pain in yesterday

the cloudless sky, sapphiric 

softening to blue 

reaches to the ends of the earth

as i find myself content

with the life

i was given 

I haven't been writing much poetry lately, but here's one for the peace theme. I don't know if it goes exactly with the theme, but I got sort of a bitter peace vibe while I was writing it, and it's something, so here we go.

Untitled

Nobody goes to bookstores anymore.

Nobody relishes the feeling of brittle pages beneath their fingers.

Nobody craves the smell of the tiny coffee shop next door.

Nobody sinks into the cozy armchairs in the corners.

Nobody lives for the thrill of going on a new adventure every day.

Nobody trails their fingers through the dust on the shelves.

Nbody hugs a book tight as though it's their salvation.

Nobody finds peace among the words seemingly written just for them.

Nobody goes to bookstores anymore. 

These two I wrote last night, the first for the ‘beauty only goes skin deep’ prompt, and the second for perseverance.

pretty girl

they’ve told me i’m beautiful

so many times i’m starting not 

to believe them

whatever they see must be invisible

in mirrors

or maybe i’m just blind

they’ve told me i’m beautiful

on the inside, too

and that that’s what really matters

but somehow

i can’t quite believe that either

i still find myself wishing 

that i had a perfect figure

and a kinder heart

like the pretty girl across the room

and i think that proves them

wrong

both ways

~ 

untitled

it’s easy to say you won’t quit before you’ve ever started

but when you’re there in the middle of it all

fighting, struggling, wishing it would all just

end and you could be done sometimes

you don’t have time to give yourself a

pep talk

or think through the reasons why you’re doing

whatever it is you’re doing (and

more often than not

giving up seems much more

logical

than putting yourself through more pain

right?) 

sometimes i ask myself

why i 

keep going

when it would be so much easier to just

lie down on the floor

close my eyes and

give up

(yet i find that

somehow

i always keep going anyway)