Tag: poems (Page 2 of 4)

keep choosing

November 8, 2025 / Cheney / 0 Comments

When you were younger you read that Robert Frost poem like everyone else in school and spent years dreaming of that point in your life where two paths finally diverge. All those years you spent trudging down that pin-straight road, fretful for the future, trying not to detour into the thick woods like the thickheaded people who think they know better.

You keep your eyes forward and back straight, plodding along as more and more people fall by the wayside or disappear into the forest, and you can feel it when you’re finally alone, when there’s nothing but you and … Read the rest

What a Life

November 7, 2025 / Cheney / 0 Comments

It’s been twenty-five years since you’ve stood with your friends singing Hallelujah on a stage, feeling the vibration of a hundred voices lifting from the platform to the sky. It’s been twenty years since you listened to that same song on the way to your friend’s funeral. He’d shot himself to death at work. What a life. Now you can’t listen to that song without crying and you will always wonder how you couldn’t have seen it coming, and why no one ever usually sees it coming. There should be a prescription everyone gets at birth, an RX for love … Read the rest

don’t test me

November 6, 2025 / Cheney / 0 Comments

it wasn’t the argument that ended things for you,
the one you held on to and wrote about, the one
you felt was so demeaning and mean —
it was a simple question — and you wanted to give a
simple, honest answer

that’s it
that’s all

you didn’t know what would happen
you didn’t even know what you wanted
to happen, but you lit the fuse that
would eventually blast you
to smithereens

boom
poof

and all these years later we are both
asking what the hell were you thinking
to do things like that, to do everything
the … Read the rest

this small life

November 5, 2025 / Cheney / 0 Comments

this is a small life, very small,
miniature if you want more, which
is also less, and the thing is
you can’t complain

the thing is
all of this was a gift
that you didn’t ask for but
have to appreciate, or so
“they” say; you have to make
the most out of every precious moment

but i feel like a wallflower
in my own fucking life, like
i’m watching from the sidelines
as i make mistake after mistake
as i make my life harder and worse
i want to jump in and grab myself
around the neck and squeeze … Read the rest

saltwater

November 4, 2025 / Cheney / 0 Comments

you had me cornered, too shocked to
react to the words you were saying,
too scared to make them real

the same old story told so many times
it doesn’t even hurt much anymore,
it’s just jarring, it’s just one more piece
in the fresh hell of my life that I don’t
need to deal with right now

when you’re told you’re not breaking
but broken, when you’re asked with
genuine concern “Are you okay?”
this is the time to say it:

of course i’m not fucking okay,
no one is okay,
nothing is okay

I don’t want … Read the rest