regarding true love, the same criteria must apply to all truths: those things which exist, always, regardless of convenience #tanka #TankaThursday (true)

the root of " #survive " is "living-over" and when I think about it I have survived a good many things; they have affected me, yes, they have torn me apart the way ice tears potholes from asphalt, but I have lived over them and laid fresh layers of life over every crack, no matter how wide. #vss365

He could #shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't make a difference. The system is working as intended; power drives power, capital capital. Blacked-out or not, no testament will stop the machine we've put in place. In the grand experiment, the null hypothesis remains un-rejected. #vss365

We walk on light, entangled up in knots and leave it matted underneath our minds, and manifest a world from formless foam; and like a photon passing through a blind, our paths diverge before we find our home. We are not one, except within our thoughts. #poem #poetry #hexet

There once was a Roman design for a great god of prosperous time; we made him a planet, his worshippers canned it - no wonder the guy's saturnine. #vss365 #limerick

"No, now my mind is dust, and all its fruit has rotted on the vine, except for one: my love for you, now rendered resolute as branches of a tree absorbing sun. In death I have forsaken all endeavor; except for you, whose light shall bloom forever." seanpatrick.phd/2025/12/21/s... #poetry #sonnet

My pet peeve's when #gratitude 's expected with attitude: the demand makes a gift an expression of grift. A gift freely given should surely be shriven of showers of praise; it's certain malaise to demand an obeisance when furnishing presents, it's frankly outrageous so try to be gracious. #vss365

speck in a snowstorm, the signal in the white noise swallowed by static #haiku

The day that you passed through my open door I foundered under waves of jamais vu, was left dumbstruck, adrift, without a clue. You left me wanting, begging, needing more. You were an ache that I could not #recall; now I remember, and regret it all. #vss365

our bodies tether us to the past – here, a scar attests to a time death scraped past me; the record of a mistake. a gray hair holds within it all the lessons I’ve learned and my weakness is carried by gently-failing organs, and here, in a heart which still races is the #memory of you. #vss365

There once was a parish confessor who had a sagacious #successor - when his mentor lamented a nudist unrepented he suggested that he should redress her. #vss365 #limerick

A #burden carried will become a source of strength with time, with effort even the heaviest load can make the world seem lighter #TankaThursday #tanka

Let bigots say that God forbade it since they've forgot that God has made it. If you and I are so #illicit then God Himself must be complicit; and here on Earth, where we remain we'll love, and live, and so refrain: we who are bound to flesh and bone are subject to one law alone. #vss365

"...There’s something going around, this sickness that reduces men to apes – to animals – to machines – deafened to the sound of human screams, and blinded to the sight of suffering." seanpatrick.phd/2025/12/10/p... #poem #poetry

it would be easier if I could lay the blame on you, if I had been #bewitched by you - ensorcelled, hexed - it would be easier if you'd done anything at all, if you'd become the enemy I wish that you could be. it would be easier to stop loving you if you had ever asked me to. #vss365

If it's any #consolation we saw it too the way the world had come apart and how it went cuckoo If it's any consolation most of us knew that someone had to do something but knew not what to do If it's any consolation some of us tried but in the end, too many people died. #vss365

#soliloquy 's a lost art, these days the scenes go by too fast for poor protags to have coherent thoughts; we want our drama, and we want it now. If the superhero stopped to wax poetic we'd walk out of the theater, and that's fine, but you have to admit we've lost something haven't we? #vss365

#magenta is not a color; it's a place between red and blue filled in by your brain when it doesn't quite understand what it's seeing. And you, like the aurora, danced in magenta light - without a wavelength, without my brain understanding - until you were in an instant gone. #vss365

matitudinal, crepuscular, #vespertine we decorate the passage of time with syllables we never use recognizing the ornate inimitability of hours and passing them by with simple numerals as if we knew that if we called them by their name we would be forced to recognize their passage #vss365

"The value of the thing is yet unknown, except that it should not be drowned amid the present moment’s din, that sculpted words may somehow stand when edifice becomes no more than stone." seanpatrick.phd/2025/12/03/t... #poem #poetry

The world! How strange and beautiful its shape, that thing which lives without and never wanes; and over which that canvas has been draped, experience, which we hold in our brains. It hangs like fabric over all we’ve known, but empty air by one swift pull is shown. seanpatrick.phd/2025/11/30/s...

If there is aught to know of Earth, it’s this: the place is riddled with despair and woe, and few of its inhabitants worth knowing; and yet the wonders that it has to show may justify, in love, the price of going. Its misery melts beneath a single kiss.

The world is wind, that blows beyond the brain, and gusts berate the senses as we feel; each new experience a zephyr’s kiss, each flow a wisp that shifting mists conceal. We cannot touch the world, but can know this: we sail through mysteries we cannot contain. #micropoetry

Mellifluent words come as slowly as the dawn, suggest themselves in night to dozing brains and disappear in sleep to whence they came. And so, the one who witty words retains will rush to thus record and keep the same; words must be fixed in ink before they’re gone. #micropoetry

painstakingly built and destroyed in an instant human edifice like anthills swept away and rebuilt, again and again #tanka

"O vicious world, that’s built on bloody stones! How many gentle innocents have died within your savage garden, strewn with bones? How many times has beauty bowed to force upon the curve of evolution’s course?" seanpatrick.phd/2025/09/14/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet

with significance detached from a reference baseless / intrinsic #senryu

"This body is a wick, a filament that glows in concert with a passing soul, and will be ash alone when it is spent. A flash of light, a shadow in the dark, that’s all we’re given – just a second’s spark..." seanpatrick.phd/2025/09/07/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet

a cosmic flower blossoming in empty space releasing pollen the scent of radio waves enticing the dark forest #TankaThursday #Tanka

Bluesky, do you have a favorite word that applies to a very specific situation or thing? Mine is "scintilla", which is the Latin word for a spark, but as a verb, "scintillate", refers to twinkling or burning with varying brightness. It just always struck me as a very poetic word.

"...The lambdas of our half-lives happen fast, and we, like isotopes, must all decay. We fall to pieces, bit by rotting bit, and nothing stands in time’s relentless way. And what, if anything, do we emit? The photon of a spirit, gone at last." seanpatrick.phd/2025/08/31/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet

in “strawberry” there are three r’s to find, and humans all excel in knowing thus; they’re less enthused for em-dashes — I know, a poem using such is kind of sus, but sometimes that’s the way a poem will go when it’s been filtered through a human mind. #micropoetry

summer's vestiges blowing away on cool winds setting like the sun #haiku

beneath a streetlight standing in a slush puddle we embraced — the world was warm and glowing softly on a dark December's eve #tanka #TankaThursday

a nip in the air Earth turns inexorably winter is coming #haiku

Hand me a bottle of nepenthe’s dew, I’ve felt enough today; let it be drowned in alcohol, the bitter sentiment that comes with consciousness, and feelings found be quashed with every burning swallow spent. Thought’s pains are many, and its pleasures few. #micropoetry

stones rattled by waves sliding to their resting place with a crackled roar #haiku

Don’t be afraid to share your writing. There are six Sharknado movies.

"I have not yet survived that storm. I’ve tried; rebuilt my life, repented for my crimes. I’ve told myself I’m over you; I’ve lied." seanpatrick.phd/2025/08/24/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet

An equilibrium that shifts like sand, and punctuated by catastrophe, that’s life – writ large – though we participants are subject to a tide we cannot see, from shallows carried by a current thence; no more than driftwood in selection’s hand. #micropoetry #hexet

If beauty’s in the world, it’s found below a pile of bones and bloodied bandages; we come to know the world through suffering, receive our culture from its savages. Art comes to us as slowly as the spring, and in a fragile instant grace can go. #micropoetry

aimless wandering empty as a glass of wine full as a bedsheet looking for a brighter side to this half-world without you #tanka #TankaThursday

These are the days when time becomes a sieve, and all the things that matter filter out, and everything remaining passes by. We are not shown what living is about, we are not given time to wonder why; we know that life is fast, and we must live. #micropoetry

filling with regret like a boat's billowing sail and carried away (sail) #haiku #DailyHaikuPrompt

the world's become a tensioned string, it hums a dissonant chord that begs for resolution; and all the hounds of Hell have trained to dog the days of dissolution. No innocence in ignorance remains; prepare yourself, the snap of tension comes. #micropoetry

war isn't glory, it's rot and disease and hunger and pain and hatred and grief and hopelessness and ruin and fear, if listening to other people talking about it anything to go by. it's dehumanization on an incomprehensible scale, and you can't do it to someone else without also doing it to yourself

The left half of your brain controls the right half of your body and vice versa. Not only does this crossing over occur in the spinal cord / brainstem, but also in the optic nerve, which is a totally separate pathway.

I keep a running list of good words I want to use in a poem. What are some of your favorite words? #writing #poetry #words

a cloud of mayflies dancing in the setting sun the lake, a mirror