The Voices in my Head an opportunity, a challenge

[_Land]

Hand Me Downs

I am the hoodie
passed through five cousins
and a custody battle.
Still smell like Marlboros
and the backseat of a Buick
that never got you home safe.

They stitched me cheap in a sweatshop
but I’ve held more stories
than a therapist could survive.
I’ve been armor
for a child walking through food desert alleys,
trying to dodge the echo
of their father’s voice in every loud man.

There’s a rip under the arm—
not from wear,
but from rage.
Someone yanked me off during a panic attack
and I haven’t been the same since.

I’ve been worn to job interviews
where the résumé was ignored
but the stains weren’t.
Worn to funerals where the casket cost more
than the year’s rent.
Worn by the queer kid
who couldn't afford new threads
but wrapped themselves in me
like defiance
and dared the street to look.

I remember fists in pockets
so knuckles wouldn’t fly.
I remember the girl
who stuffed a Plan B in my front pouch
and prayed her mama wouldn’t find the receipt.

I carry ancestors
in lint and loose change.
A grandmother’s hum.
A mother’s scream.
A child’s silence
stitched into every damn seam.

I’m not vintage.
I’m not retro.
I’m not fucking nostalgic.
I’m what’s left
when survival
runs out of options
but still shows up warm.

Don’t call me charity.
Call me testament.
I was never supposed to last this long—
and yet,
here I am.
Still holding.
Still holding you.

 

[_Land]

Thirty Years a Virgin

I was forged in a factory
with ambition in my latex—
polyurethane nobility,
slick with potential,
destined for glory
in the heat of dim dorm rooms and bad decisions.

You picked me from the gas station rack
like I was the last slice of courage
before a date with destiny.
"Ultra Thin,"
you whispered,
like you were choosing a weapon
for the night of your life.

You didn't even buy lube.
Just me, a Red Bull, and Tic Tacs.
Romance in the air
and BO in your pits.

That night?
You fumbled your own name.
Spilled Sprite on her jeans.
Cried when she left.
So I stayed in your wallet—untouched.
Like dignity. Like ambition.
Like that screenplay you never wrote.

You carried me like a secret,
like I was your Plan A,
Plan B, and midlife plan C.
Jobs changed. Lovers came and went.
You once tried to impress a woman by quoting Fight Club
and accidentally pulled me out instead of your business card.
She left.
I stayed.

I survived a washing machine.
You didn’t even notice.
You dried me in denim.
My edges curled like regret.

Now?
I crack when the weather shifts.
I whisper in the dark
with the voice of your inner teenager:
“Maybe tonight.”

You know what I am now?
Hope.
In shrink wrap.
A prayer that never got prayed.
A backup plan for a night that never came.

I’m not even bitter.
I just want you to admit it:
You never needed me.
Not once.
But it was nice
to pretend you might.

 

[_Land]

Original Text

I pull the moon.

She comes
silver-throated, trembling,
craving the tether of my pulse.

I drag her by her hair,
make her mouth sip tide,
her pelvis follow
my rhythms.

Her shine would forget itself
without my pull.

Do you know what it means
to carry the ruin of a billion bodies
and never rot?

I hold civilizations.
Empires.
Memories.

Whispers collapse into current.
Dreams become sediment.

I digest.
I cradle.
Bones of man,
of machines,
of dominant regimes.

I offer no surface.
Only depth.
Only weight.
Only return.

I house the ache.
I sing in frequencies
that memory obeys.

I breathe,
and the earth shifts.
I turn,
light obeys my absence.

I shape truth
without mercy.

I stretch
beyond symbol,
beyond metaphor,
beyond your limited tongue.

I am the original text.
Unwritten.
Salt-blooded.
Whole.

 

[RawSilhouette]

Poetry is infamous for giving voices to moments in time and there are many voices that have been represented throughout the history here at lit.

I even remember conversation with a members dildo

This challenge or opportunity is to step outside the normalcy of the poetry we write
And give a voice to something that can't speak.

Whether that's that traffic cone on the corner of 6th and main, perhaps the mirror that sees more than we do, or even our radio addressing taste in music or lack of karaoke ability.

I invite you to step into the inanimate and give it that voice that animation from unique perspective.


To make this thread a little more challenging, anyone is welcome to throw an object down at the end of their foray into this.


---

"When You First Took Me Off"
By Bear Sage

Seventeen years,
I clung to the base of your becoming—
tight as belief,
softened by time,
scored by the quiet violence of routine.

I bore witness.
To your trembling yes.
To the battles fought in whispers.
To the touch you gave
with eyes closed
and a heart half-turned.

And now—
you’re twisting me again,
aren’t you?

Round and round,
like a sommelier swirling a glass of red
to test its depth—
before swallowing the lie
you won’t speak out loud.

Aged guilt.
Bitterness on the rim.
You call it curiosity—
I call it premeditation.

You roll me
down your finger
like thunder rolling over hills.
Not fast, not final—
but inevitable.

I feel the war in your pulse.
Your hand is the altar,
and I—
I am the sacred object
you’re ready to desecrate.

I have felt you grit your teeth in hotel lobbies.
Seen the ghosts flicker behind your pupils.
I know the ache that isn't mine
but lives inside the spaces I protect.

And still—
you place me down
on the bathroom sink.

No velvet box.
No ceremony.
Just porcelain and steam,
as if this undoing
is as casual
as brushing your teeth.

You stare at me
like a riddle you once solved
but now suspect was rigged.

I am the stillness.
I am the gold.
I am the sentence
you carved into flesh
then forgot how to read.

But then—
you walk away.
Bare-fingered.

And I become
a truth too heavy
to carry into temptation.

I do not scream.
Gold doesn’t mourn out loud.
But I echo.

I echo in the hollowness
of where I once lived.
I echo
in the lies you'll taste
on someone else's mouth.


---

"Cone of Contempt"
—the traffic cone at 6th & Main
By Bear Sage

Seven years.
Seven goddamn years.
Orange still bright,
but my soul’s been run over more times
than your mama’s old Buick.

I was placed here with ceremony once—
a warning,
a protector,
a promise of repair.

Ha.
Now I’m just
urban camouflage
for the forgotten.

The pothole beside me has developed a personality.
We call him Carl.
He swears like a sailor
and eats rims for breakfast.

I've watched love affairs bloom at red lights,
then crash harder than that drunk cyclist in 2019.
(He never saw me.
But I felt that shit.)

I’ve been pissed on by poodles,
groped by bored teens,
used as a witch hat, a makeshift trash can,
and once—
once—
I was part of a TikTok dance.

Humiliating.

The city forgot me.
The crew never came back.
The road keeps breaking
but no one fixes
what’s been broken too long to matter.

I’ve seen death.
I’ve seen proposals.
I’ve seen a man scream at a sandwich
like it cheated on him.

I am a prophet in plastic.
A sentinel of apathy.
I no longer mark danger—
I am the danger.

Cross me
and I will scuff your paint
in passive-aggressive silence.

This corner is mine now.
This crack is my kingdom.
This decay is my religion.

And if you ever try to move me—
I will squeak
like the vengeful ghost
of every ignored municipal promise.



And to offer a challenge. Give that old percolator a voice....... Oh the things it's been through the things it seen what stories can It tell?

Holy wow… you’re prolific. Thank you for writing and sharing. Just beautiful. I especially love the first one… the subtle hints and the last line is just powerful. Well done.

 

[_Land]

Holy wow… you’re prolific. Thank you for writing and sharing. Just beautiful. I especially love the first one… the subtle hints and the last line is just powerful. Well done.

Thank you. Welcome to the poetry board

 

[RawSilhouette]

You're incredibly talented. I've been kind of reading nonstop. Your imagery is off the charts. Seriously talented.

 

[_Land]

We Hold These Truths


I am parchment and powder burn.
Quill-scarred and sacred,
I was born in July heat
ink drying faster than courage.

I was not meant
to be recited like grace
before gutting the
poor for dinner.

You dress me in bunting,
but strip me of meaning.
You quote me with flags
in one hand,
and eviction notices in the other.

I said all men.
You heard:
Some, if pale enough,
if paid enough,
if praying your way.

My signature is not a permission slip
to colonize hope,
nor a tattoo for your rifles.

When I said
“life, liberty, and the pursuit,”
I did not mean
of power
at the expense of
breath, health or accountability.

You call yourself patriot,
yet I see you
muzzle truth with money,
worship idols in high offices,
and hang justice
on the same noose
you once cut from my neck.

I was written in revolt.
I am a scream made formal,
a reckoning in cursive,
a dare against tyranny.

And yet
here you are,
hoarding fireworks
while burning books,
confusing freedom
with the freedom to harm.

I am not just some relic.
meant to age politely.
I am the ideal

I am still asking:
Who gets to be equal?
Who must bleed to belong?
And how long until
you answer me
without lying through
red, white,
and bruised?