#ampoetry — Public Fediverse posts

Saturday Morning: A Poem about Nostalgia, Grief, and Simplicity

Keep resurrecting and rebuilding
old graphics, pixels, theme songs, and art styles.
Once exiled, dead, against a backdrop
of change, licensing, and technology.

I’m old now, my skin is dry.
My friends look more akin to their parents,
and my memories pick and
choose when to reappear.

I want that dream-kiss.
The wonder-bite of happy and suspense
I had on Saturday mornings when the X-Men roared
across time and space.

To make me happy.
To leave the past and present
of bullies, divorce, homework, and bills.
A graveyard of living without dreams and joys.

Even if they’re bad, these resurrected and reanimated
corpses of childhood
they’ll sing to me, remind me,
there was once a bit of jeweled, cartoon-wonder

within me.

Saturday Morning: A Poem about Nostalgia, Grief, and Simplicity

Keep resurrecting and rebuilding
old graphics, pixels, theme songs, and art styles.
Once exiled, dead, against a backdrop
of change, licensing, and technology.

I’m old now, my skin is dry.
My friends look more akin to their parents,
and my memories pick and
choose when to reappear.

I want that dream-kiss.
The wonder-bite of happy and suspense
I had on Saturday mornings when the X-Men roared
across time and space.

To make me happy.
To leave the past and present
of bullies, divorce, homework, and bills.
A graveyard of living without dreams and joys.

Even if they’re bad, these resurrected and reanimated
corpses of childhood
they’ll sing to me, remind me,
there was once a bit of jeweled, cartoon-wonder

within me.

I've rewritten this poem as a nonfiction essay before. Newly revised as poetry. When you know you're using something to cope with a broken relationship before its ended. In this case, hoarding. Read below:

#poetry #poems #poem #love #relationships #poetrycommunity #ampoetry #writing #reading

https://patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com/2026/08/06/empty-spaces-a-poem-about-clutter-love-and-loss/

I've rewritten this poem as a nonfiction essay before. Newly revised as poetry. When you know you're using something to cope with a broken relationship before its ended. In this case, hoarding. Read below:

#poetry #poems #poem #love #relationships #poetrycommunity #ampoetry #writing #reading

https://patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com/2026/08/06/empty-spaces-a-poem-about-clutter-love-and-loss/

Empty Spaces: A Poem about Clutter, Love, and Loss

My dog knew it right away.
She was inside your car
surrounded by boxes, bags, papers,
clothes, and more boxes. A fortress
of clutter, material, and belongings.
So tight, she felt scared, and whined.
The walls were closing, clawing, and tightening
phantom hands around our throats.

We were broken before we knew we were.
The cardboard was the beacon, the blazing fire-eye
Sauron-spying over the darkness of our apartment,
highlighting the labyrinth of clutter and memory.
Its corridors meant to distract, occupy,
and prevent us from knowing
we were suffocated, buried by each
corrugated wall, with its shipping label mortar.

Books, movies, TVs, games, video games,
computers, posters, notebooks,
pencils, pens, toys,
artwork, clothes, and furniture.
We stuffed that one-bedroom apartment to the brim.
They were just abandoned cities
always hoping for Avalon, but still,
it was simply a repeating Atlantis

We tried, we did,
crammed together like an Indiana Jones trap
with squares instead of spikes and poison darts.
No matter how many foundations we laid
it was always a sandcastle
with empty love refusing to stand.
We should have just admitted

they were never strong enough.

Empty Spaces: A Poem about Clutter, Love, and Loss

My dog knew it right away.
She was inside your car
surrounded by boxes, bags, papers,
clothes, and more boxes. A fortress
of clutter, material, and belongings.
So tight, she felt scared, and whined.
The walls were closing, clawing, and tightening
phantom hands around our throats.

We were broken before we knew we were.
The cardboard was the beacon, the blazing fire-eye
Sauron-spying over the darkness of our apartment,
highlighting the labyrinth of clutter and memory.
Its corridors meant to distract, occupy,
and prevent us from knowing
we were suffocated, buried by each
corrugated wall, with its shipping label mortar.

Books, movies, TVs, games, video games,
computers, posters, notebooks,
pencils, pens, toys,
artwork, clothes, and furniture.
We stuffed that one-bedroom apartment to the brim.
They were just abandoned cities
always hoping for Avalon, but still,
it was simply a repeating Atlantis

We tried, we did,
crammed together like an Indiana Jones trap
with squares instead of spikes and poison darts.
No matter how many foundations we laid
it was always a sandcastle
with empty love refusing to stand.
We should have just admitted

they were never strong enough.

Read my Poem “Extra Skin” Published by the Mourning Paper

My poem “Extra Skin” was published by the awesome literary magazine the Mourning Paper.

This poem is about a interdimensional entity living in a warehouse. The monster is continuously stalking around the shelves and corridors, looking for people to come travelling through. When this happens, the creature throws its skin at them in an effort to understand itself.

You can read “Extra Skin” right here

My sons initially gave me the idea for this poem. They are obsessed with the Back Rooms, and its various lore, and they were talking to me about a creature that likes to give out its skin. I took the concept for myself and put my own spin on it.

I’m thoroughly honored to have my poem published by this excellent literary establishment.

The Mourning Paper is an excellent magazine. I highly suggest not just reading my work, but exploring the publication thoroughly. The many excellent writers and artists deserve your time and attention.

Hit it here to read more of the Mourning Paper.

Happy reading!

Read my Poem “Extra Skin” Published by the Mourning Paper

My poem “Extra Skin” was published by the awesome literary magazine the Mourning Paper.

This poem is about a interdimensional entity living in a warehouse. The monster is continuously stalking around the shelves and corridors, looking for people to come travelling through. When this happens, the creature throws its skin at them in an effort to understand itself.

You can read “Extra Skin” right here

My sons initially gave me the idea for this poem. They are obsessed with the Back Rooms, and its various lore, and they were talking to me about a creature that likes to give out its skin. I took the concept for myself and put my own spin on it.

I’m thoroughly honored to have my poem published by this excellent literary establishment.

The Mourning Paper is an excellent magazine. I highly suggest not just reading my work, but exploring the publication thoroughly. The many excellent writers and artists deserve your time and attention.

Hit it here to read more of the Mourning Paper.

Happy reading!

Triggers with depression and trauma are everywhere. Accepting them into your daily life is tricky. Sunlight marks my memory thoroughly. Just another journey to be one.

#poetry #poem #writing #reading #poems #poetrylovers #poemoftheday #poetrycommunity #ampoetry #trauma #depression #mentalillness

https://patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com/2025/12/03/i-cant-change-the-sunlight-2/

I Can’t Change the Sunlight

First, it was the beams between dust,
highlighting particles dancing
in my parent’s basement
with chocolate carpet and an eyebrow window.
Where we, old friends and lovers,
would swap dreams and desires
until you tearfully realized I couldn’t do anything
but wrestle with my depression.

Then, rays of it glittering in jeweled reflections
during our honeymoon
on an emerald lagoon, with tropic tips, and
bows of sand being plucked by Key Largo waves.
That sediment could never be a keep or castle,
it was too broken, fragmented,
and fragile to form any support.
Just like us.

Next was the morning slanting through
the bay window over the couch of our old house.
A theater seat for our fights, screaming, throwing, thrashing,
and every detail of my unending depression.
You, my son, are on my lap, asleep, an infant.
I’m crying, and the tears sting your forehead.
I wipe them away, my trauma baptism,
I have an endless supply.

This stardust anchor falling through time
and space, cracking the earth’s atmosphere,
honing our existence, growing our cells,
is a cosmic stake piercing my heart.
It will not end me. I’m always undead.
Worse, it reminds me honestly
that this daylight trigger
will always be there

as long as I am.

#ampoetry #author #blogging #books #creativeWriting #emotionalWriting #literature #originalWriting #patrickWMarsh #poem #poemOfTheDay #poems #poetry #poetsOnWordpress #spokenWord #writing

I wrote this poem about my father's struggles with hoarding throughout his life. It comes and goes, and the more I learn about my own trauma, the more I see his hoarding reflected in his. Enjoy.

#poem #poetry #writing #reading #hoarding #family #poet #ampoetry #poemoftheday

https://patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com/2025/11/26/the-cast-iron-star-2/

The Cast Iron Star

My father’s hoarding heart
is bending bricks in his garage
creasing the foundation, turning
his house downward,
closer to the pit
he clawed out from.

At first, just artifacts
bits of his past lives
recovered from dead family.
Immortalized in tins, boxes,
bins, stacks, and piles in his office,
study, backroom, and garages.

My mother would whisper
that he’d always be this way
perpetually holding, gathering, keeping
things for the future, or to anchor the past
a ship adrift in trauma and loss,
without a compass or map.

I stare at that cast-iron bathtub,
the 600 pound invertebrate
bulging out of this house’s spine.
Another shadow added to his grief silhouette
a mixed-media of material requiems
to his past and present.

I know that when he dies
it’ll still be here.
I don’t have the strength to move it.
How could I pluck his favorite constellation
of its most beloved star?
For him,

it’ll always lead home.

#ampoetry #amwriting #books #family #hoarding #patrickWMarsh #poem #poemOfTheDay #poems #poet #poetry #reading #writing