Robert J. W.
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robertjw4688.bsky.social
Robert J. W.
@robertjw4688.bsky.social
980 followers 490 following 1.4K posts
Poet, writer, artist, mental health warrior/advocate
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robertjw4688.bsky.social
Robert J. W. @robertjw4688.bsky.social · Aug 21
TODAY IS THE DAY! My new #poetry collection, The Line Breaks Between Lives, is out now! I've put so much effort into this one; it's beautiful, it's ugly, it's witty. It bares teeth and blooms flowers!

www.amazon.com/Line-Breaks-...
robertjw4688.bsky.social
Trying to practice gratitude for all my blessings, no matter how small!

#vss365 #bouncing #emoetry #mind-blowing #poetry #gratitude
ELECTRIC CRUMB There is an electric crumb that bounces around my casket. I'm still alive in my self-imposed vivisepulture, watching this current light up the abyss. It's mind-blowing how the smallest morsel can feed the greatest god. I'm drinking from the intrusive soil and I swear I've never been more satiated.
February 18, 2026 at 3:31 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
No prompts for this one. Had a rough morning so I wrote it out.

#poetry #coping #mentalhealth
THE BITTERNESS OF COPING I'm encasing consciousness in the tension of premature mornings. Glass shards grind against my guts and blue whales dream of drowning on my eyelids. There are boundless questions in the bitterness of coping and most of them go unanswered. The other side looks pixelated from here but I can only clear the way if I'm moving, even if it's with the grace of gasoline.
February 17, 2026 at 2:05 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
I hope we are all able to recover from the weights we carry!

#emoetry #illicit #vss365 #enchantment #poetry #mentalhealth #recovery
TO WADE IN SURREAL WATERS We can turn "once in a lifetime" into every passing second. There is a pang within the heart's lyric that slithers in flame and shuns the water. The words can become paragraphs can become epics if we take the time to let them wade in a creek that flows sideways. Recovery may feel an illicit dream but the sirens will fade as enchantment perseveres one breath at a time.
February 16, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Robert J. W.
poetguygabe.bsky.social
these minuscule steps
walk me away from the past
that nearly killed me
and my undiscovered self
still yearning for more healing

#vss365 #minuscule #tanka
February 15, 2026 at 9:38 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
A peaceful poem for this rainy Sunday morning!

#vss365 #minuscule #emoetry #hatred #poetry #peace #rain
February 15, 2026 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Robert J. W.
birdheartedgirl.bsky.social
it's Sunday my love
come lay your weary
sky soft against mine
on the altar for birds
February 8, 2026 at 3:43 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
A poem about healing!

#emoetry #overit #vss365 #kiss #poetry #mentalhealth #healing
OVER IT... "I'm over it," I whimper into my mug of green tea. The walls have stopped in their journey to suffocate but they're still too close for comfort. Can I wash away these infinite chemical spills? I'm bleeding sand and crying vermiculite, trying to transmute the absurd into a love letter sealed with a kiss from cracked lips. Someday, I will throw a party where tea and time will flow like spirits. All my loved ones will be there and I will make a toast, crying out: "I'm over it!"
February 14, 2026 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Robert J. W.
rickehling.bsky.social
we rise early
we tend, we clear, we clip
pruning, harvesting
squeezing sweet wine, vinegar
we bottle both we rise
© Rick Ehling ✍️ 02/14/2026
#dailyhaikuprompt (grapes) #tanka #bspp50
February 14, 2026 at 2:00 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
This is about my love of writing. Poetry, especially!

#vss365 #lacuna #emoetry #glowing #poetry #amwriting
POST-GENESIS There's a lacuna within my spasmodic speech that I fill with prose poetry. I hope it flows over and drowns me in its valiance. In this post-genesis world, I am glowing like the newly sober. Toxins and remedies conjoin into an animal I can either hunt for sport or take into my arms and say "I'm sorry."
February 13, 2026 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Robert J. W.
clivereed.bsky.social
As I flip the colourful pages
in the family album
those lacunae
those spaces of white
ooh they bite
they are the unclean
bleached out
blizzards of the past
holding their cold space
through the changing seasons
#vss365 #lacuna #poetry
February 13, 2026 at 1:16 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
As evidenced by the title, this is about my near life-long struggle with hypochondria.

#vss365 #dark #poetry
HYPOCHONDRIA Every symptom is a disease. Every disease is a doomsday. I've been torturing myself with the endless search of my every bodily idiosyncrasy and the results are always apocalyptic, muddled in slop. I'm aging from a mollusk to a cracked shell and it's all my fault; I've been ingesting toxins to fight toxins for decades. I just need to tell myself on repeat: "You will be okay! Even if you're sick, You will be okay!" while the dark becomes something more beige and I thrive whether I want to or not.
February 12, 2026 at 2:23 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
I recently started reading the Tao Te Ching so I suppose this is inspired by it. Trying to find inner peace!

#vss365 #touch #poetry #tao #zen #peace
LAZY DECOHERENCE I let myself drift in the movement of honey, finding the Tao within the lazy decoherence. My grateful fingers touch the paper and they leave with an understanding of the forest. I am more powerful than the Big Rip that may destroy the universe and I am more timid then the rabbit that hides to feed her young. My breath is filled with multitudes of nothing. I exhale afterbirth.
February 11, 2026 at 2:08 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
I will get out of this funk. Today is a new day to try!

#vss365 #ache #emoetry #delighted #poetry #mentalhealth #positivity #recovery #pma
THE ILLUSIVE TRY I'm gazing within my own abyss and I'm finding doves and novels along with the ache. The illusive try is flashing loud today. Maybe I will liberate myself from this after all. The purpose is in the callouses not the bed sores. My skull fills with the delight of a million crumbs of circus. I am the rope I climb!
February 10, 2026 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Robert J. W.
sanjar.bsky.social
night gates left ajar
milky way in cold pixels
#pale insomniac

#vss365 #DailyHaikuPrompt #Milky_Way #haiku #senryu #blueskypoets
February 8, 2026 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Robert J. W.
everettpoetry.bsky.social
From grateful.org
Word for the Day from Grateful.org
February 10, 2026 at 1:29 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
I'm gonna try to start practicing radical acceptance. Wish me luck! Also, today isn't my birthday. I just used it as a metaphor 😊

#vss365 #bones #emoetry #challenge #poetry #mentalhealth
FINDING A DIAMOND IN THE FOURTH HUMOR I pour green tea over my enervated skeleton, music steaming from every bone. Something good will happen today and I will claw at this excessive black bile until I find it. The challenge of acceptance is not in the pointing finger but in the arms' embrace. These inordinate bad days are just a singular whisper in a stadium filled with my every birthday party. I'm celebrating whether I age or not.
February 9, 2026 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Robert J. W.
poetguygabe.bsky.social
these bones are weary
that carry humanity
we've walked a long time
we just keep wandering
but we won't find it out there

#vss365 #bones #tanka
February 9, 2026 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by Robert J. W.
oldsoulprose.bsky.social
I'll fill my grave
with a
pile of bones
blood of wars
won and lost
I came
I saw
I loved
#vss365
#bones
February 9, 2026 at 2:08 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
My mindset has been frigging awful recently (though it's been a frequent problem for me my whole life.) I'm trying to undo the damage my own brain has done and is doing to me. It will take time and a lot of effort. So I must be patient with me.

#vss365 #pale #emoetry #blissful #poetry #mentalhealth
SHAKING AND ABRASED A pale mindset will never write me an iridescent biography. There are bruises lining my essence and the hands brandishing the war hammer resemble my own, shaking and abrased. I'm putting down my weapon in an act of revolution against myself and I will let myself weep away these doubts, these demoralized reveries until the holes in my heart fill with blissful rain in which I will swim like a sea otter.
February 8, 2026 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Robert J. W.
sifaswriting.bsky.social
#pale pastels
the colours of spring
of renewal, new life
when the earth awakes
from its long winter sleep
and from somber grey
bursts a rainbow of hues

#vss365 #poetry #writing #writingcommunity
February 8, 2026 at 2:46 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
A peaceful write. Hope y'all enjoy it!

#vss365 #blood #emoetry #afflicted #poetry #mentalhealth #recovery
ATARAXIS There is tranquility in the crawl to middle ground where I balance my breath and blood. The water in my lungs starts to flow outside of sentience. It is irrigation for flowers I have forgotten in my agonal afflictions. I release the universe from my grasp and let my empty hands play with the hummingbirds and the fireflies.
February 7, 2026 at 1:47 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
I think a major root of my current anxieties is my social media and phone addiction. I need to curb it and I think writing this was a good first step. I HAD to write this. Poem in alt text!

#emoetry #wistful #vss365 #wound #poetry
THE BRIGHTEST BRICK I have replaced the darkest void with the brightest brick and it is infinitely more dangerous. My dopamine dependency is a choke chain around my entire life and it leads me through Eden and Gehenna with no journey in between. I've got permanent bends, staggering through symptoms of cancers I'll never meet. I type manifestos with wistful fingers and pray that they'll make a difference, buried under a million other scorching takes. Blue light can be a debridement for my long festering wounds but it can also be a pathogen that infects my entire spirit until I have to sever the whole damn thing.
February 6, 2026 at 1:54 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
Continuing from yesterday's theme of anxiety, I've been beating myself up majorly recently for the mistakes I've been making while in panic/survival mode.

#vss365 #lambent #emoetry #uncomfortable #poetry #anxiety
SEESAWS AND BRIDGES No grace, no lambent over the detritus of my mistakes; My psyche has shaken itself through yet another reality and has dropped into a fractured mirror. I'm throwing myself off seesaws and bridges as a punishment for my panic and the lapses it brings. My worth is an uncomfortable burden that I have shackled to my every blink and breath. Meanwhile, my defects run free along the jagged edges of my incoherent heart. I am trying to corral them away from here while flinching from the sound of my whip.
February 5, 2026 at 2:46 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
Another lengthy one (poem is in alt text.) This one is about my struggles with anxiety, which I've been dealing with since the mid 90s.

#vss365 #ghosts #emoetry #terrified #poetry #anxiety
HOME MOVIE WITH NO PLOT Another night of vivid perditions making their home between my ribs. Am I scared of the ghosts that stalk me or am I terrified of the absurdity they shriek in the silence? I've been mugging myself of the present moment and giving it all to pestilence. He barely glances at my gift, an apathetic haze flushing his demeanor. So what have I changed and what good has been accomplished by the endless fast forward of this home movie with no plot? I've pulled a million triggers with an osmium finger; it's getting calloused and tired yet I'm still here, trembling while trying my hardest to achieve nirvana.
February 4, 2026 at 2:56 PM
robertjw4688.bsky.social
This is a pretty uplifting write about gratitude and trying to find the beautiful things in life, both of which I'm working on. I hope you are too!

#vsa365 #pain #emoetry #rejected #poetry #mentalhealth #gratitude
FINDING THE WONDER IN THE WASTE The curtain is pulled down over an anonymous dream. I rise from a wrinkled crib, bathing my somnolence in coffee and poetry. I am in pain but that can wait as I count my blessings on a thousand hands. Finding the wonder in the waste is as essential as the cascading water I sometimes take for granted. So I'm rejecting the allure of rusted chains for now but I'm leaving my mind soaked in citric acid just in case my jailer heart beats itself into exile.
February 3, 2026 at 4:00 PM