If you persevere, in time you will have an entirely different problem – not that life is meaningless, but rather that life has almost too much meaning. As the scales fall from your eyes the world rushes into focus, presenting itself with a kind of vibrational eloquence that can, at first, be almost overwhelming. Everything shimmers, everything clarifies, everything wrestles for your attention. Trees feel super-real, their roots plunged into the earth, their branches stretching to the sky, birds are flesh and blood souls, fragile with life, the sky unfolds and rolls, the ocean crashes, people fascinate, books are beautiful, children are whirling dynamos of chaos, dogs bark and cats meow, flowers shout, your neighbour glows, and God runs like a helix through all things. The world awaits you, humming with meaning. You are alive with potential. You are not dead.
— Nick Cave on getting clean, Red Hand Files #258
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1862
2023
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AHHHHH I FOUND IT
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being in love with straight man while non-binary:
being your first choice for best man
in another life maybe your wife
see my body as what i’ve tattooed upon it
know me as what you call me
maybe this was easier for us both
before I as myself could want to be with you
every time life kicks you down
i’d drag you up, lean your weight on my shoulders
along with the world
i’ll raise your arm in victory
i’ll nurse you back to health
i’ll fight bloody and scorned
to get us out alive
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Proposal
Marry me if that’s the only way you will know my children.
If it is the only way I would know your children.
Vow yourself to me, in front of our mothers,
My mamma loves you,
yours always whispers to me about you.
Cook in our kitchen;
trade setting the table and washing the dishes
Make the bed and the couch up each night if necessary
I’d share but you might not want to.
Marry me if that’s the only way I can watch you change the world.
If its the only way you’ll watch me.
Vow yourself to me, at a courthouse, church, or corner store,
We can toast with ginger ale;
20oz into two red solo cups.
Cry into my shoulder;
Trade whose tears fall and who passes over tissues
Save our sadness for therapy and work it out there’
Id share but you might not want to
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I was wondering if you knew any tender poems about friendship? if not, that's totally cool!! :)
“[First full moon of a new and final decade]” by June Jordan
“Poem Read At Joan Mitchell’s” by Frank O’Hara
“Ode to Elliott Smith, Ending in the First Snowfall of 2003” by Hanif Abdurraqib (he once said that Frank O’Hara’s friendship poems/the way he casually mentioned his friends by name in his poems was something that meant a lot to him and I love how you can see in this poem that he did the same)
“The Orange” by Wendy Cope
“Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey” by Hayden Carruths
“acknowledgements” by Danez Smith
(if you’ve noticed that in all these poems there’s a deliberate use of their friends’ names and specific references it’s because it’s something I find very heartwarming. they’re not writing poems about something meant to be relatable they’re just writing because they love their friends and that makes me ! inside)
“To All My Friends” by May Yang
“For Tom Shaw S.S.J.E. (1945–2014)” by Mary Oliver
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i don't think i love you anymore
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— Traci Brimhall, “You Said the Lambs Were Ready” from Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod
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the thing about siken is that people are incapable of seeing the optimism and the hope in his poems. they want to boil it down to tragic quotes, to one-liners that can be an ao3 fic title or a blog title, and never engage with the wholeness of the work. they want the sadness, the parts they can affix to characters without ever analyzing the text. this is why crush is so well-received, and war of the foxes is mentioned perhaps half as much, despite it being another masterful work. why should they care about poetry that is more prose-like, that doesn't explicitly talk about tragic gay relationships, that truly forces them to confront their own opinions about the work? they want the sadness and the panic, not the—we are all going forward. none of us are going back. dear forgiveness, i saved a plate for you. quit milling around the yard and come inside. it's simple: it's not over, it's just begun. it's green. it's still green. i just don't want to die anymore.
it's easier to read sad poems and come away with melancholy. it's more important to read sad poems and come away with catharsis, to grab onto the hope and go forward.
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forced to the point of the cut;
i was born to shift into something
other than
what i was made as,
i picked up my thread scissors
and chopped off my hair.
I am a blur
shifting between
your binary so fast
i blur the lines between
who I was and who I become
glorious transition; blessed
by creation itself for it is
an act of creation.
I am my own universe
Everything I need is
within me; for I am
everything!
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my heart on my sleeve
i compulsively pick at
mining out hope
and selling it off
as faith
that things will get better
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a piece of Adam’s rib
and Eve’s tongue
My creation myth is that
Aphrodite took those pieces
and wanted to create
a creature that inspired love
and so she used the muscle
and flesh of eves tongue
to shape me
and used Adam’s ribs for the bone
I am built of sin and creation itself
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And She leads the men into battle,
whispered prayers for a God
who keeps his promises.
Victory and She,
ears ringing from angelic ruin,
is answered.
And as Angel-Claimed She will echo
ruin into revelation into rallying cries
She knows the heart of holy war now.
Blessings if war is won;
She is; illiterate yet powerful
when war is finally won.
And She, burnt into Sainthood;
stripped of her armor;
crying for a God who keeps his Word.
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