purplenerdwithcoffee

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

I wanna know how this will be enough.

As I kid, I wanted to be a savior, trailblazer, the prophecy child. I wanted a big life, with ups and ups like the breasts of mountains and lows like the depths of valleys full of forgotten debris. I was convinced the great flood was knocking at my door, beckoning me to become someone bigger. A juvenile fantasy, a hazy dream.

I'm 19 now. It's not a grand big life, I'm no hero. I love my friends and sunday mornings. I like cats and strawberries. No flood, no rapture, no calamity- just quiet weekdays and sleepy weekends. But oh my days, I am full, finally.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned

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One day, you wake up to the sun on your finger tips.

The years littered around the floor have folded themselves into neat sheets by your bedpost.

Faded scars have turned into healed, perfect skin.

Where your nightmares once sliced you open,

your lover now fills you up.

One day, you wake up and the ghosts from your yesterdays have gotten tired of lingering around.

(You find the opposite of a haunting to be not so lonely after all)

One day you wake up with the sun on your finger tips and eighteen years have kissed you goodbye.

What you thought was unsurvivable sits caged within piles of diaries

Something you never thought could be yours grants you another day in its shelter.

People you love

And people who love you

bring you cake. bring you faith.

One day, it has been eighteen years

And you're glad you chose to stay.

#writing #excerpts from my journal #romanticism #poetry #its been five years #it gets better

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

i know we’re both just messing around pretending to be whole but look at me. if the train was coming would you move. if the ground was falling from under your feet would you even notice or would it just be another tuesday for you. if somebody stabbed you could it hurt worse than you already do. what i’m saying is that i love you but i think we both drive over the speed limit when it’s raining. what i’m saying is that i want to hold your hand and i understand about how you sometimes have to sit down in the shower. what i’m saying is that i’m here for you and if the train comes please move.

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

Love, I was told, is a lot like poetry: you could not look for it without finding something less than you’d hoped - you had to wait and let it come to you, find you in the middle of a conversation about Christmas traditions. It would form under your fingertips whenever it chose.

Love, I said, leaning into the narrow space between your collarbones, You are a lot like poetry.

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

i.

I sit down to write myself a poem in three parts. the before the during the after.

the before, the breathing of our love from tiny into this massive sun that just e  a   t    s me up, takes me down like I am made of paper, my skin so blackened with your bitter kisses. I stand back and watch my life burn and wonder what will happen to all the love poems I have written you.

ii.

the during, the part where you lean in and whisper not sweet nothings but sweet everythings, words that become the hinge of me, the whole of me, my door that swings wide open as if you have kicked it down and I just fall right on through- tumble, girl, tumble, love will never save you.

iii.

the after, where the tide has finally risen, where we are swimming with the shouts of the others making white music in our ears, a foreverland of neverland where we are finally friends again where I am free of you and the salt of the water slowly scrubs me of your deceit.

I sit myself down and try to write a poem in three (3) parts: the burning, the falling, the ocean beneath.

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

this is written for me.

they keep the silverware in the same place. you forget about it a little bit when you move out, but during the holidays, it comes back. the way you smooth over your life for them, a gentle reckoning.

for a while, you tried to find yourself by being wild. throwing your body at the emergency exit. finding comfort in the sharpness of a held breath. you used to write wake up on the inside of your wrist. you couldn't calculate the weight of your own sorrow, only that nobody was looking at the anchor of it. you tried maladaptive coping mechanisms like catnip. got caught half-in half-out of them. felt, weirdly, like you should be embarrassed of all of it.

but it does get better. mostly it's just that you become a priority to yourself. it turns out that lending yourself the ragged edge is just cutting open more marrow. for a while, it felt good to see a physical representation of inward agony. but who was that punishing? you learned, slowly (so slowly it was almost invisible sometimes) that you could put love into the wound instead. that the floor was comfortable because it was certain - but it was cold, and unwanting. instead there is a warm bed. you learn to treat yourself like a kid again. gentle-parent yourself into the shower and over breakfast and into laughing without effort. you do wake up.

but then you come home again, and it is like everything is a strange kaleidoscope of childhood moments. here is how you inherited your mother's anxiety. there is the same music playing, and you can't sit down without worrying you forgot to do something. your mother's clipped words and hovering hands - are you sure? are you sure? birdlike, you find yourself seeing unwell and still end up repeating.

here is your father's anger. you are 16 again. there was a moment where you remember thinking - holy shit. i am so much more emotionally mature than you. how you have to talk him down from minor inconveniences, how you parent him like an errand and spoiled toddler who can't be told no, and i mean it. you feel the warp of you. why you can't be in the same room as people having a completely normal conflict. why your skin crawls if there's ever a hint of a fight. why you live with your hands up, placating. and god forbid you get angry. you feel that little spoiled kid rage against the iron will of you. not you, not your hands. you would rather cut your own tongue out of your head, no matter how valid her argument is.

and you're so fucking far from where you were as a kid. you've done so much healing. and there's this little sad part of you that can see the shadow of your past, and your hands wrapped into each other so tightly you made your knuckles white. and how much your parents are just people, and haven't changed much, and still keep the spoons in the drawer to the right.

there is a long dark tunnel here, and it has a name, but you haven't learned how to process that kind of speech yet. close the cabinet. make a note to go get more oat milk. close your eyes.

this place was never home, was it.

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

!!!!!

The rape and brutalization of any women—including white women—in any country is not a "response" to colonialism, oppression, slavery, poverty, war, murder, and starvation.

It is done out of hatred of women and the pleasure of female pain, degradation, and humiliation. It is attempted to be justified through cultural relativism, through religion, by blaming women for male violence, blaming women for the actions of male systems of governence, blaming women for being in the wrong place at the wrong time—or around the wrong men. In times of war, the rape and brutalization of women demonstrates male behavior in the absence of rules and law.

It is depraved, shameful, disgusting, and absolutely unforgiveable. It does not matter which men are doing it to which women in what place. Rape is never justifiable.

As a Jewish woman, would I shame Jewish men for raping the wives of Nazi men? Yes, I would. Would I shame black male slaves for raping white women? Yes, I would. And I would shame white men for raping black women, Nazi men for raping Jewish women. And I would shame male Israeli soldiers for raping Palestinian women and Palestinian males for raping Israeli women.

The rape and brutalization of any women is not an act of liberation, resistance, decolonization, self-defense, or freedom from oppression.

If your measure of the depravity, immorality, and disgust for rape hinges on what men are doing it and what women they are doing it to, you are a rape apologist. That is sexually predatory thinking, that is male supremacist thinking, and that is disturbing behavior. It is wrong to rape.

Female liberation, now.

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

- What is a dream?

- A delirious, unconscious longing of the brain. Don't you think?

- Is it, but?

- Waking up shivering in the dead of the night,

I wish I could put a bullet through your mouth.

Isn't that, a want too?

My dreams are an acidic pool of blood. of shame.

of how could you? of please, stop.

- I ask you about your dream, and you tell me about your / violence.

- I'm sorry. Can we try again?

- What is a dream?

- I've been unsure. Maybe a sticky want.

Of something / someone / somewhere different.

Dreamy. The edges softened. rounded.

Or maybe torn. and burnt.

I don't remember if I forgot the bits and pieces

Or thought it all up in my head.

- What is a dream?

- A memory. A mirage.

#inktober #inktober 2023 #writing #excerpts from my journal #romanticism #poetry #dream #prompt #warm up #im sorry #violence was shoved down my throat #now it runs in my blood

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

You meet god and she's mostly dead fish. You ask her why and she says most of the world is dead fish, and she's made herself to appeal to the most common denominator, the everyman funnyman comedy show that runs for eleven seasons but with the entire universe in mind. You ask her how much of the dead fish is your fault, she says it's far less than you'd think, in the grand scheme of things. You ask her if you matter at all. If you can do anything. She shrugs her rotting shoulders and says mattering is a made-up concept, like life, but sure, you can matter if you want to, on some scale. She has many scales. She doesn't know what you mean by 'anything', but you can do everything you can. You ask her if it's enough. She says there's no base requirement for deserving to exist. She's smoking a joint and the smoke filtering out of her gills gathers and forms gas giants and red dwarfs. You ask her if there's any hidden secrets of the universe you should know and she says it's not a secret if she tells, plus it's fun to let you figure it out yourself. You ask her if any of your questions were right questions and she says you worry about being right so much it might keep you from fucking around, which is as close to meaning of life as she ever bothered to make. You don't ask but she says she loves your hair, also your whole being, also your planet. She says she figured out what love is yesterday and is trying it out, which explains the ten thousand rainbows and sudden influx in rains of fish. She offers you a drag of her joint and you wake up half past midnight behind a chain restaurant clutching a smoked salmon. The new stars are winking like they're in on some joke and you're sure if you try hard enough you'll remember what it is.

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

I really wanted to be a writer,

But then.

I sat through those classes.

Where they took the literature by its collar

And broke it down to study

Limb. By fragile limb.

They sliced down the poems. Right to their core.

Cut out the meanings into nice little squares.

This is what the prose means.

Light is the angel, dark never not the devil.

They took something wild,

something alive and glorious

And caged it in knowledge

In I know. In I understand.

But do you feel?

They took something wild, and alive, and glorious,

And strapped it down to see

How is it alive? Why is it glorious?

And before they knew it, the / art

Was a dead frog on their dissection table.

(The wonder is now gone from their eyes.

Blood on the scalpel. Salt water on the cheeks.

Does it bother you? That mercy is so hard to understand?)

I said I wanted to be a writer, yes.

But I guess now, I'd rather be the / poetry.

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

My heart ouch

a cockroach sneaks into an art museum by judas h. ( @judas-redeemed )

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

You had refused to recall my name for the seventh consecutive week. while yours kept ringing in my head.

finding me everywhere. rhyming with everything.

Those days, I had curled into myself. like the recoiled spring of a gun being shot. But your name had me fighting with teeth.

"It's not 'i', it's double 'e',"

Correcting friends as if getting your name wrong was a crime against me.

my devotion.

They say your name wields your life.

But.

What about the way I wielded your name?

With scathing hatred and unwilling familiarity.

Like I had the sacred knowledge of your truest nature. when it's been half a decade since you met my eyes.

The way I wielded your name.

With a razor sharp tenderness that could split you into two. but clustered in my throat it sliced me instead.

The way I wielded your name.

Like I loved you, once, before. but a love like a fist. a love like a knife.

after all it was you who blurred the lines between love and violence for me.

(And I say wielded because I've hoarded your name beneath my tongue for seven weeks now. hoping I can kill this desire by holding its breath)

But your name.

Scribbled messily on all my pages. there was a time when its presence felt enough.

Your name.

Throbbing with my pulse. Like a weapon, like a prayer. Like a hunter, like a God. Like a consolation, like a wound. Like a plea, like a curse.

Everywhere, rhyming with everything.

...

When the dust has settled, I'll promise you one thing.

No matter how many souls you bare,

or hearts you bewitch,

or minds you tame,

You'll never find anyone

else

Who has mouthed your two wretched glorious syllables

more than me.

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

Anew.

As the sun sets / On a

tiring day / You step into the / kitchen

Tryna escape all the grays.

Your playlist on shuffle

Your hair tucked high

You're striding in your slippers

Tryna keep your eyes dry.

You're making yourself maggie,

Your favourite comfort meal

Your steps are mechanical

You're trying not to feel.

That's when an old old song comes up,

And you slowly start singing

Long before you know it,

You're really busy twirling.

Realisation dawns

Of just how many years have passed

Since you last heard / that song,

Since you last / sang along.

It's like, suddenly,

All the ache evaporates.

You're back in twenty-eighteen,

When you believed in fairytales.

It's like coming back home,

After a long while away.

Softly, gladly, knowing,

You're now here to stay.

It's funny how one song,

You swore, you'd never hear again,

Stayed in your playlist,

All throughout your disdain.

It's funny how one song,

You ugly cried to for weeks,

Is still memorised by your body,

Your lips and your cheeks.

It's funny how one song,

With it's same old rhymes,

Can make the hurt vaporize;

Erase all it's crimes.

Funny how the blood you called / art

Can turn into a faded view,

Funny how the same old start,

Can gloss your heart / anew.

#writing #excerpts from my journal #romanticism #anew #songs #that one song #healing #but there are many times #i had to start over and over again #before i could start anew #poetry #dark academia #richard siken #anna akhmatova #warsan shire #mary oliver #sylvia plath

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

Worshipper.

These days, I ruminate on the love (and not the ache)

Instead of the knife, I twist the care (in my hands, examining it)

No sharp edges. No blood stains.

In the stillness between the moments, I feel like I belong there. here.

The knife beneath my pillow (unscarred, despite the massacres it caused)

But the care? It shines like glass in the sunlight.

I've realised,

To love is to create a religion.

(With a breakable God)

#to love someone #leaving behind the hurt #romanticism #excerpts from my journal #writing #care is fragile #the anger lasts longer

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

I oh so feel the boiling, molten, white hot anger barely restrained behind these words.

it just sucks because nothing is ever fucking made for you, and if it is made for you like 75% of the time it gets chopped into little pieces by every person alive because this is the one thing you have, so it has to prove itself to you.

like, a thing can't just be for women. men need to assign it to women. women have to experience "must" or "should" before their hobbies and passions - women are allowed to do silly, passive things like tuck our ankles and titter behind a fan, or something. women are allowed to, they are welcomed to. like the world is a house and we are supposed to be in the kitchen and now we are being given the divine right to enter the living room if we bring chips

because when it becomes for you, or about you, that is when the thing is vile. you should/must wear makeup so you can appear beautiful to men. once you wear makeup for yourself, or because you yourself enjoy putting it on, then you are no longer doing the right thing. there is a reason men hate certain fashion trends. there is a reason men hate things like the pumpkin spice latte - because it's not about them. you are buying it because it is good for you. they degrade your passions and interests. there is a reason women-led fields are largely seen as being "not a real" profession. when you are a good cook, that is because you can provide for him. close your eyes. you're not going to be a chef, be honest. that is a man making food for himself.

bras are made so breasts will be appealing to men. they are rarely about comfort or support. you have given up entirely on the idea of pockets. young girls have to worry about a shorter inseam on their shorts. a girl on instagram gets her septum pierced, and men in the comments are rabid about it - i just want to rip it out of her face. she'd be beautiful without it.

and fucking everything is for them. even the media that is "for you" is for them, eventually. remember "my little pony"? remember how hard it is to convince any executive to believe that little girls are worth selling to? in the media that is for you, you see little ways that you still need to make it accessible for them - the man is always powerful, smart, masculine. he is a man's man. the media usually forgives him. it usually says okay, some men are awful, but hey! gotta love 'em. because if you don't hold their hands and say "this is literally just a story about my lived reality", they shit their pants about it. they demand you put them into the media that's for you.

these are people who are so used to glutting themselves on the world. they are used to having every corner and every dollar and every place of leadership. so you say can i please have one slice of cake, just for myself, please, holy shit. and they fucking weep about it. they say you're being unfair, because some of their one-thousand-slices aren't beautiful, and your singular cake slice doesn't have their name on it. and aren't you being rude by not offering to share?

and honestly. fucking - yeah, man. you were kind of surprised, because the cake is a little basic (you bake at home, you're way past this stuff). but holy shit, it was nice just to be offered cake in the first place. you're used to having to starve. you're used to getting nothing, but going to the party anyway, because you're expected (professionally) to show up. you liked that it is a simple cake, and that it is warm, and mostly: you like that there is, for once, a cake-for-you.

in the real world, outside of metaphor, it feels like fucking being slapped. barbie didn't even say anything particularly unusual; it literally just made factually evident points. there are less women in leadership than men. we can look at that fact objectively. that is a real thing that is happening. and the movie is aware that it has to defend itself! that it has to spend like half an hour just turning to the camera and saying: i know this is hard for you to understand, but this is a real thing that women experience.

it's just - this is that one kid on the playground who thinks its allowed to hog all the toys. he builds this hoard that nobody else is allowed to even look at, or he'll get aggressive. everyone's a little scared of him, so they let it slide, because his daddy gave him the golden touch. he hates when people cry and thinks bullying is cool. he writes boys only! on a big sign and makes all his friends take "alpha male" classes.

and then girls pick up barbies, because there was nothing left for them. and in the void they've been given, with their scraps: they make long, spiraling narratives about how barbie is actually descended from snakes and has given her righteous followers magical (if concerning) powers and can speak 32 languages (2 of which are animal related) and has big plans for infrastructure (beginning with the local interstate). and the boy comes over, and he has a huge fit about how the girls aren't "including" him. he wants to know why the girls aren't making the story about ken.

"we didn't like your story." the girls blink at him. they point to his war stories and the gi joes and the millions of male-led narratives and how still in the modern day men get two-thirds of the speaking roles in movies and they point to men making mediocre shows that don't get lambasted and they point to men encouraging toxic masculinity and they point to men everywhere, men and men and men. and they say: "how is this our fault? you had ken."

"no!" he is already back to screaming and stomping his feet and tearing at his hair and intentionally reminding them that men are holding back thinly concealed violence and he says: "if it's not for me, it's actually sexism."

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

denial and discipline are practically synonyms. shit.

you're in the habit of denying yourself things.

if someone asked you directly, you would say that you love a little treat. you like iced coffee and getting the cookie. you drink juice out of a fancy cup sometimes, and often do use your candles until they gutter out helplessly.

but you hesitate about buying the 20 dollar hand mixer because, like. you could just use your arms. you weren't raised rich. you don't get to just spend the 20 dollars (remember when that could cover lunch?), at least - you don't spend that without agonizing over it first, trying to figure out the cost-benefits like you are defending yourself in front of a jury. yes, this rice cooker could seriously help you. but you do know how to make stovetop rice and it really isn't that hard. how many pies or brownies would you actually make, in order to make that hand mixer worthwhile?

what's wild is that if the money was for a friend, it would already be spent. you'd fork over 40 without blinking an eye, just to make them happy. the difference is that it's for you, so you need to justify it.

and it sneaks in. you ration yourself without meaning to - you don't finish the pint of ice cream, even though you want to. the next time you go to the store, you say ah, i really shouldn't, and then you walk away. you save little bits of your precious things - just in case. sometimes you even go so far as putting that one thing in your shopping cart. and then just leaving it there, because maybe-one-day, but not right now, there's other stuff going on.

you do self-care, of course. but you don't do it more than like, 3 days in a row. after that it just feels a little bit over-the-edge. like. you can't live in decadence, the economy is so bad right now, kid.

so you don't buy the rice cooker. you can-and-will spend the time over the stove. you can withstand the little sorrows. denial and discipline are practically synonyms. and you're not spoiled.

it's just - it's not always a rice cooker. sometimes it is a person or a job or a hug. sometimes it is asking for help. sometimes it is the summer and your college degree. sometimes it is looking down at scabbed knees and feeling a strange kind of falling, like you can't even recognize the girl you used to be. sometimes it is your handprint looking unsteady.

sometimes it is tuesday, and you didn't get fired, and you want to celebrate. but what is it you like, even? you search around your little heart and come up empty. you're so used to denying that all your desires draw a blank.

oh fuck. see, this is the perfect opportunity. if you had a mixer, you'd make a cake.

#this isn't good #because this is the best #the writing i mean

[purplenerdwithcoffee]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

#preach!!!!