semicolonsoliloquy

[semicolonsoliloquy]

GOOGLE SEARCHES

How to stop telling people I love them,

how to slow down the love, the bleeding,

the honey.

How to stop being so sickly sweet.

How to remove a beehive. How to lock my tongue

between my teeth. How to melt down beeswax

and burn my heart like a candle. How to fit real blood and sinew

where the metaphors were. Help, what if the metaphors

shatter in my newfound bloodstream.

How to be a guardian angel. How to stop the love from spreading

from my sternum to my shoulders and growing

wings. How to stop the wings from growing mouths

that say “I love you”. Do my wings have pink eye,

or are they supposed to look like that?

Guardian angel applications. How to make sure people are safe

when I’m not there. How to let people know I love them

without reminding them I’m real. Am I real? Would it be better

if I was real? How many times can a real person say “I love you”

before someone gets annoyed and straight-up

murders them? Carnivore bees eat corpses?

Carnivore bees make honey? Ghosts say

“I love you”?

#written 4 years ago today #and I think I’ve finally found peace with my own love #I have friends and a lover who I can trust to accept and enjoy what I have to give #maybe I should write another poem about the change

[semicolonsoliloquy]

What if I don’t fall apart? 

What if you unravel the dark green ribbon from my neck, 

and my head stays attached to my spine? 

What if, God forbid, I have to watch the fabric fall limp, 

a dead snake in your hand, a dead snake you strangled 

the moment you pinched your forefinger and thumb 

above my collarbone? 

.

What if my throat doesn’t split 

and your face doesn’t pale 

and your eyes don’t go gun-wound wide, 

what if instead you smirk and say 

“That wasn’t so bad”, 

and I have to live a long long time 

with those words echoing in my mind? 

.

I still think it would matter. 

I still think it would matter because 

I asked you not to touch it. 

.

I asked you not to touch it, I asked you not to touch it, 

Please, God, I asked you—

#written 3 years ago today

[semicolonsoliloquy]

The sea is a princess, crown jewels

glinting in the light. Her perfume mists my face

in a sigh of saltwater, her lace gown froths

at the hem of the waves. The sea is a princess,

and she’s run away with me. Kisses me so deep

I can taste her in my lungs. I dance with her

in lethal pirouettes. Her skin so smooth and cold,

storm-dark. I sing her every song I know

and she laughs. I’ll sing you the only song

there ever was, she tells me.

I’ll sing you to sleep.

#written 4 years ago today

[semicolonsoliloquy]

no distractions for me please . i need to decipher what trends in online poetry are considered "in" and which are now "gauche and overplayed" on tumblr dot come.

[semicolonsoliloquy]

SOMEONE STOOD WHERE I STAND SOME THOUSAND YEARS AGO

[semicolonsoliloquy]

Fear throbbing unreachable, an ingrown blister

where everyday anxieties have rubbed-rubbed-rubbed

like a pebble by my heart. Let me touch you,

you soft disgusting thing, let me take a needle

and drain you, warm clear pus seeping down my face

as if it were tears.

#written 2 years ago

[semicolonsoliloquy]

It is poetry month, and I’d do just about anything

except write a poem. I make marshmallows

with too much gelatin. I plan outfits for a renaissance faire

that will never come. I send unsolicited texts

about the Boston molasses flood.

I invite you to a picnic

but can’t seem to choose a date,

because what if it rains, or

snows? We live in the kind of place

where it can snow in April, where the ground fluffs up

in ice-down before the dandelions

are really yellow yet.

Which is why I’m enjoying the sunshine

while it lasts, how it creates a halo around the edges

of the squirrels’ tails, how it gives me an excuse

to ride my bike across miles and miles

of not-poems. The asphalt is not a poem,

nor the trees, or the sky,

or the six-sided die

I find in the gutter, with the six

facing up, which I think is lucky—

There is a whole world out there that is not a poem

until I write it down.

#written 2 years ago today

[semicolonsoliloquy]

eclectic love poem

My creme brûlée, my torch,

my spoon, my plate

armor, my coat of arms

and torso, there is nothing so cuddly-cozy

as you, or even the thought of you,

nestled in my brain

like a lobotomist’s tool.

You are my ice pick, my only ice pick!

.

I am your glacier, your frozen

caveman. You turn my prison

into glitter-water, you free me

from myself, my alchemist,

my archeologist, my

constellation-connect-the-dots.

.

You are the ice pick and the ice box

with the plums, you are the poem about the

plums, you are every poem

written in words or ink or bark-pulp

on cave walls. You are every sonnet,

even the poor ones,

which still moved somebody’s heart

enough to be written, 

and I can’t imagine a heart-movement

that wasn’t because of you.

                                         after Jaswinter Bolina

#written 2 years ago today

[semicolonsoliloquy]

I take the hands from the clock,

needle-sharp, needle-thin.

I place each syringe,

minutes in your left arm,

hours in your right. Your heart throbs

with residual ticks and tocks.

The nauseating way

time pulls your blood,

and you along with it.

#written 3 years ago today

[semicolonsoliloquy]

A friend just reminded me that napowrimo is an exercise. It’s a time to stretch your writing muscles and build habits, not an Olympic sport or a deadline for the perfect chapbook. It’s okay to write poems that aren’t up to your usual standards! Don’t judge your napowrimo poems, just be proud that you’re building your creative stamina! You’re doing good!!

[semicolonsoliloquy]

When I wrote this three years ago, it felt like the most embarrassing, unachievable thing in the world. Now it is the simplest sweetest fact of my life. (And one of my boyfriend’s favorite poems)

Tell me that when I am cold 

there is a warm place in your heart for me to visit. 

Tell me I will see my portrait there, 

above or in the fire, and when I do 

I will hardly recognize myself, because in this portrait 

I am not horrible or strange. 

Tell me that sometimes, 

when you are alone, 

you sit in your heart and think of me, 

and you are warm too.

[semicolonsoliloquy]

Peel me open and what’s inside?

Just skinned-knee pain. Inside a fig

is just a wasp. Milky enzymes,

barbed womb, in your mouth

a stinging ghost. Inside a wasp,

something else’s flesh. Butterfly

still aching from metamorphosis.

Life is a nesting doll of wounds.

#written 3 years ago today

[semicolonsoliloquy]

NAPOWRIMO PROMPTS

1. Tell a personal story in as few words as possible.

2. Write a poem talking about the kinds of poems you most enjoy.

3. Think of an old friend you haven’t talked to in ages. What do you remember about them? What have you forgotten?

4. Write a poem from the point of view of an inanimate object from a fairy tale. (e.g. Snow White’s apple, Cinderella’s slipper, the straw spun into gold…)

5. What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told?

6. Rewrite a Shel Silverstein poem in your style.

7. Choose seven objects, each one a different color of the rainbow. Mention all of your chosen objects in your poem.

8. Write a set of instructions on how to fall in love with you. (If you are uncomfortable with the romance aspect, feel free to make the love platonic.)

9. Rain writes a letter to the ground.

10. Write about a moment of kindness you’ve experienced today.

11. Write a poem where each line ends with a word that doesn’t rhyme with anything. (Orange, silver, purple, month, angel, dangerous, etc.)

12. Write a poem with twelve lines, where each line represents a month of the year.

13. Interview a mundane object in your home.

14. Write about your earliest memory.

15. If you found out you weren’t filled with the normal things (blood, guts, etc.), what do you think would be inside you?

16. Write a poem in which you forgive yourself.

17. Write about what kind of poetry different animals would write. (Would small creatures write short poems? Would beautiful creatures write beautiful poems? Or would it be entirely different?)

18. Write about an object you’ve lost. Where might it be now?

19. Try to write a “square poem”, in the style of Lewis Carroll.

20. Write about sounds you might encounter in outer space.

21. Write about something you didn’t know a year ago.

22. If you were an item sold on EBay, what would you be? Write the listing.

23. Write lyrics to your favorite lyricless song.

24. Build a house for your sadness.

25. Write a poem where each line ends with the word the previous line started with.

26. Write a recipe for a potion that cures writer’s block.

27. Spend at least ten minutes outside today, if at all possible. Pay attention to the details, the smallest leaves, bugs, cracks in the sidewalk. Then write about it.

28. If you could live in a painting, which one would you choose? What would it be like?

29. Write an ode to your favorite comfort food.

30. What are your thoughts on immortality?

[semicolonsoliloquy]

Woot woot!! It’s NAPOWRIMO time, babeeeyyy!! Pen a poem everyday for 30 days or browse around and write when you can—the choice is yours. ❤️ I’ve loved making prompt lists over the years and I’m excited to see what this years brings. Be silly! Write some bad poems! Write some okay poems! Enjoy ya’self. Love you. ❤️

instagram: hiitssky

[semicolonsoliloquy]

I completely forgot that I wrote this poem

This poem is about you This poem is about you and about me This poem is about you and me and who I want to be I didn’t become what I wanted, did you?

This poem is about a crow, Your father said it was a raven but it was actually a crow Ravens are better for poetry But this crow had sewn his feathers from the skin Of blackberries

Now this poem is a blackberry Bite it, it is tart sweet cold And its spine is hairy and soft Between teeth, your lips are now Purple and waxy like Juniper berries, this poem is about junipers All around them and between their branches like The terrible wind that moves them, This poem is about a girl named Juniper and how her thick red hair Hovers In that wind

She sees the crow your father saw and thinks it is a blackbird You smile because you know it is a crow I smile because you think this poem Is about crows Maybe blackberries

[semicolonsoliloquy]

If I die

this afternoon

Oh what a waste

of a sandwich

[semicolonsoliloquy]

small town joys ❤️

schuylerpeck / instagram: hiitssky