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Bianca Stone, from What Is Otherwise Infinite: Poems; “God Searches for God”

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Jennifer Huang, from Return Flight; “Customs”

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I saw a man today Clutching two little bundles in his arms Screaming, howling, rolling on the floor. “Animal grief” The world is a agape hull blown apart all the air rushed through— You can't tell if you're drowning or burning when your lungs are on fire, blood gurgling where your heart had been. There is no surface to break through, to wake up, to stop. To die. Agony is bestial. you thrash in death throes condemned to life. "My darling, my darling, I am so sorry I couldn't protect you Dear God have mercy, have mercy take me with you."

I wonder if He misses us wherever He is. I wonder whether Heaven is an orphanage. whether we are one too. I wonder whether the world can run out of air if it gets blown up enough times I wonder if we're all just supposed to keep going, drowning and burning till we're all animals praying for an end.

#free palestine #gaza genocide #child death #grief #mourning #spilled ink #my poetry

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“maybe we’re tired of tragedy maybe the world said: welcome home, it’ll be a beautiful ride. maybe the world lied, maybe the lifelines on your palms are no more than some ancient tragedy dragging its teeth on your skin like an animal that refuses to die no matter how many times you shoot it. maybe i’m applying lipstick in the front seat of my car and the leather smells like my friend rushing out to throw up. we are all rushing out to throw up because we live in a time of cataclysm, every day might be a new catastrophe. nuclear apocalypse is the new black and we are already putting shotguns in the trunks of our cars. you blow a breath of smoke and i want to know why everyone tells me that cigarettes are bad for my health when the sky over my hometown is no longer the blue my grandmother remembers, and why you think that i am destroying myself when the world is being destroyed and you just throw the leaflets away. we are not trying to kill ourselves here, we were just born exhausted, and i don’t see people in the streets, i see moving muscles and bones. we all want enough breathing room but our lungs would break apart if we got oxygen. there are people who have never even seen the stars and now you tell me that elon musk wants to launch us into space. to do what? to destroy, which is the ancient tragedy, which is the only thing we know how to do right. i weep for the stars and for the galaxies and for some passengers two centuries into the future, the child with curly hair pressing her nose to the shuttle window as Earth burns burns burns, the only legacy we ever left.”

— Nuclear apocalypse is the new black by Lana Rafaela

#poetry #prose #sunsetablaze

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Fuck you, depression!

I found this old livejournal entry from three years ago. Still nowhere near all right but nowhere this bad either. Frankly, I am taking a moment to be impressed with myself. I came back from THIS, bitches. Woo! :D “It’s one of those days where you’re just hanging on by the skin of your fingertips. Where you’ve been hanging from your fingertips for days and every muscle is screaming in protest and you feel like what you want more than anything is to let go and just stop the pain…but it’s a long way down and you’ll never be able to stop falling or crashing to earth and exploding into a million pieces on the ground. But that’s not what’s scaring you. What’s scaring you is that you might change your mind while you’re mid-fall. Think that maybe you’d hung on a milisecond longer, someone would have saved you. That you might have time to watch that last spark of hope for your life and everything it could have been, just slip from your fingers and disappear into the lost expanse forever and realize you made the wrong choice. You’re afraid that, after the initial glorious relief from pain and the exhilaration of free fall that  you’ll suddenly see the ground rushing up towards you and try futilely to slow down, to breathe one last gasp of air that’ll never feel enough, to brace yourself against a final, crushing blow that can never be anticipated and a blackness that will never ever lift. You’re afraid of what may come after, whether there really will be a white light that will carry you upon an updraft to a heavenly judgment for your weakness, or whether you will become a spirit, an insubstantial whirl of memory and emotion imprinted permanently upon the world at the moment of your death, like a mere flash-photo capture of who you once were. You’re afraid consciousness exists trapped in your bones long after your brain has rotted into the earth and you will spend centuries staring up at the lid of your coffin feeling yourself disintegrate. You’re afraid that you will be reborn to suffer again in a new, perhaps worse existence, doomed to obliviously repeat the same cycle of hope and fear and death until your soul-memory tires out and begs for a non-existence that will never come. You’re afraid that the dead are not reborn and you will be forced to wander the world passively forever. You’re afraid that maybe there really is no such thing as a soul, and that the sum total of you is not a permanent imprint of merit and sin, emotion and thought but a disposable bundle of nerve-endings and neurons, chemicals and biological imperatives that is snuffed out forever like the light of a tallow candle. That nothing you did or suffered ever mattered for more than a moment. You’re afraid that you’ll always be equally afraid of both holding on and letting go, stuck in a torturous impasse. The fear of life and fear of death. Equal and opposite forces that stretch you taut, keeping you in an eternal yet precarious stasis that leaves everything except your mind suspended in motion, leaving it to scream unheard into the void of inertia. And you are so. Fucking. Tired.”

#tw suicidality #blast from the past #christ this is twelve years old now #quite unrelatable now. i don't give a single shit about the afterlife when i want to give up #but still pain avoidant af #prose

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I left a light on so you could find me.

It gets dark later these days, I know,

Still I think it could help, if

You’re running late or moving slow.

Already I’ve attracted moths

And a menagerie of bugs that sing.

I give them sugar water and a

Place to rest their wings.

I left a light on for you, just in case,

In this house you laid foundations for.

Been renovating thirty years

Still the bones are just as you recall.

Sometimes friends will gather here

to share a meal of things we’ve grown.

I left a light on just in case

I’m busy when you show.

Been planting flowers in the garden,

The sorts that you can eat.

It looks a little overgrown,

Though very lush and sweet.

Clover underfoot,

I can’t help but dance for fun.

I left a light on just in case

I’m dancing when you come.

At night, all tucked myself in bed, I stay up late.

I oiled the hinges on the gate

So I might not hear you there.

I left a light on just in case you catch me unawares.

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Reem, Reem

Soul of my soul

I weep no tears for you.

Love was always too weak

a word; and still God loved you

more than I; it's why

he called you from my arms,

so soon; just long

enough for a window,

into my Paradise; yet

not long enough to let

the world hurt you

any more than it has done.

Reem, Reem

light of my heart; I rejoice

for it will never be you

who bears this hurt

this agony, this world,

He loves you so much

He could never bear to

see you in pain for His glory

the way I am blessed to suffer.

I praise His name,

prostrate with gratitude,

I am in a grief glorious

for this gift of His love,

of your love, this howling love,

these hallowed flames

this blessing of a love

that would hurt this much.

Reem, Reem,

my angel on earth,

now you are one in Heaven.

God sings you lullabies

sweeter than I ever could,

cradles you more gently

than I ever would,

Spirited you into

an eternal dream

softer than I could ever

spin you.

Reem, Reem,

I know my tears

broke your little heart, you

never could stand to see them.

So I try to not let them fall.

But darling, if I fail,

don't be sad;

These are glad tears,

patient tears, blessed tears,

knowing because of you

my love for God is stronger

His shield over my soul truer;

that a love that gave me you,

will never keep us apart,

for longer than I can endure

Tw: video of small dead child cradled by grandfather in Gaza under the cut. In an interview he called her "the soul of my soul".

#my poetry #this is pretty bad but it was the only thing that helped me stop crying #i'll never get that video out of my head #i don't believe in god but that old gentleman did so deeply #i can't help believing too #hurting like this means we still have human hearts #the way those israeli monsters never will #becoming an abomination unto humanity is much worse than loss #free palestine #spilled ink

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I remember every single person I let down and hurt. Every relationship I broke or drifted from, every one I didn't do enough to keep. I could count them out between my fingers one by one like a rosary. Every failure, every thing I never deserved, every blessing I squandered. How can I ever be a good person when I leave this trail of damage in my wake? How do I deserve love when I have treated love so lowly? How have I grown when I still wouldn't have done it all differently? Because my own hurt is just as real now as it was then?

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The empty space

that love should have filled

though resigned now

will always be waiting

at the school gates

watching the road

in the falling dusk

a child's faith

in the promise

of a love meant

to bring them home.

#my poetry #my writing #spilled ink

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Ada Limón interviewed by Lauren LeBlanc

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The worst thing about hearts is that they refuse to stay broken.

#my writing

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Mania

Frag ments

time and … I

out ….. of step

with

…….. Each other

like that time

at

Wonder World on the

……………. Orbiter

I braced against

the bars

they picked me …..up

and

SWUNG

…….. me round and round and round and round

until I

was standing

…. q-u-i-v-e-r-i-n-g

….. s t i l l…

while the world

ROARED

past…around

all over…me

space time huuurrrttlling

in

a vortex

around–surround me

my toes curled

Breath

……… Holding

……………. On.

i think

there is

a

…… Scream

trapped

….. in my chest but

the.. world is…going…

far ….. too ….. slow

to hear

it.

#actuallybipolar #my writing #hypomania #mania

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“poetry doesn’t really speak to me” ok, then try reading:

“Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath

“The Years” by Alex Dimitrov

“Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying” by Noor Hindi

“What the Living Do” by Marie Howe (dedicated to her younger brother John, who died from AIDS-related complications)

“Love after love“ by Derek Walcott 

“Crude Conversations with Boys Who Fake Laughter Often” by Warsan Shire

“Ginsberg” by Julia Vinograd

“Unsolicited Advice to Adolescent Girls with Crooked Teeth and Pink Hair” by Jeanann Verlee

“Fossilizing Trauma” by Blythe Baird

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My father told me

"You will be worth nothing

unless you can be

everything."

I have been dissolving

ever since.

#cptsd #actually cptsd #gifted child #parental abuse #child abuse #parentification #my poetry #my writing #spilled ink

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my therapist says make friends with your monsters

we are gathered in truce to discuss our differences, my therapist seated between us.

my roadrunner legs point past the door in case. we are gathered in truth,

because my therapist said it was time to stop running, & i pay my therapist too much

to be wrong, so i am here. in case my therapist is right. my monsters, coyotes in the

chase, look almost human in the sterile office light. my monsters say they just

want to be friends. i remember when we first met, me & my monsters. i remember the moment

i birthed each one. each time i tried to shed a piece of myself, it grew into a monster. take this

one with the collar of belly fat around its neck, the monster called Chubby, Husky, Big Boy.

i climbed out of that skin as fast as i could, only to see some spirit give it legs. i ran & it never stopped

chasing me. each new humiliation coming to life & following after me. after me, a long procession of sad

monsters. each monster hungry to drag me back, to return me to the dirt i came from. ashes

to ashes, fat boy to fat. i point my feet to the nearest exit, all my fire alarms go off.

my monsters crowd around me, i stare into a no-fun house of mirrors showing me all the angles i try

to forget. my therapist says i can’t make the monsters disappear no matter how much i pay her.

all she can do is bring them into the room, so i can get to know them, so i can learn

their names, so i can see clearly their toothless mouths, their empty hands, their pleading eyes.

-José Olivarez

#mental health #self-talk #therapy #self-care #recovery #actually cptsd #jose olivarez

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My sister puts glasses away upside down.

Because our mother does,

Because her mother did,

Because her mother lived through the Dust Bowl.

One day my father sat me down and told me about epigenetics.

How the trauma he went through

As a child in an abusive home

Wrote itself into his DNA

And, in turn, into mine.

How he and his brothers,

In various ways,

Are all sick from it.

How I might be too, someday,

And I’m not sure I’m not.

I hear people say,

When will we get back to normal?

And I think of a woman born in the twenty-first century

Who puts her glasses away differently

Because of what her great-grandmother endured

Ninety years before.

#poetry #generational trauma #covid #child abuse

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The overwhelming dominance of free verse poetry in English sucks actually. It’s not a bad form but it IS bad that it’s the main form of english language poetry being published

I know everyone is conditioned to think rhyme, rhythm and meter is for either maudlin, sing-songy and childish poetry or excessively formal, pretentious poetry, but these things are just what makes phrases and lines memorable and punchy.

English naturally has rhythm and all poetry uses this stuff a little bit, it’s legitimately just What Make Word Sound Good

more importantly, rhyme, rhythm and meter are very connected to memory. there’s a reason why little songs and chants are our most enduring and effective memory tools

#poetry #writing #how to #iambic pentameter #english literature