Poetask Meme

poet ask meme

a. what other poets style do you emulate the most?

b. do you write with too much imagery or too little?

c. write four poems in one day or go three weeks without writing anything?

d. do you have your poetry organized or are you more likely to write half a stanza on a one dollar bill and then spend it by accident?

e. bird imagery or ocean imagery?

f. what was the last poem that you loved?

g. do you write about people or landscapes?

h. dreams or real events?

i. who do you write for?

j. what is the worst thing about your writing? what is the best?

k. what’s the best line you’ve ever written?

l. how much do you edit a piece before you consider it complete?

m. how long does it take you to write a poem?

n. ghosts or angels?

o. god or sunlight?

p. soft or harsh?

q. safety or happiness?

r. how long have you been writing?

s. who is your favourite poet? you have to pick just one.

t. what is your favourite line of poetry?

u. would you be okay with never being well known?

v. slow or frantic?

w. what colour is your poetry?

x. who, if anyone, do you send your new poems to?

y. is your poetry light or dark?

z. write a couplet (a short poem with just two lines) about pulse points.

i’m overcompensating for forgetting to breathe by writing too many words

and trying to make them sound poetic 
when really there’s no artistic way to say

i woke up one morning and drank bleach
just to see how it tasted and bled out

in a bathtub dying a thousand little 
deaths every time i breathed in

so you could imagine how it feels to be told you’re writing too many words

when all you’re trying to do is remember 
how it felt to have air in your lungs,

what it tasted like instead of the blood 
that you vomited all over the white tiles.

REMEMBER HOW TO BREATHE :: o.m. 2017

it’s my blog’s first birthday today! i wanted to do something special to celebrate all the work that’s gone into it and all the lovely people who’ve decided to follow and support my crazy mess of a self, so here we are. send me asks from the ask meme i posted please, or questions, or anything at all, really. :)

G.O.D.

the g in god isn’t an acronym but if it was we’d have to talk about the a for allah and how guns and arms are too common a theme. shoot them up and all. guns and gods and girls are all the same, sawn-off shotguns pointing in no direction. listen for the crack of the bullet- (or the empty mouth, please, screaming) don’t shoot. don’t shoot. i always come back to this. or fire into the masses. after this god won’t care.

occupation day

a girl walks in wearing a NASA shirt and galaxy print leggings, everyone thinks oh, rockets, she’s got the glasses to be an engineer. she raises her hand to ask, is the never-ending void an acceptable job? there was a help wanted sign on the desk of the universe and i’m attempting to fill the position. a pencil two rows over gets pulled in by her gravity (purple with black and blue sparkles) and she just smiles, tosses it back out past her edges and says you’re lucky it wasn’t turned into spaghetti. the physics goes over their head. all over her paper she observes and draws particles and she knows that by doing this she changes what they are but maybe if she didn’t notice them they wouldn’t exist at all. later when the teacher calls on her she says quantum mechanics and the formula for how long it takes to reach the ground because this time an entire desk rolled over to her, the focus of the room. it’s an occupational hazard, drawing things in. red and blue logo and she thinks there’s some light inside it just can’t get out past her event horizon and she wants to know has anyone ever heard of something coming out of a black hole, or anyone coming back? her shoes have constellations like her freckles and no one noticed when they winked, twinkled, she shimmered out of existence. she was going to prove wormholes and timeless stars and maybe dead cats she was just waiting for her rocket to take off the ground. empty desk and David Bowie and the occupational hazards of being a black hole that even in your lack of existence everyone is pulled in by your void, the spaces in between stars and the letters on her t-shirt spelling out G A L A X Y where she left blank spaces for compensation. she’s somewhere out there tearing up a storm or aurora borealis, shining green-blue lights so far past herself she could never lose them. entire worlds and universes she could swallow in an instant with her big, hungry eyes. always looking up saying is there more? and knowing every star by name. a girl walks out of the room, into the office of the universe and applies for the position to fill the spaces, checks all the boxes until she’s told yes. supernova bursts forth from the room but she still says do you think anyone could ever find the edges? and runs chasing after it, laughing, crying, filling up the void.

for sharp-edged women, made of thorns, points and needles:

you have been broken, beaten and abused to become who you are.

your eyes are tired from always searching, never daring to stop looking for where the next attack will come from. you sleep with one eye open.

scars are your badges, medals of honour you wear to remind yourself not that you let someone do that to you but that you survived. there is no greater challenge than this-

to live in a world of softened, loving people and to be what you have made yourself. a creature of hard edges, claws, teeth biting and words cutting like knives.

you are difficult to love, and maybe, you do not want to be loved.

it is enough to stand on your own two feet in the shelter you have created, safe in the knowledge that no one and no thing can hurt you unless you let it.

and you won’t let it.

no one comes close enough to even touch your points and if they do once, they never do again. you are wild and free and self contained all in one; you are your cage, your door, and the key to open it.

if someone looked close enough they could see brambles weaving through your hair, claws like knives instead of fingernails, razors hidden behind your throat and the iron that runs through your body instead of bone.

you are fire and ice, clawing your way from underneath the dirt and falling from the skies.

everything you have, you have had to fight for, and everything you have you deserve.

you make and remake the world in your own image, shaping your daughters to be strong, hard, guarded and full of wit- something you wish someone had done for you.

no one told you that the world would break you, your heart and bones and mind, and no one ever warned you of the dangers of pretty green-eyed girls and dark haired boys who slit their wrists in the name of love. you have lost friends and love that way, and once, almost, yourself.

and you wish someone had told you that edges are not something to be scared of, that you could stand on a precipice and not fall off. brambles guard the castle holding everything you love (and when you love, you love fiercely, the sun chasing the moon and dying to give it breath) and needles are what you sew yourself back together with.

for the women who are strong- you understand.