am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

aren't poems supposed to rhyme

This is honestly a really good question!!!

I’m such a big literature nerd, so I’m happy to answer this :)

Though poems often do rhyme, they are not required to, in fact lots of modern poetry doesn’t rhyme. I don’t tend to rhyme in my poems because I don’t like the way they sound when I read them out loud.

A poem is simply an arrangement of words that evokes emotion or tells a story, often in a rhythmic manner.

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

The Sun

I am filled with regret

It’s white hot and burns the memories I touch

I wish I had known how scared I was

I should not look back on these memories with disgust, unable to view the photos as anything more but a memorial for a person who appears half dead

He was half dead while his friends laugh because they do not know it’s a wake.

He is awake now, he is risen.

He has new memories but they are just that,

New

I am not new, but I feel I was born on October 31st, 2023 at 2:30pm when the first lock hit the floor.

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

Recent Sensations

My lover’s arm across my chest, he holds me and neither of us wonder in that moment whether or not the shape of it is a sin

A sharp stab into my stomach, my fingers, unsteady but sure pressing liquid life through my muscles

The burn of a vice, liquid or fire, feeling safe in exploration, allowing myself to let fear go

My throat tight, but I am not sick, far from it. My voice catching up to my thoughts.

I’ve never been so happy to be imperfect.

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

Pure Love: A Drunk Poem

Drunk, forgive me:

I love you more than a cat loves to wander, more than a plant loves the sun, more than Hades loves Persephone.

How could I ever try to live without your kind eyes and the bridge of your nose.

When I look at you all I can see is the future, something I have struggled to see.

You’re like a consonant chord, a sound I need, a melody I will replay as long as I can still hear, and interval I can rest in.

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

Boyfriend

The word feels odd in my mouth and it’s hard to pinpoint why.

The word to me means something so different than that of everyone else,

To them the word means a suffocation,

A “ball and chain”,

Someone to cover in kisses and then leave,

Something replaceable.

We are not replaceable,

And I am not suffocated by you,

Nor are you a burden.

I love you in a way that links us for life.

I want to be your boyfriend on our own terms.

I want to be each of those words separately.

Your

Boy

Friend.

I want to be seen as all of these things, and yet with that word that I find so odd, I am twisted by expectation.

Scared that the word will hang on you and will make me replaceable.

I don’t want to be replaceable.

You aren’t replaceable to me.

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

WHOLESOME KIDS SONG FOR ELECTION SEASON BLUES !!!!

(Sorry for no poem lol)

My siblings and I had a cd from a local kid’s band that had a song that I think was so important to my social-emotional development as a kid. A while back I showed it to one of my friends and he cried about how he wished he had something like this as a kid to show him that being different was something that shouldn’t have to be an issue. It’s not perfect, but it’s incredibly cute and has dinosaurs so it gets extra points from me. Felt like sharing :)

Love, Grayson 🤍

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

Not a poem, but I took my first t shot today. It gets better, life is worth the wait.

Love, Grayson :)🤍

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

Thank You

The dark is a lovely place to sit

Bubbling water that fills with tadpoles when the season is just right

Small lights from nearby shops, covered from view by the tall grass I have grown to associate with the land that I live

The dark is a lonely place to sit

There are no voices, melodic and strong coming from you or me

Because of course you aren’t here.

To compensate, a playlist runs

The songs feel like the tall grass,

They feel like you,

Like home.

Thank you, for being the grass, and the stream, and the music, thank you for making the dark lovely.

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

I dont hate her.

Truth is that I’m jealous.

I hate seeing her face because she only wanted me when I was her.

I hate her because she gets to wake up every morning and see her femininity, her face soft like sunshine and her hair long, prairie grass that thrives on her head and

Sappho calls to her, to love each girl she sees, including herself.

I hate her because I will never have this.

I rise as a bear, sick from a hibernation I so desperately want to return.

My slim hips are too wide, A-cup breasts too big, it seems they blow my cover even when hidden out of view.

Detected by my movements, the same as when I was small, a little boy pretending that he was like his friends who loved the girl he was.

I love like a shark, unable to stay in one place too long for fear of death, ugly and sharp.

I hate that she loved my femininity, the things I so desperately want to cut away.

I want her to see me, some fucked up in between that no sane person could love.

I want her to see it and hate me, chest compressed, hair a mess of broken straw, chopped off in a dysphoric haze.

The femininity she used to love stripped away with nothing left to love.

I want her to hate me, because being unlovable is better than why she loved me in the first place.

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

HomeGoods

When I was a little kid I lived in a mishmash of a neighborhood

The houses were all different, some were immaculately clean and decorated with a catalogue like eye, others were empty, newlyweds who had not yet discovered their compromises and filled their spaces with well meaning gifts from relatives with questionable tastes

My favorite homes were the ones filled with an odd, eclectic beauty

Filled with figurines collected through childhood, tapered candles, cat toys, and sprawling spider plants and vines

There was a sense of love that filled the spaces along with the Hallmark stationary

A love that did not care what anyone else said, it was a refuge for the owner

A space that simultaneously was a secret hidden in the walls and wore a beating heart on its shutters

This love is what I feel when I see you,

When I look into your eyes I see a house that isn’t quite cookie cutter but isn’t quite custom,

I see a home that may not have started out as mine but I would do anything to keep,

I see an heirloom of a place that generations of emotions have passed through, anger, sadness, and joy all stemming from the passion written in the faded wallpaper,

I see a refuge,

I see novelty rabbits and olive print dishes like my great grandmother’s,

In you I see a place that the neighborhood kids can see love for the very first time

-grayson h

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

Iscariot

6

I am sitting behind you in the church and you are the coolest person I know. I watch you sit perfectly still as I fidget with the hem of my dress; it doesn’t fall low enough. I wish I was like you, the model grandson, in the pews dressed in your nice shirt and pants. I like it when we are told we could be twins, even though I know it’s not true. We’re pen pals, but I dream about moving closer because we are the best of friends.

12

I am sitting in front of you. You look me in the eyes and say the one thing I wish you wouldn’t. One sentence leaves your mouth and I start to grab at my jeans, they’re too tight, they are beginning to hug my body in a way that I’m supposed to like. I am angry beyond words, so I don’t say anything. I just stare at you as you walk away. I don’t understand how you can be so heartless when all I’ve ever wanted was to be like you. I no longer want anything to do with you.

18

He’s dead. We sit next to each other during the service, a silent olive branch. I fidget with the cuff of my suit jacket as you stay a still as possible. I feel oddly comfortable sitting in the pews despite the circumstances, but it’s as though if you move everyone will see that you are more like me than you know. We haven’t spoken in six years, I doubt we will for at least a couple more. Neither of us let go of more than a tear or two, we are men after all.

-grayson h

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

“No command strips”

I never wanted this.

My walls are empty and I feel 14 all over again.

The people I love have slowly stopped replying.

I can’t tell if it’s out of their own fear of loss, or if they’ve simply forgotten me, caught up with new memories, building back a community they’re naturally losing.

I can’t let go, I’ve never been able to let go.

A boy I know told me to cut off the one person I think I can’t.

I begin to yearn for L.A. again.

I think I’m too old for this running away shit, but if everyone else can do it, maybe I should run just like I’ve been expected to.

-grayson h

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

Hi!

My name is Grayson, I’m a queer, transmasc, Midwestern, college boy, poet! This account is meant for me to share poems and emotions that I have no one to share in irl.

In person, I am a loud, energetic punk kid, and as a masc presenting person, it’s hard for me to express my emotions without feeling dysphoric and out of place, so I decided to do something about it. That’s all! Thank you all for reading. :)

FREE PALESTINE 🍉🍉🍉, SUPPORT LOCAL ART, FUCK CAPITALISM, GO GET A LIBRARY CARD

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

Sun-Bleached and Dying

The cicadas freeze in their shells in the boil of early July.

They stick to the dying tree in my dad’s backyard, a house that is not longer my address.

In his little gray suit, my cat lounges next to the sun-bleached swing that waits to fall when the tree finally gives in.

A decade ago I sat frozen in my room.

Paralyzed in fear I repeated the same prayers my grandfather told my dad, learned from his dad.

I bided my time until I would move away from it all.

In one month and twelve days I will be 45 minutes away from here, frozen, hanging.

I wonder if the cicadas still sing at night in Lawrence.

There is only one way to know.

-grayson h

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

adam

Stuff my throat with apples

Coat my ribs in fire

Strike my face with cold metal

Make my body one I wish to stay in

Make my voice one that I can bear

Match my brain and soul

Catch my physique up to my heart

-grayson h

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

untitled

Why am I so afraid that you don’t love me?

Maybe my shivering brain needs something that your burning one cannot give;

I refuse to cave.

I will not ask you to fix me,

I will affix to you

Give me whatever love you can and I will transform it into what I need,

If I can be by myself I can be with you at your worst.

[am-i-a-boy-or-a-crybaby]

Grad present

I’m bored, I tell a colorfully dull room.

This is a lie that my untouched instruments and college deadlines bore into my soul.

Moving from the mattress is impossible as it contorts to swallow me in a warm, pillowy heap.

Lethargically my eyes open and close, staring at nothing in particular.

I was so excited to be free that I forgot what freedom does to me.

I had forgotten that I cannot be alone.

In four hours I will reluctantly move in the same cautious manner as yesterday, and attend another celebration where people expect high energy,

That is my present to them, I decide, they will get who they invited

-grayson h