crashedsea

[crashedsea]

you know youre in the fuckin trenches when you start comparing yourself to characters from greek tragedies

[crashedsea]

mcdonalds cashier: sorry the flurry machine broke 

me: its fine *goes home* *crying* *opens laptop* *opens tumblr* *new text post* 

I was sensitive, a baby lamb, pink and tender

and You were harsh, sharp, edges and pain

you were broken and you wanted me to break too

your knife against my pale pink skin, deepen the wound

“its fine” 

january 19 2017

[crashedsea]

[crashedsea]

good evening. are u avoiding pain or seeking joy

[crashedsea]

like normally i would not share that kind of personal stuff on my blog even one with what... like 7 followers? no one really sees this. but still i would not have. but they sent me the poems to publish so i guess they were fine with it. idk.

i mean i do talk about a lot of personal stuff on here but usually im very vague and dont actually refer to the actual event.

anyway

[crashedsea]

I cannot sleep.

I cannot think.

The worst part about it.

Is not the muddled thoughts

The confusion

The unsteady ground beneath my feet

Not even the why now

And not even the why me

No. The worst part

Is the spark

The little bit of joy at being seen

The idea that these words these feelings these deep ugly parts of myself might spur someone to respond in kind?

With their own poetry?

The feeling I had.

When I thought someone saw me

Without every string attached

But its fine. Its always fine.

After all you can keep your crown of thorns

I will not take if from you

You can keep your twisted forms

I will not untangle them for you

The poems were beautiful

I mean that.

I saw the weight of the world, atlas

Do you grow tired?

Of putting it on your shoulders?

But no.

The truth is simple.

Just as there are simpler ways

To say what you mean.

I will not be your greek tragedy.

For as much as I may lament as icarus

As much as I may wish for the sun

wish for the sea

I am actually trying to fly.

I am actually seeking happiness.

And the small piece of me that I still allow

Just to indulge in that want

To be wanted

Thinks it is romantic

The rest of me knows

It is a curl of smoke.

You could not even bring yourself to say goodbye

To my family.

To YOUR long time friend who had wanted nothing more.

Than to help you.

It was messy.

This I know.

I was not perfect.

This I know.

But even before it all finally imploded

Being your friend made my heart ache

For reasons I cannot express.

You made me feel so small.

[crashedsea]

god. you know what, why not just air out my bullshit on this blog. for context those two anon asks were from someone who used to be a friend and then had a falling out with us and had not spoken to any of us for a year. then sent me those. and then texted me about it like i already knew the anon messages were from them. i did not. anyway.

[crashedsea]

The lucky ones fight brief battles

With valor, and wine, and feasting

And we unlucky get none of these

No

We get the same battle and

Each time it takes more of

Our bodies, our honor, our hearts

And since we are learning creatures we

Learn to run and to hide and to bite

Things that respectable warriors do not do

I am not a respectable warrior in face of the

Sight of the same battle my mother saw the

One that she counteracted to my harm

I grew up in a white room in ribbon handcuffs

My mother grew up in piles and rot and pills

I am not a respectable warrior in the kingdom of

A grieving queen afflicted with the same rot

That drove my mother from her homeland into

The arms of my foolish father who could not

Treat her worsening caught ailment with any of

His work with spirits so he turned to ale and so

Now I turn away too

In addition to the running and biting and

Lack of sportsmanship

Pitiful.

I once had to take refuge for several months in

My mothers kingdom of exile and watch her

Become a child again while we sat in cat urine

Old newspaper and last sundays dishes

My mother spit her rot into my eye once trying

To assert dominance over a crumbling kingdom

She was hiding it behind her dead tooth

Behind the mask of perfection that wouldn’t

Wrap all the way around her entire life

And coincidentally this is the eye that sees best

Now in my otherwise failing vision

Coincidentally this is the eye the aching chose

To brew behind when I remembered

The warriors I left behind to face

Another queen succumbed to rot

The same battle the same injury I can feel

The ghost pain I can feel the glass press into

My knees as I kneel in the grove

And wonder if to be Atlas is to be sorry

Or a sign of another battle lost

The wounds call to be reopened like

The inner voice of parasite mold begs to spore

In the recycling piles and under my still ill body

And I am Echo, crying silent misery

As if I didn’t invite the seagulls shoreside

To nourish on my ugly gore

Maybe I’m Narcissus

Not in body but in spirit

I miss the sight of Icarus up high in the tree

Smiling in his proximity to the sun

And the dangerous heartbeat hum of

Bittersweet stimulants

Little did he know he was the warmth

And like the sun I can see him smiling still

When I close my eyes

The feather burns when I think about him

Always

One day I will stop crawling through the shards

Like cathedral cobblestones to repent to saints

That I don’t believe in and instead ask the sun

Or Icarus to absolve me

july 15th 3am

[crashedsea]

Echo said nothing, as was her way | voice caught lonesomely in her throat | ever since her love was caught in the glassy plane of pond water | and she wondered what would happen if the mirror shattered | shards would fly, certainly | with no guarantee as to whether she would regain her voice | she wondered if it would be love to break the mirror | | | the day the surface cracked the angels sung annihilation | and still Echo could not scream | at the sight of the cut on Narcissus’ throat | nor weep for the tattered feathers of sweet Icarus | who heard her silent voice with startling clarity | who’s only sins were to wish for warmth | misjudge the longevity of heated wax | and land like a bolt from the heavens | | | Narcissus healed with time and biased luck | and he began to hear Echo with patient remorse | she taught him to listen through her now periodically broken silence | which she healed as much as her own remedies could | | | Echo’s voice rattled a timid whisper | into the dark water of the pond | she wore an emerald mallard feather at her neck | it raised as she swallowed and shared the heartbeat of her jugular | | | Icarus? | | | she could have caught him she swore | had Narcissus not demanded her attention, as was his way | and she feared what could lay beneath the surface | like consequences… she recalled the troubles of Atlas | but again she swallowed | her fingers trembling at the feather at her neck | and the tremor traveled quaking through | to her other hand as she reached out to touch the | black glass water where Icarus fell | where Narcissus was reborn | where Atlas failed | where the world burned | | | in a memory she walks past the grove-hidden pond for the hundredth time | she never has any real reason to apart from to remember and to | feel the feather singe her neck like it was caught by an ember when Atlas fumbled | | | as her fingertips broke the surface tension the sensation of cold invaded | and she grit her teeth, praying that whatever was in the water was Icarus | and that he could trust the warmth of her hand

july 15th 1am

im posting these because i want them out of my notifications but idk if i wanna delete them yet. so.

[crashedsea]

You can keep your crown of thorns

i will not take it from you.

You can keep your twisted forms

I will not untangle them for you.

Does it grow tiring?

Putting the weight of the world on your shoulders?

I will not be your greek tragedy

I will not be

The new person you seek

To twist yourself into shapes for

Endlessly.

[crashedsea]

One must wonder about the tragic figures

That prometheus tried to give us warmth and light

Through the darkness of night

And instead to spend his days

Guts spilled open to the world

Held down as that warmth and blood and life

Was devoured

And the question was never

Did he deserve it

The answer was always

He did not

For who possibly could

And what good deed does not go unpunished

How many of the rest of us spend our nights

Growing back pieces of ourselves

Just to wake and watch them destroyed

The next day and the next day and the next?

And what of Sisyphus?

What of his sins

His baser deeds and the banality of a lifes greed

A mundane sort of suffering.

Not ripping

And tearing

Not the intimate depth

Of talons reaching into you

Of a living mouth

Taking parts of you

No instead

Sisyphus is a bore

He is menial

And dust-sweat covered tired

He is not screaming

Not in the way of being so consumed

We are suffering as sisyphus for the sin of being so flawed, so human. And we are suffering as prometheus for the sin of feeling love.

And the mortal truth of it all

The suffering is the living.

[crashedsea]

icarus down

it is not the down

of any other person

it is not the fall

of any typical height

of the tumble

from the hill

the twisted ankle

the shredded knees

the broken wrist

all trying to catch yourself

the broken crown

instead

hits the water

it can be that

the surface tension

makes the fall

as harsh as any solid surface

that fluid motion

might be disguising a deeper hurt

something that can shatter bone

tear ligaments

rip skin, in an altogether

worse way

than to just have dirt in the wound

after all.

the water lets the blood flow so well.

.

And the wings

well we have not touched on the wings

and be careful not to

as they are fragile

melting in your hand

ruining that one thing

you have so laboriously sought

but you want more

you want the pair.

you want the sweetness on your lips

not the stain and sticky substance on your hand

a fall from grace

may happen to all those

who search for that in the undergrowth

which they already hold in their grasp

but you want more

oh how you always wanted more

you want the feathers.

you want the sun's halo

you want the love

that only the heavens can give you

for you cannot find it in yourself

you are your own earth

the planes of your body

your own horizon

you can only reach as far as you let yourself

so yes.

try to fly icarus

you wanted to fall,

didnt you?

[crashedsea]

I ask god to send a swordsman / and god says ‘look at your hands’

— Melissa Broder in “Problem Area” from Last Sext

[crashedsea]

i’m printing this out and i’m putting it on the mirror so i can confront myself with it

[crashedsea]

[crashedsea]

Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”, Without End: New and Selected Poems

[crashedsea]

You wish you could show them the new world, naturally|but you’re a ghost, and so is their world, and you failed|and you wish they would duet the cicadas|and you wish you could apologize for the things that weren’t your fault|like the half-life of lung mold-lining|moments after the things that were your fault|like decaying in all the other ways, or being a wretched and sinful thing, or failing|but to you the loss was by your own hands|like you died there beside them instead of freeing them too| | |and you made it that way on purpose, naturally|because that’s what cowards do|stupid, fickle and fretful thing|even after the soil reaches well past half-life radioactivity|content to hide forever from consequence|tin-canned love as a vessel for botulism|shameful and sickening|land-locked dry motionless into frozen state|compressed to stress-cracks by the weight of the world. The whole world, spinning, dizzying motion sickness.| | |Narcissus was preoccupied, naturally.|The winged one lunged at horrific mirror mimic Narcissus and it was fair to each when either was cut.|Atlas’ “dying” breath was a gasp in horror and then the burning, rotting world fell with him.| | |Creator shook its head in contempt at the sight of the ghost of Atlas, hiding beneath a pile of long-forgotten recycling like a roach, damned to live eternally with that singular instance of shrugging.

this is beautiful thank you