isawhitney
Poetry, I Suppose
225 posts
A place to harness peer pressure and the fear of letting down one’s fellows that is intrinsic to the human spirit for good
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isawhitney · 1 day ago
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It is the devil!
And he mocks himself at us!
And he stretches out his feline neck
And his ermine bracelets
And his wolf throat
And he laughs at us!
And he grins like an ape
(And his teeth are yellow like an ape’s)
And we can feel his breath on us!
And he winks,
And he winks often, and lividly, and well,
And our proper sensibilities are maligned!
Whatever shall we do?
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isawhitney · 8 days ago
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I hold my poem in my hands
And spit on it, and shine it well
So it can stand the world’s demands
And give ‘em hell.
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isawhitney · 15 days ago
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Mandarin
I peel it back:
Paring skin, tearing chalky tendons,
Baring orange flesh under my cat o’nine tails.
All I seek is wisdom:
Some small insight into the seasons’ turn,
How rot can bloom at the core of an orange.
All I find is silence:
My ripened stoic keeps its secrets
And the bureaucracy of nature breathes out.
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isawhitney · 21 days ago
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Freed from the burden of writing good poetry, I choose the superficial. I am writing poorly. I will use idioms if I care to, and similes like a bridge to my meaning. My words may not move your soul, but you will hear them and appreciate the logic in my saying so. “The woman,” you will think to yourself, “has sense. So few poets nowadays have sense.” Because I have stopped at mediocrity, perhaps we can talk to each other. Maybe we can even have an honest conversation. I, in my plain little way, will speak my nothings and you will reply with banality, and so we shall proceed: saying nothing, wording all.
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isawhitney · 29 days ago
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I have a bee
caught in the fly screen
across my window
and it watches me,
dead,
while I undress
I have a moth,
dead,
on my carpet
that fell out of my lampshade
as i screwed the bulb in
I have a spider
and a fly
right in the corner of my life,
but while the fly,
dead,
observes everything
the spider lives on
and is unmoved by me
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isawhitney · 1 month ago
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Along the Styx
Ely sian
El
y
sian
sian
y? Elys
i an
i an
an y,
Elys
El y an
si si si si si si
sian
si
y
i an
Elysian.
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isawhitney · 1 month ago
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Flaw,
Pencil stroke? As it is,
My lapse again began
Again a poem
And words suffice
A candle breath of
Meaning.
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isawhitney · 2 months ago
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Lifetimes
I am on the train (i spend
much of my life in trains)
and a girl (a little girl, more
properly i guess you could
consider her a toddler) with
a Frozen bouncy ball (anna
is on one side and elsa on
the other, so that i am mak-
ing eye contact with elsa
and remembering my old
copy of the snow queen)
throws a smile my way.
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isawhitney · 2 months ago
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Genealogy of Thought
I am what I am because
You are what you are, and
You are what you are because
Your mother is what she is, and
Your mother is what she is because
Her mother was what she was, and
Her mother was what she was because
A seamstress in Antwerp caught the boat over to Maine, and
That, of course, is why
Your grandmother was what she was, and
Your mother is what she is, and
You are what you are, and
I am what I am
And here we all are,
Reading this poem together!
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isawhitney · 2 months ago
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My Life As An Edgy Poet, Pushing Against The Barricades Of The Mainstream (And Yes, That Does Include My Overly Long Titles)
Today I think I’m gonna write about my tits
Or something else fucked up, or even about
My cunt and make Judith Butler cry. I mean, I
Could write about our climate crisis and how
Our planet’s gasping like a whore on her last
Legs, or one of those other hardcore things
I read about in magazines that people want
To write about. Like cancer. Fucking cancer,
Man. That’s one quick way to write a poem.
Just say cancer over and over. Or name them
All. Blood cancer. Brain. That one where those
Blokes’ balls fall off. Pretty soon, the whole
Damn poem becomes a statement about our
Health system and our kids, which is almost
Guaranteed to win some kind of thing. A schtick
Is what I need, as an edgy poet. Some trauma.
I guess I could cash into all my racial drama if I
Wanted, but Americans have that basically in
The bag and as it lies my skin isn’t dark enough
For anyone to empathise with me anyway.
Well, it’s good to try, but really I should stick to
Musing on my tits and making Judith Butler cry.
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isawhitney · 2 months ago
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What the Hon. Jemima Braithwaite, Late of the Stage, Said
Tired?
But yes!
too tired to think of an oration or to tango. indeed,
I’m far
too tired to type or even to minaret
(if that’s the word I mean, that is, and not a type of barbecue)
no,
darling,
my star power’s been set with a
use-by date,
In fact,
all my good soliloquies got used up years ago
(despite my many, manifold attempts)
and
oh my dear!
I appreciate you
coming,
trying on the cloak
and smoking jacket
and dagger of the artist,
telling me that one more jaunt
round the proscenium couldn’t possibly
hurt
(and can’t you hear the applause?)
but the salt of the matter is
speaking plainly
that the stage isn’t what it was
all the flashy new directors!
and these actors!
my heavens,
the WoPA-taught little sods don’t know anything!
why, I expect
that the devils would,
without any prevarication,
simply out-and-out say
the name of the Scotch play!
which play? well, dear,
what else but
Macbeth!
oh
shit
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isawhitney · 3 months ago
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Haiku
Daylight leaks. Through the
Bamboo slats on my window,
Rash sunbeams drip in.
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isawhitney · 3 months ago
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Me To You, Driving On The M11 At Midday In March
“It’s too much blue,
man
i’m telling you
that one more drop of
colour
and all that sky
it’ll well up - yeah, it’ll well
up at the edge
of the horizon line, until
the meniscus breaks, sudden-like, and
a great big
Warrnambool tear floods
the road out.
and then
I don’t know how
we’ll get to where we’re going.”
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isawhitney · 3 months ago
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A Happy Little Poem
Today, I think, I was happy.
That’s enough for a poem, really,
But I’d like to stretch it out some,
Clarify things a little for you.
So, today I was - thinking back
And contemplating it - happy:
Content is the best word, perhaps,
Because I wasn’t radiant or at all
Built up, brick by brick, of joy.
Rather, I was happy in that quiet way,
Happy in the mode of an orange peel
Or an early chrysanthemum in Spring
(It is Spring, as it happens,
But I assure you this fact is incidental)
And I don’t know why I was happy,
Except for the obvious - I am happy
Because I am not miserable,
And because I have mostly all my teeth -
But the fact remains that I sat
Today, in the spring shrug,
And was quietly, commonplace-ly happy
For quite a while.
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isawhitney · 3 months ago
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Mona Lisa
It’s funny,
When you look at it, that really
All my inscrutability,
My indecipherability
That critics, with agility
(and - it must be said - virility)
Have been working with facility
And their creative fertility
To assess
Is the fault of tummy trouble
And a little IBS.
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isawhitney · 4 months ago
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Love
Scratch out your eyes!
Come on,
Scratch out your eyes with me!
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isawhitney · 4 months ago
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this is not poetry this is just a list of me thinking of mental things to say
I wonder why we say
mental
when what of course we mean is just fucked-up
like a mother’s itchy love
or a rain full of rain full of raindrops
but then we don’t say fucked-up
I assume out of a sense of decorum or propriety
or a lingering want to honour the fucked-up things
like a tree unanchored with all its roots showing
or an old woman’s underpants in the breeze
no instead we say
mental
or deranged or confused or befuddled or befogged
which of course sounds a little like fucked-up but isn’t
not like hope
or the last ant on the kitchen counter with your fingertip primed to squish
and the mental things
which are boring things really
get all caught up with the truly fucked-up
like a stain on your third favourite shirt
or the window that you rest your wishes on
and then where are we?
nobody knows anything’s anything
not anymore
and the things that are fucked-up crumble
must do
like an end to a sentence without a full stop.
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