#but now I feel if I do the poems will be different

[psychotropicruby]

[wordsofnoconsequence]

The Sweetness of Growing Older

Tell me the light is fading, And the wells won't run dry. Tell me stillness will still enfold me, Its arms unyielding, faithful As the turning of the sea, And the sea in turn, boundless, unending. Tell me that the sky is full to the brim With dust that looks like stars if you squint. Tell me a story that pins me, holding me To what I want to be faithful to at all costs. Tell me the house is still standing, That there is still a place for me. Tell me I'll live past the wishing to be wanted, Past the fear of no longer being haunted, I'll wake up to the days growing longer. Tell me of the beckoning pull of new months, The heedless, beaming motion of my growing up. That wherever I go in this world, I am loved. All there is left to do is everything else. There is no chain, the door is unlocked, My life is mine for the best part of all- Finding it out.

[inertia-writes]

dehradun days

you meet them for the first time,

knowing it's probably the last.

might as well make the most of this time,

since life comes at you fast.

you find the strangest of signals

in the no-network zones.

cross-tent communication with folks,

just rambling about the unknown.

there's the warmth of shared laughter,

that carries you through freezing nights,

and you look up at the flickering stars,

to finally see things in a different light.

and at 11,000 ft above sea level

you finally reach the peak,

just to realise the joy was in the journey,

and the friends you made that week.

you'll visit caves & splendid cafes,

and remember the city in mere parts,

but years later, you'll still tell everyone,

how dehradun captured your heart.

[ante--meridiem]

Extremely confidence boosting to me that every time I've read my poetry out loud in public at least one person has come up to me afterwards to say they like it. More confidence boosting than people telling me I'm good at anything else which usually just feels very awkward because poetry is something I don't feel I can self evaluate at all because I know how easy it is for something to accidentally come out cliched/overwrought.

[pasdetrois]

Rebecca (1940, dir Alfred Hitchcock) // Vievee Francis, "Apologia" (Excerpt) // Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

[flickeringflame216]

🗒

[existentialcrisistime]

!!! just found out one of my favourite poets (Eileen Myles my beloved) is doing a book reading event at the queer bookshop in Glasgow next month and I'm so excited I may cry. They did an event at Edinburgh book fest the other year but I only found out after the fact and thought I'd missed my chance but! I get another! (of course I got a ticket)

[crave-mp3]

remarkably strange and sort of lonely transgendered feeling is when you go to a community function with people you knew in middle school and none of them recognize you

[crossbackpoke-check]

do you really believe in him? is he a good kid? no problems? you're gonna love him. you're gonna love him.

[obstinatecondolement]

I give my dad's brother a pass on never contacting us, as he is more broadly shunning all of my dad's side of the family. He was adopted and was treated like shit by my grandmother, because she a) didn't want to adopt and resented her adopted children, and b) was a fucking racist to her black adopted children, so he doesn't consider us to be his family. Particularly now that he is in contact with his biological mother and half-siblings.

He's also chronically depressed to a very disabling degree and lives in another country, so like... there are barriers to communication there that are different to the rest of the family not talking to us because they think we're embarrassing and messy.

[rosicheeks]

oh yes you were at court! i forgot that was at the start of that post lmao. i've been to court twice when i was super young for drinking underage and then smoking lool it was so boring and long and shit but thankfully you were just there for moral support, i hope it wasen't such a bad thing your friend had to deal with! I remember seeing you post about moving but i forget if it was TO or AWAY from your parents but that clears it up. I totally get you on that though, i'm living at home right now and i feel kind of similar about not feeling comfortable in your own home. Its a bit different for me, but similar enough. Hell my stepdad even sleeps in the living room too! hes always done that so ive always felt like i had to be on eggshells when night time hit. I used to sneak smoking in the backyard back in the day myself, i got caught once when i was in highschool he made me throw all my pieces out which sucked big time. ahhh i love that, art! you should totally show more stuff on here too, at least if you're comfortable and its not stuff you'd wanna sell, i would absolutely love to see any of it 🖤i've dabbled in writing poems and things i planned to make songs, although only recently. I've always wanted to be a musician but my attempts at learning guitar over the years have never ended up lasting long and i try to learn singing but i just dont really think i can. plus i was always afraid of self expression so i never wrote until a few years ago. i still do, because music is so important to me (which is why i did pick 🎤!) and it makes me so happy but yeah. i have 2 shows im headed to in a few months even so im so excited 🥰my day though has been so boring, i mostly played video games and watched youtube videos. watched another episode of a show i've been watching called Silo, which i absolutely love. im so surprised you had room in your tags still after myself lmao, but i do that same thing i always talk in the tags! also i'm giving you tons of hugs and kisses 😘🥰 - 🎤

Hi hi hi ☺️ how are you doing lovely? 🥰

[idkimnotreal]

i think a bi guy might want something from me. i don't know if he's closeted.

[dadbots]

Had a pretty fun weekend. :)

[silhouettecrow]

365 Days of Poems: Day 1 (January 1st)

Sharp Stomach

A knife point

digging into the thin stretch of organ

Not pushing inward from the outside

but rather emerging small

as a hunger

deep in the pit

that grows and twists and evolves

into a never-ending ascension

like bile rising in one's throat

The stinging and burning and prickling

a cousin of the cold edge of steel

as it slices through pink muscle

until it forges something new and terrified

and hungry itself:

A starvation

- - - - -

Here's the link for the corresponding writing prompt post

[coquelicoq]

[Image description: The first image is a screenshot of the first five sections of Inger Christensen's poem "Alphabet," translated from Danish into English by Susanna Nied. The second image is a screenshot of the first seven sections of the original poem, "Alfabet." /end ID]

and see an interesting interview with the translator here and here. you can read an excerpt from the original and the translation of that excerpt (via the link at the top of that page) here.

[inkskinned]

i don't mean to sound ungrateful, but as a content creator on this site, there's a part of me that's like. they absolutely just stole my work.

i'm not, like, unaware that tumblr has been shuffling downhill for years now. sometimes i play with the idea of switching platforms, turning myself into the shark. i often get tens of thousands of notes - i could be "doing numbers" on a platform that actually pays me to do so. i could have statistics that i could use to sell myself, i could rebrand and make content pay-to-play and make brand deals. i could have the other life, i mean.

but i don't want to. i like the quiet nature of tumblr. i like that it still feels like i'm writing poetry, not like i'm fulfilling ad spots. i like the community, and that i can sometimes still take someone by surprise and write something that really speaks to them. i like the tags and reading things like oh of course it's fucking inkskinned i love you inkskinned you gay mess. my girlfriend recently told me that people tag things "inkskinned" because they assume it is similar to tagging "creative writing". that's wild. i made this word up when i was 19, and have always assumed people tag me in things so i read it (and i often do). i have nothing but love and gratitude for you all, for this tiny scoop of family.

and i haven't made any money off it. i had opportunities, and i turned them down. i could have sold this thing like a thousand times. i thought about moving my work elsewhere - over and over and over i thought about it. i weighed each option specifically. but my tumblr felt like ... it's for you guys, only. if you're still here and reading this, you deserve to do it for free.

tumblr has now, most likely, skimmed my work (and yours) in order to make money. i will never see a single cent for that violation. something about landlords, i guess - my work pays their rent.

i just lost my job on valentine's day, and am working on scrambling for solutions. i am writing this to a blog that they will probably scrape with AI. and like, what number to do you think it was? do you think it was only a couple hundred thousand? no way it was close to a million, right? my time, effort, energy - it belongs to someone else now. how many silver pieces for them to completely sell out their user base.

and it's kind of like - funny? when it isn't very-sad. because i personally don't know what to do, ya know? i might as well move to a different platform, where my efforts are ai-scraped but could eventually pay me. where i know my privacy is the cost - but it could result in actual money. anyway. i need to figure out how i'm paying for meds. i need to email like six people about COBRA benefits.

my work is powering someone else's AI. it will be a beautiful fabricated poem, made from words i've already said.