#easy poetry

[katies-poesy]

Hollywood

The boulevard is flooded with

so much artificial light that they had to

wrangle the stars and trap them in concrete

under feet to ensure they'd be seen

[inkskinned]

okay is she being actually immature or is it just a woman over 30 expressing a human experience you find to be immature.

like yeah. at certain ages... let shit go. im not defending the real immature shit. im not defending the karen you're picturing. i worked in retail i hate those people too. (once somebody got mad at me because she didn't like how our winter window decor was a snowman smoking a pipe. i wish i was joking).

but men at 57 will write books about how 17 year old girls are soooo sexy. they will invent worlds where women have to be naked for "armor reasons." they will write songs that treat women as objects. people rush to defend them. meanwhile a woman at 35 will be like "heartbreak is hard, actually" or "i feel betrayed by a friend" or "i am struggling with something emotionally." immediately people will say stuff like this woman is 35 by the way. by the way this woman is SO OLD to be experiencing this. BY THE WAY.

im 31, almost 32. the other day a poet was blasted online because at her "big age", she had written a poem about feeling unloved. top comment was "this woman is 29 by the way." this woman is too old to still be useful, by the way. she has to behave better . maybe if she was a good wife and mother she could stop existing loudly, and the story could continue on without her. this woman has served her purpose, by the way. she's so cringe, by the way. at 29 - so old! - she still hasn't figured out that her existence should be one of shame.

[atompowers]

'All my secrets… REVEALED'

I wrote a How-To as a gift for you: How to Bring Your Cleantech Colleagues to Tears in a Divebar While You're Standing on Top of the Bar Reading a Poem

[mumblesplash]

part 2!!!! [read part one here]

transcript below the cut arranged into stanzas to help show where the rhymes are:

“that’s why they brought gem in? as a failsafe?” as a pawn. we were told to point her at whoever we need gone

“gem won’t hurt her allies. …yet.” the curse she carries will it’s had its eye on her since she lost the other eye she was specially selected for her hunting skill it’s quite the high honor. “wow. how generous.” we try

think about it: why does almost no one fight the curse? “given how fast scott killed skizz last season, i can guess.” [“any pain you spare your friends, you’ll have to suffer worse”?] it’s designed to shut down higher reasoning with stress

[crow-talks-hockey]

for johnny.

"Do not stand

by my grave, and cry.

I am not there.

I did not die."

"Immortality" by Clare Harner

[geryone]

Dayspring, Anthony Oliveira

[whaliiwatching]

haunts the punk rocker with gay thoughts

prompt: dream

[firstfullmoon]

Albert Goldbarth, from “One Continuous Substance,” in The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Losing

[tojisun]

love is stored here, in spite of

(1, 2, 3)

[celbrini]

But we sing it anyway

[peachcitt]

we're sitting under the stars on my best friend's balcony,

and everyone but us have gone in for the night. I've just told you, hazy and drunk, that my astrology app feeds me bullshit every day, and sometimes I'm weak enough to believe it. But most of the time it's bullshit.

I don't know why I told you - to you, the stars are lifeblood, or at least a personality gauge based on spinning planets and hair size. "Leos are known for their big hair," you'd said, maybe only a few hours prior. I can't remember why I chose that bone to pick - I think I've reached a barrel-scraping desperation where I feel the need to assert, over and over again, that 'I defy you, stars!' even though it would be much easier to say that mercury in retrograde may be causing my acute depression.

You pull up your astrology app. We're friends on there, and I think I remember checking our compatibility and feeling drawn to the sex & love section, but that would be ridiculous. There's something in the bullshit my astrology app fed to me that I read out loud in drunken amusement that resonated with who I am in your eyes, sitting in front of you under the stars. Your app tells you that you might experience a big change when the sun comes up, that you'll have to reach for it with both hands, and I see your eyes flick over to me.

There's a defense mechanism that locks in, underneath my skin, that acts as a human deterrent. I look at my best friend and there is something primal and soft that begs to lean my body against her and touch her with a casual intimate care. But when she laced her fingers with mine, pushing up against my stiff palm like digging through stone, I had to look away. She knelt down by her puppy and took my hand in hers, pressing my knuckles to her forehead to show her puppy that I am safe, that I can be trusted, but the little creature watched me like a sentinel behind my best friend's back, wary and right.

I think I told you it might be bullshit; I can only remember myself contrary in the string lights. You insisted that it could be true. "What if everything changes," you said, "what if it's right and today" - we were far past midnight - "and today the-"

"The world ends?" I finished for you.

I don't think that's what you wanted to hear, the careless laughing way I said it. I stared at the back of my best friend's house today, hours after you left, and I thought about fate. I bent over backwards and stared up at the stars, framed by the staircase up to the porch we sat. The world didn't end, nor did it change substantially, and I'll admit I didn't want either. I want to stay the same forever, but the goddamn stars keep moving.

I've played this game before, and I've been the one to lose every time. I'd like to say I'm a good sport, but there's only so many hits you can take before it starts getting personal, and I'm afraid my jagged edges are sharpening in preparation. I can't let you be another meteorite I strain every muscle to push to the top of the hill only to fall back in the same bloody crater. You have to understand; where you see fate in the stars, glinting just for you, all I can see is apocalypse.

(28 August 2023, 3:26 am)

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

to you (unfinished, off the top of my head) x Fall Out Boy lyrics

in order: (Coffee’s For Closers), Sugar, We’re Going Down, CFC, Thriller, Miss Missing You, w.a.m.s., I Am My Own Muse, w.a.m.s., Favorite Record, CFC

[annagxx]

I always feel that I'm being taken for granted by my loved ones, but the real problem is that I allow them to do so, I've ruined things for myself, I am easily approachable and accessible, that's why I get treated this way. I always thought being there for others is a nice thing but in reality it sucks, you lose your value in that process, i wish to not to be taken for granted for actually caring for my loved ones and being easy only for them, someday someone might actually understand me and take me seriously and not some kind of joke. I just wish to be treated right and not for granted

[authenticity2025]

I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything's easy. I believe that loss and emptiness and confusion often give way to new fullness and wisdom. Shauna Niequist

[lunaa-with-sol]

[kiisuuumii]

Barbara Kingsolver, from "How to Drink Water When There Is Wine," in How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)