#i am so going to be quoting these poems

[technicolourcowboy]

He would listen to mitski I think

[ihatethisapp-gs]

This weird feeling comes around again. The guilt and shame of being alive. The discomfort of living.

[crossbackpoke-check]

Why I Am Not Coming In To Work Today [abridged], Jess Zimmerman

part one | part two

[youjustwaitsunshine]

i love you historical epics with prefaces and footnotes i love you bilingual historical epics with side by side verses i love you historical context i love you endless appendices i love you explanation for the historical text that makes up half the book

[ravencromwell]

The poem evokes human greatness and human vulnerability. People are “godlike” in their courage and skill, but even the greatest mortals fall and clutch the dust between their bloody fingers. The beautiful word minunthadios , “short-lived,” is used of both Achilles and Hector, and applies to all of us. We die too soon, and there is no adequate recompense for the terrible, inevitable loss of life. Yet through poetry, the words, actions, and feelings of some long-ago brief lives may be remembered even three thousand years later.

--Emily Wilson's introduction to the Iliad

[habshihalwa]

"you don't understand"

you know what I don't understand?

how could you go from talking to me every single minute of every damn day, laughing so hard you cry,

to becoming a random stranger. and not being able to look me in the eye

~ a poem about losing your best friend

[jtownraindancer]

"...we make our journey alone, that few will ever know what we sought or understand what we have found."

Excerpt from "For truth was to me a breath, a wind, a shadow..." by Gerald D. McDonald, an introduction to Poems of Stephen Crane, 1964.

[ohsoinvisible]

[ardenigh]

More questions on Tegan & Lucky!

What sort of media would Lucky be interested in?

What sort of books and journals are in Tegan's collection?

What bike did Tegan have and what is Lucky's? How did Lucky get his?

What are Tegan's associates doing about Lucky being around instead of him?

Whether for his curiosity of meeting new people and places or distancing himself from Tegan's social circles, would Lucky consider moving somewhere else?

Since Lucky is still legally seen as Tegan, would he get his name changed?

Since Tegan is the king of street racing, would it be fitting that he also has an unbeatable skeeball highscore in every arcade he's been to?

i was going to open this answer by going "well it's your lucky day" but i just made myself cringe with it lol

it is time for boy lore!

What sort of media would Lucky be interested in?

I think he likes weird mixed-media and self-published stuff, honestly. Audio dramas, video essays. Things he can put on while he’s on the road or stretched out watching the clouds. Reading is nice, too, but he focuses best when he's just gotten up and isn't moving yet.

He likes a classic slasher from time to time, too, but only with other people. Corn-syrup blood and cheesy practical effects are just kind of better enjoyed together.

What sort of books and journals are in Tegan's collection?

Make no mistake, Tegan was a NERD. Aeronautical anthologies, astronomy texts, those weird Barnes & Noble historical coffee table selections. Poetry, like a lot of poetry. Tegan's very much a Yeats boy, although he was also fond of Rilke and Rimbaud. There’s also, like, a few dusty language textbooks, the sort that you buy on a kick and never get around to actually studying. And he wrote a lot. Memo pads and leatherbound Walgreens journals, that sort of thing. Crack one of those suckers open and you get a free tongue-in-cheek existential crisis in mechanical pencil, 'cause that's what he had on tap 80% of the time.

What bike did Tegan have and what is Lucky's? How did Lucky get his?

Tegan had a 2012 BMW F800ST! Torquey and balanced and really well cared for. Midnight blue with some subtle yellow and white accents, little bit of a Van Gogh homage (nerd).

Of course, Janus had mixed feelings on the whole racing thing, but he also recognizing that having a motorcycle was an integral part of his brother’s identity, so he arranged for a replacement — a Sprint 1050. They are both sort of sharp in the front, and honestly, like, a bike is a bike. Only thing is that a bike is not a bike, and so while Lucky does get things done with the Sprint, it’s a little bit too finicky for his taste. He ends up trading with another local bike enthusiast for something a little more his style, and that — a Yamaha FJR1300 — ends up being his trademark bike. He gets it done up in his colors and everything. :)

What are Tegan's associates doing about Lucky being around instead of him?

Aside from the fact that he just isn’t around as much as they’re used to, I think that most of his acquaintances are just convinced that Tegan sort of got scared off the scene by the crash. First one of his career, right? And bad enough to take him off the map for months. I think that what strikes them as the strangest is the way that he just doesn’t seem to engage in the racing game at all anymore — he just seems to be a full-time courier, now.

When they ask, though, he’s genial. Maybe a little vague. Something's ever so slightly off about him. It’s weird, but who wouldn’t be? The crash was pretty bad. I’m still sorting everything out. Everyone doing okay? Nothing like an NDE to really mellow someone out. He’s still welcome, though, and sometimes he takes people up on invitations on the town, but the atmosphere’s a little different now that Holloway doesn’t step up and dazzle whole rooms like he used to.

Tegan’s best friend is canny enough and close enough that she knows what Lucky’s deal is — anyway, she’s been busy in the interim with trying to suss out what got him killed in the first place. How is she coping with the recent development that the bestie has been format wiped and now perceives way more and also way less than she is comfortable with? Uh. Really well. Don't ask her any more questions.

Whether for his curiosity of meeting new people and places or distancing himself from Tegan's social circles, would Lucky consider moving somewhere else?

Lucky would love traveling, I can tell you that much. You know those people who will tour from one coast to another with a backpack and their bike? That's right up his alley.

As far as leaving permanently, though, Lucky is a creature of sentiment. He's got ties to the city, inherited though they were, and once he starts making them his own, it'll get that much harder to actually leave it behind.

He is going touring though. Someday.

Since Lucky is still legally seen as Tegan, would he get his name changed?

Maybe after enough time’s passed. Feels disrespectful to immediately start over, you know? I think a part of Lucky seeks to understand who Tegan was, and it might just be sentimentality, but wearing the name feels like a part of that, almost? You wear the name, you read the journals, you find the person still lingering in the apartment, the idle nail-carvings on the end table, the weighted blankets and sleep playlists.

In the end, if he gets too used to it, he might just start telling people that he is Lucky, yeah, but he was named after a brother who passed away. Maybe Tegan would be amused.

Since Tegan is the king of street racing, would it be fitting that he also has an unbeatable skeeball highscore in every arcade he's been to

YES. Is it anywhere near as prestigious? Absolutely not, but it's fun to see the neighborhood teens placing bets to see who can beat him.

Did Tegan have any tattoos? If so, what where they and what meaning did it have to him?

He’s got a simple one stretching horizontally above his shoulder blades, the phases of the moon. He would’ve had more, but he had too many ideas for them and often sketched down concepts in his journals and never actually committed to them. Lots of thought went into maybe getting a line or two from poems he liked inked, but he never got the chance.

If Tegan did have tattoos, would Lucky be interested in getting one as well?

The first tattoo Lucky gets might be for Tegan. Some poem on his bicep or chest. But in you is the presence that / will be, when all the stars are dead, maybe. A lonely impulse of delight / drove to thus tumult in the clouds. That one will take some thought.

Other than that, maybe a spade? Is that too on the nose?

[altruistic-meme]

🦜🐤

hi nymph!! :)

🦜 a pretty quote

He didn't mention how it was the only message Nathaniel had sent all week. He didn't mention how Nathaniel hadn't responded to anything Andrew had asked. He didn't mention the way that one word had torn through his chest.

here is a quote from chapter 12 of (why is there) joy in this poison :3 i will die with the rule of three gripped tightly in my hands

🐤 a mystery quote

not technically a quote as much as it is a note, but i am working on a story that will probably be a lot more involved than anything i've ever written before, and this is from my researching/studying for that!

[the poem is from LVOE. by Atticus]

im already very excited to work on this story :)

[ WIP bird game ]

[king-spite]

i'm having a bit of a username crisis right now so this a PSA so my mutuals recognize me 😭 used to be @/king-spite, now i'm @/godscursedd ! (for now🫠)

[ivyinforests]

I got myself used to sleeping an appropriate amount. Fatal mistake. Now I can barely make myself stay up late doing objectively fun things and it feels ridiculous. I used to stay up till three with chem and algebra and now I’m struggling to work past 11 analyzing Enheduanna and making lesbian cake. These are my favorite things to do!!! If I told myself this a year ago I would think it was a joke.

[ihatethisapp-gs]

[crossbackpoke-check]

"This extra space next to me belongs to you. I know where I end now. I won't get lost." -- shoot me (metaphorically) and leave me for dead (metaphorically) why won't you. To make this about Dylan and maybe it's about Connor, maybe it's about Brinksy, maybe it's about any journeyman in the NHL. My brain screamed Chris Driedger and his memorable (to me) Players' Tribune article:

And how can you mention Dylan and Zach (Za-ach, the way Dylan says it) without me having a breakdown about them? You simply can't. And for the younger dudes, maybe it's a little Bords/Briss, not yet steady in The Show, a little bit of distance, a summer that tries to erase and make up all the memories they've made separately... and then a blurry insta story in Vegas. Just like old times but somewhere else. Maybe it's not the same bed, maybe it's not the same set of forks, but maybe it's the principle of the thing.

Anyway, goodbye. Sorry for this, your tag walls make me break out in imagined scenarios.

Much love. xxx

please never be sorry for sending me messages <3 i love reading them i love getting them i think they’re beautiful and i love them i’m!!!!! [🥹💕🦋🫧✨💘😭 <- the best approximation of what my heart is doing]

ok NOW i am taking this step by step because every narrative here kicked me straight in the knees (metaphorically) i am w e e p i n g (literally): i knew tangentially about chris driedger going to seattle but i had never read his players’ tribune love letter to seattle & all i can say is oh. oh. and with the part about trains delayed but still being right on time—

sometimes a dream is a truth your heart knows long before you do. the space that the city and the team made for him (“you’d be the only guy on the team”)🗣️🗣️🗣️ !!! but the way that chris talks about needing to put in the work & leo not letting him quit,,, that’s chris filling up the teakettle with twice as much water, crowding one side of the bed (falling asleep against a bus window dreaming), becoming unburdened by the idea of not being their guy, not having the fallback being their draft pick to content and settle himself with. that’s chris betting on a future. that’s the train coming down the tracks, right on time.

(i am feeling unhinged about it)

SECOND. i know i was the one that said zach and dylan to start so technically i brought this on myself but also i have been ktfo by the mere mention of the way that dylan says zach’s name different from everyone else, stealing an extra breath, stealing as much time as he can get with him, which reminded me of a poem i just read:

The Need Is So Great, Jim Moore

^^^dylan still in love with zach even as he’s leaving, can feel himself losing him, and taking every sliver of the love in his smile that he can get. even if he knows zach doesn’t still feel the same way he’s drawing out the long goodbye & saying i love you in a thousand ways without ever saying it out loud (“i have been asking for a time but in ways that have no words” because he doesn’t want to ask too much, to ask for love) in the hope that zach will say it back OKAY I’M LEAVING i can’t do this

that was a lie because THREE. “maybe it’s the principle of the thing” please insert the most ungodly screech how could you just (lovingly) come in straight with the steel chair and bean me upside the head with that l i n e i think this story has the potential for such tragedy in it but also the most tender domestic longing because bords & briss have known each other for a long time (i think) and guys do sometimes lose themselves when they first get to the nhl.

it’s a big scene, you’re with big name guys, you’re finally doing the thing you always dreamed about, you’re no longer necessarily the best because everyone’s the best, you’re not sure how you fit in, you can get lost in the glitz and the glamor of it but you can also literally get lost in it, the slog of the season and getting caught up and down between teams and leagues and endless airports and buses and travel and ice rinks, losing your phone (accidental) and having new people hound you for quotes and fame and connection so you lose your phone (on purpose) and i think where i’m trying to go is: this could play out as the tragedy of borde going to the california coastline and briss shipping off to the vegas strip and both of them getting a little lost.

maybe there’s someone else, maybe i am steadfastly not thinking about “a summer that tries to erase and make up all the memories they've made separately” as either a summer of them pretending things are ok after a year of barely speaking and now being completely different people they never were before OR a summer of them trying to pretend like they can forget about each other because maybe they didn’t think their relationship was the same thing, is all, when they were or weren’t together. maybe it’s nobody’s fault but for the fact that they were scared and tired and lonely trying to make it in the big times and didn’t know how to show it. and then borde shows up with takeout and plastic forks in vegas and it’s december and nothing like winter in ann arbor and still they fill up all the empty spaces in each other with the things they didn’t know they’d miss until they were gone and this is the real thing, not whatever they were trying too hard to be, to recreate their own nostalgia for the love in their memories. it’s the principle of the thing, is all, to always be true to the love they have right now & not what they think it should be.

sorry that i wrote you kind of an essay of an answer but i had so so so many thoughts because your ask was so lovely so thank you for sending it to me (you are always welcome to!! i love your imagined scenarios!!! cannot even explain how much!!!) & thank you for taking the time to read my walls of tags :))) <3

[ronanlynchbf]

diversity loss! those ppl correctly gendering u assumed you're straight..