#poetry for kids

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[gascreates]

a new star

[theapexacademy]

Nurture a love for poetry in children with these delightful small poems. Engage their imagination and foster a joy for learning. #KidsPoems #RhymeTime #poetry #poems #poemsforkids #simplepoems

[manicgremlinnightmaregirl]

2000s emos in horror films need to make a comeback

[whendidmythoughtsgocrazy]

You have to keep making new goals so it won’t be the end when you’re done with one. Think of “because I reached this goal, I can probably reach a higher one” and make new goals. You have to make new reasons for yourself to keep going.

k.b. // lee know from stray kids

[perfectfeelings]

You sometimes think you want to disappear, but all you really want is to be found.

Kid Cudi

[fixing-bad-posts]

internet freaks (affectionate) 💚

[ghoulpoole]

dear nex,

your school failed you.

your peers failed you.

the hospital failed you.

authorities fail you,

adults fail you,

words fail you.

i fail you,

and i'm so sorry.

[lucidloving]

Li-Young Lee, "A Hymn to Childhood" // Adonis, "Body" (trans. Khaled Mattawa) // #6—AroarA // @inanotherunivrse // @heavensghost // Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game // Eight—Sleeping At Last // Anne Carson, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry // @lesbiantherian // @inanotherunivrse

[stay-close]

You sometimes think you want to disappear, but all you really want is to be found.

Kid Cudi

[shalom-iamcominghome]

[soracities]

Cameron Awkward-Rich, from "Another Middle-Class Black Kid Tries to Name It" [transcript in ALT]

[unalteredgraces]

ARCANE: "Are we still sisters?"

Antigone // Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you, Gabrielle Calvocoressi // x // x // The Other Boleyn Girl, dir. Justin Chadwick // Soup Is One Form of Salt Water, Heather Christle // Hope You're Well. Please Don't Read This, Lev St. Valentine

[thoughtkick]

I knew he didn’t love me but I adored him anyway.

Patti Smith // Just Kids

[geryone]

DEED, torrin a. greathouse

[thatsbelievable]