#queer poets on tumblr

[earlgaylatte]

Old Enough-

Came out of the womb/Fists curled and screaming/Little red face scrunched up in the white light./Foreshadowing to the nth degree./Body soft enough to be young./Sharp shrieking anger like a banshee and a head of Irish curls./Born old enough for your emergency contact to be the emergency/Or old enough to taste acetaminophen on your breath./The first time you watch a X-rated movie/You’ll cry yourself to sleep and won’t know why,/The first time you masturbate to the sight of a pretty trans boy you’ll try to take your life during sub-drop./Baby never smelt like Johnson’s lotion, just/Jack Daniels and cigarette ash./Fifteen the first time you asked a man to put one out on you./Sixteen and realizing being called pretty boy raises goosebumps like worship music,/Feeling slick and wild under the red midwest Sun./Growing up like a humiliation ritual with no safeword./Queer and/There’s no metaphor for that, just being seventeen the first time you/Took a smoke break from his parted lips/And seconds old when they pulled you up off the hospital bed still rosy and roaring./Brought into this life knowing that it’d be spent starting riots./You’re not old enough to drink but old enough/For friends to be killed or kill themselves./Not yet prose but a/Poem.

[mxmorbidmidnight]

My worst fear as an Aromantic is someone thinking my poetry about crows, suffering and being a creature is about romance

[cainvstheworld]

Inches Closer by Cain Birch

My boyfriend pointed out that when we hug now (both of us having had top surgery) our hearts are closer together, so I wrote a little poem about it :')

[Text ID: Inches Closer by Cain Birch. The long, sticky summer fades, and I slowly peel back the bandages cocooning my chest. My scars are just flowering, and will bloom darker in the coming cooler months. Yours are lightening, softening  under the un-weight of time. You wrap me in a firm embrace, one flat chest against another, our hearts inches closer than they were in August. Now, they throb in perfect sync, too-tender skin no longer interrupting when one calls out to the other. /End ID]

[nearlywrites]

becky tarasick, published in identity theory

[killyourhistory]

I had a dream about us, Dorian Alain

[pearlmoney]

I Chose You

I chose you it’s not a decision I still make I’m not choosing you I’m done I’ve made my mind up I chose you and that will never change

-Mason Gilbert

[v333spertine]

[eyez-withoutaface]

trans activist art of the day you’re welcome

[gor3sigil]

About being ugly

So imagine this: you're a young teenager in need of validation. You see other people your age put photos of themselves on social medias and get tons and tons of compliments. You try your shot, post a picture of yourself and get like… 2 likes. And no comments about how pretty you are, just these 2 likes.

Then, you discover Twitter. You post a new pfp of yourself and since you see that it's a thing people do, you post with the hashtag “new pfp”. You go eat lunch with your family. Then you come back online with hundreds of notifications from people making fun of your appearance and calling you ugly. The only “nice” ones are telling you, “respectfully”, to delete the post, for your own “good”.

A few years later, you're transitionning and you see all the support trans people get online in some places. You're an active member of a discord server. You gather up the guts to post a picture of yourself in the designated server. It gets 2 to 5 “🏳️‍⚧️” reactions. The people before and after you get wonderful compliments and praises.

You leave the server feeling humiliated and sad.

And I wish I had advices to give you about how to cope with this. I don't. I studied cinema and photography for years, trying to make flattering pictures of myself, longing for the reactions everyone seemed to get but me. It never worked.

Even in designated spaces it never worked. I seemed to fail to get what to do with myself in pictures. No amounts of filters, poses, angles seemed to cut it. I'd never get one compliment out of anyone.

How do you build any self worth when people look at you only to say how you could improve your looks ? How you could improve your image? How you could be a good product™️ ?

Even dolled up in drag, all I ever gor was that my looks were “interesting”. This isn't a fucking nice thing to say. A book is interesting. A movie is interesting. A human can be, but hell, when I heard what people said about other performers I had to ask myself why the FUCK all I got was that.

Now you know part of why I play the part of the freak.

I'll burst the hell out of your bubble. If I can't be beautiful I'll be so rancid I'll make you want to puke. No, “interesting”, “brave”, “nice” won't cut it. If I can't get you to admit how pretty my being can be I will be repulsive. I will seize you by the throat and take you out of the comfort bubble you worked so hard to build. I will burry your head in the dirt of me, in the dust of my soul until you can't breathe anything but what I inspire to be, until you choke on your own tears and have nothing left in your sobbing lungs than the ashes of the selves I burnt for your little comfort, your little cabins made out of my flesh and bones. I'll hold your skull down and yell “What's beauty, bitch ?! Do you not like my belly rolls ?! Does my fat not feed you ?! Do you feel at ease now ?! Do I need to spoon myself into bite sized pieces you can digest ? Are you hungry for my rotten fruit ?”

I will spread my ugliness so far it's the only thing you'll see when you finally raise your pathetic symmetrical face.

I will shit on your perfect mouth until it's the only thing you can smell.

I will piss in your cookie cutter boxes untin you have to take swings of it when you try to fit in, your mouth dirty with the rancid liquid, forced to swallow bits of it down in every breath you ever take.

I'm beautiful.

[heartlessromantics]

Self abandonment looks like  letting you hurt me in the same way twice and still trying to understand where you are coming from.  It’s like having more empathy  for your trauma than my own.  It’s having an over abundance of patience while you refuse to grow. Self abandonment looks like over explaining myself because  it’s become more important  to convince you of my worth  than treating myself like I  am worth more than this.

[earlgaylatte]

How to Empathize with the Sad Tboy who Lives in the Dorm Across From Yours-

1) Shed everything, from the seatbelt wrapped around your core to the sheets on your childhood bed. When the sun rises in the morning and peppers your face with kisses, draw the curtains and block him out. Believe what the media says about transness, that it is a life of absence.

2) Start practicing constant fear. Wake up with shaking hands and looming dread laying over you like a blanket. Check the news. Don't check the news. Prepare to carry the burden of every sixteen year old killed in the nearest big city, even when the police say it was a suicide. Check the news. Watch the murders slowly get closer to your home.

3) Put wrapping paper up over your mirrors because you can no longer bear the sight of yourself. If anyone asks why you aren't eating or showering, make something up. Fill your stomach on the feeling of shame.

4) Daydream that you were born a boy. Replace all your childhood memories with this version of you. Your father is still around, and he's carrying the precious little boy he's raising up to bed. His feet are nimbly dodging toy trucks and legos, and in the morning, he'll wake you up to scrambled eggs and little sips of his coffee. When he talks about you with his new family, he'll say, "That's my son," instead of "Pass me the bottle."

5) When your mom starts catching on, try to ignore the sobbing you hear from her bedroom, her shaking voice begging the pastor of your church to make sense of it. Don't knock and try to comfort her. Don't acknowledge how icy your stepfather has become, how often he seems to be accessing your masculinity and finding you lacking. And whatever you do, don't start trying to track down your father, who must've seen some ghost of it on you when he left.

6) When the church gathers around you in a circle, rebuking the boyhood they call demons, don't flinch. Don't cry either. Just clutch the baggy flannel you're wearing around you tighter, like a fabric hug could heal the fractures of your soul.

7) Don't call that church a cult, even if it was. Don't go back to it, either.

8) When you get older, stand in the bathroom with scissors, hair dye, and a promise. Slowly shape yourself into something you can recognize, soft waves of hair falling into the sink. When you see yourself again, it will be a disaster. But it will feel like being whole.

9) When your mom says that the HRT will kill you, when your stepdad says that the HRT will kill your mom, don't let it under your skin like the other cruelties. Don't trade a full life for conditional familiarity, some semblance of holiness, and no sense of self.

10) Instead, tell them that you want to live long enough to tell your story. Tell them if you die, it will be in a blaze of glory: god's gift of creation is told in the generational echoes of people like us.

[mxmorbidmidnight]

Fight Dog (an original poem)

[cainvstheworld]

The Phlebotomist by Cain Birch

This is a persona poem from the perspective of my phlebotomist (person who draws my blood). It's a bit different than what I normally post on here, but I wrote it for my creative writing class and liked how it turned out.

[Text ID: The Phlebotomist by Cain Birch. The youngest tremble more than the graying, the grayed. Some of the children beg, barter with their parents, howl at the sun as I borrow their blood with a slender needle, but I offer every flavor of lollipop, so their pain is not fruitless. My heart breaks most for the ones whose fathers extract crumpled doctor’s orders from their jangling pockets, whose mothers offer tight smiles as their child squeezes their eyes shut, stilling, accustomed to the burn of the needle. I call out girls’ names into the waiting room and choppy-haired boys follow me into the sterile room, let me slide silver into the tender crooks of their elbows, measuring the hormones in their budding bodies. I call out a man’s name, and a woman with a five o’clock shadow coating her cheeks holds her arm ramrod straight for me. I don’t know how to ask her  what she’d like to be called, whether the “Samuel” in her chart should spell “Samantha” instead, perhaps “Iris” or “Rose.” Instead, I make small talk about the prices of gas, of chicken. I don’t tell her that the fried chicken my husband brings home grows cold by the time I arrive, that I do not turn on the heat in my hatchback even though my car’s engine sputters into the frigid night as I turn the key. I don’t tell her that I chew the tough meat without the microwave’s aid, so my husband’s breath, his still body is molten by comparison when I slide into the sheets next to him, drawing warmth into my bones, pretending the fire between us is more than a fading flicker. He wakes me up before dawn, before leaving to fill in the northeast's endless potholes, fills me up for a few minutes, catches his breath as he slides on his belt, his dirt-caked boots, kisses me with a closed mouth. I lay in the nest of blankets, let my mind slither off to hopeful gardens. In a few weeks, I will call a child’s name for the last time, his ailments healing, his parents glowing with quiet optimism. In a few months, I’ll call a woman’s name, Heather, and she’ll stick out her arm, ramrod straight, beaming. I won’t know what to say, but I’ll smile back at her. /End ID]

[allmpoems]

May [9/9/24]

may flowers grow from your ribs

and may moss cover your limbs

i ask that you'll return

to the earth that brought you in

may the deer graze near your bones

may your legacy remain intact

may you forever go forward

and may you fondly look back

may your skull wear a crown of roses

and may your body be adorned

may your memory be golden

and may it never once be scorned

may your death be peaceful

and ready, and true

and may they now feel the love

that they all had for you

[ink-flavored]

i'm really proud of this week's poem! i think I did a pretty good job with the prompt of "universe" -- thanks members!

If you’re interested in being able to vote on the topic of the next poem, make sure to check out my Ko-Fi!

Transcript under the cut!

[Ko-Fi] [Magnetic Poetry Series]

Poetry taglist (ask to be added/removed): @elegant-paper-collection​ @dove-actually @polyphonetic @the-ichor-of-ruination @qelizhus

Universe

and the epitaph of the universe

will be a question

what silence gives the handsome morning

clothes of pink, green & lavender?

where does the blind embrace

of a true reunion come from?

who will bear the breeze and snow

for us?

and the universe kisses us

and says

the past is now

my love

and it lingers...

[wordsofkore]

Sacred Summer

i meant it when i said

i was yours from the start.

i’ll spend my days with you in grace,

tangled limbs and treacly words

edging the tips of our tongues

and spilling with a honeyed cadence

when we grow warmer

and the days grow longer,

my heart will be setting

with you in the late evenings;

flowerbed awaiting and pools of affection

filling—perpetually at the crescent of my heart,

overflowed by the essence of you.

01.17.24