Weeeeeeeeeeee . . .

Inkandprimrose.tumblr.com's NaPoWriMo dailies! Yaaaaaaaaaay! Hahahahaaha. No. Not really. This going to be really hard and only about three-eighths of me is looking forward to it.
I'lll just keep saying, "Weeeeeeee!" in my head and pretend I enjoy it. That always works.

Yes, I know I'm late, but I just found out about this site, so I'm going to post what I've already written here as well as what I will continue to write for NaPoWriMo. Wish me luck, and good luck to you, if you're doing it.

Any and all constructive criticism is welcome!

NaPoWriMo #1


Them Boys


them boys is blue
in the morning—faces
flat like a soda
bottle left open—like men
whose lives are full
of things
they do not
love.


them boys is white
in the day—fingers
licking fire ‘gainst their
knees—like men
who’re willing to burn
up themselves
if it burns up the
anxiety
as well.


them boys is gray
in the evening—eyes
half-lidded and glazed
with sleep—they are men
who try to dream
the world
away—my men
my father my brother my uncle
my men—
are men who try to dream
themselves
away.



them boys is pink in the night—the
world is tilted, black
and fussy with its lines and its shapes, and the whiskey
in their blood
sloshes color into
cheeks
and lungs
and hearts and
them.


them boys
do love,
I think—
but only
when I sleep.

NaPoWriMo #2


A Part


She used to part her hair
on the right
side of her chest
so that anyone
could see
who
and what
she was.


but then you came.


Now she parts it
to the left—
right
where her heart
used to be.

NaPoWriMo #3


Chalk and Chipping Bone



I know I should
be more concerned
with the hearts
and stars the other
kids draw
on the sidewalk,
but really what worms
inside me
is the way
the gravel—
rough like the edges
of brok
en glass—
scars
the chalk.



Sometimes there are thick loud lines,
rivulets criss-crossing like tar-smothered roads
across a dusty desert plain—
but mostly
what I see
are thin
scrapes—someone slipping a knife
through skin
and chipping
bone.
and when the other kids
are through,
and chuck the chalk
into the box
like it cannot break
and flake
as everyone knows
it does,
why—
why sometimes I save one.
Tuck a stick
into my pocket
so it can make stars
and hearts
on skin
instead of rock.



A fingerprint is rarer
than a road,
and there are
worse
things
to draw with.

NaPoWriMo #4

Requiem

Rec
Kwe
Um.

Morening do
here. On the grass,
cut and bristling
like hair
chopped
close
to your skull.
On the cough
en,
leather like his skin
and as tasting
of gloss
and water.
On the lips
of Pre
Cher May Be,
who heaved the hole
the night before
and fell alseep with a shuv
ul in his palm.

And in my hair, so tang
gulled
in the dead man’s hands
that they almost cut it
off, but I told them
no.


I’ll
go
with him.

NaPoWriMo #5

Hole

they rise and they dip
a flip and trip
of
empt.

Tea and tums
and morning toast
the useless
boast because
I haven’t got a
stom.

Ache in my toe
nail
that I
stubbed, rubbed
(made love to
to satiate
the hole
in my
abdomen,
the silver-fuzz smattered
bump beneath
my breasts
and breaths so labe.)

Erred in the wrong
direct
tion—up instead of down
and safe into the ground
where I knew
a red-plush gold-flattered
oak home
one day will lay with a bushel
of dandelions.

Dandelions and cockscomb.

For the wishes I blew,
the ands I grew,
and the gritting gouged-red
hole
I knew
was there.

what are you doing here? why are you so delectable?

Hannah wrote:what are you doing here? why are you so delectable?

what are you talking about i have been here since the dawn of time how could you not have noticed me? also i appreciate your use of the word "delectable" as it is a very delicious word to say and also i like the way that you are just so overwhelmed by my overwhelmingly overwhelming poetry that you do not capitilize anything in fact i am so overwhelmed by you being overwhelmed that i am not even putting any periods anywhere look it is amazing yes agree with me! yes this is all nice and all and all but where is the nasty, scathing nitpicking apart of my every amateur word? you trolls are the whole reason i live please i need serious trollish yet actually very insightful criticism it is the only way i learn please be mean and very very thourough yes do it now thank you very much.

No, really! Thank you very, very much. ^^

1.
Tall kings talking
in their stained dress shirts
to the brick-backdropped grafitti
con
verts come
come from
stained white walls and stained black guns
unneeded but for
the licking sun
the picking done
(pick-pocket) pick-axe like in the mines
like in the mines except
for the stained black guns and stained black
guard-dog
eyes.

2.
Cheap pawns and ponsie
schemes
on the TV ra
dio
no where
to go
to escape them
talking
talking like they're guard-dog
eyes
talking like their belts are weighed
with stained
black guns and stained
white hands
and maybe a couple of
leashes for the big
black Dobermans sniffing
for the sinners,
the big black
colorless
pupil-filled guard-dog Doberman
eyes.

3.
Pupils are the blackest thing
your body has produced.
You think the inside of your skele
ton, the wet red
side
of your
skin is black
in the body?
The stomach churning blindly
in the dark, the intestines curling
intui
tive
ly in the insides where no light
goes?
No.
Your pupils are not just
the ab
sence
of light; they are the
black holes
at the rinds
of the uni
verse; they are the
night under
a help
less, newborn
moon; they are the
flaking
stick-figure
black skeleton
after
the fire.

Pupils take everything you have:
the color
of you, the light
of you, the sight
of you, and the love
of you.

4.
Tall kings and cheap pawns,
teaching, preaching
hope
lessly,
life
lessly
love
lessly:

Their words are pupils
Their words are pupils
Their words are pupils,

And their shirts
are stained.

Whyyyyy? Why are you so good at this? I feel so hopelessly inadequate! If only you were older than me instead of slightly younger than my youngest sister, I could just tell myself that you have more life experience/writing experience/experience in general...

Ah, well.

I just read through like four of your poems, and they are delicious. I love love love the way you break up words with line breaks, like "shuv/ul." Wow. I don't even think to do that, because obviously I have not yet achieved the level of writerly awesomeness which you have achieved.

Continue being amazing!

*recedes into writerly insignificance*
*also academic insignificance brought on by the too-fast encroaching end of the semester*

(Don't like this one at all, but I am just so freaking tired and I don't really care anymore. :/)

NaPoWriMo #7

I’m not
Very quotable.
I get that.
I’m a woman
Of extremes:
Always either vague
and full of metaphors-twice-removed
Or a gimmick of easy rhymes
And cheap cleverness.
My verses don’t make sense
When you take them out
Of context,
So no short and punching
Quote on a wall
Or in a signature.

It’s not easy
To understand
My poems—
always long and always over
Complicated,
Rhythym-in
satiated.
Sometimes I think
It takes a year
Just to read
The endless coiling snake
My words
Become.

I don’t have the novel
Ideas
That are needed
For a poet,
The quick raw brilliance
That conveys a life-changer
In just a few
lines.
I’m not the kind
To be elegantly simple,
Decadently succinct.
And nothing else need be said
After I tell you
How I pace
In a dark bedroom,
Green clock numbers past twelve,
Wondering how people
Will remember
Me.

BlueAfrica wrote:Whyyyyy? Why are you so good at this? I feel so hopelessly inadequate! If only you were older than me instead of slightly younger than my youngest sister, I could just tell myself that you have more life experience/writing experience/experience in general...

Ah, well.

I just read through like four of your poems, and they are delicious. I love love love the way you break up words with line breaks, like "shuv/ul." Wow. I don't even think to do that, because obviously I have not yet achieved the level of writerly awesomeness which you have achieved.

Continue being amazing!

*recedes into writerly insignificance*
*also academic insignificance brought on by the too-fast encroaching end of the semester*

O.O You just made my entire life.

NaPoWriMo #8


NaPoWriMo #7

1.

People
like to know me
before I've even
traced a word
with my tongue.
They ponder in their minds, in mouths
muttered maybe
near my chin
why hair and lash and flesh
of mine
seems from a distance—
an instance of eyes dissecting
me—so dead.
I wonder do they really need
eyes for seeing rough and fraying,
stippled nails,
touch for feeling coats
of oil and sticky
heat
on my skin,
ears for hearing crinkling
of my food-stuck
candy-wrapper
strands
of hair?

2.

Friends
exist
in the nails, the ofs, the next
to the next
of the ends.
They are there
in the things
you do not notice
unless painted,
unless named,
unless ended with.
Sometimes they are ragged,
or cut
or clipped,
And sometimes they are forced
and shut
and skipped.
But they are connectors,
to skin,
to words,
to ringing breaths of thought
slumbering
in the vessels
beside your heart.

3.

Lovers
I choose for honesty.
For them to swirl
epiphanies
like the artist brushing want and wont
into the white.
For I to slap them
across the face,
a clever quip and
silence
silence
silence
si
lence . . .

but for the humming
of sound
and soul
slipping
through the trance-like quivers
of our lips.

4.

Words
I need
for me,
Dear Lover,
for me to tell
you what I am
when you me why
my hair
is always greasy,
my nails always torn and mottled,
my heart
so weighed
with clinging
discord.

My hair I wash
each night for you,
my skin
I scrub raw
each blue morning
‘fore the sun.
My heart I carve
open
in the dark,
amd whisper tender everythings
as I brush
the dust and spit away.

But really it’s not this,
these things I do for you,
that are what makes me
what I am:
It’s each word murmured
in the bedroom,
each sigh given
to a kiss,
each gentle lifting of the lips
like the wave
that cannot control itself,
swaying sensually
back and forth, push and pull
as it punds the shore
and it swept back out agin.


These
are the things that cling in me.
They coat my hair like grease and dirt;
They nest and huddle
under the tattered, white edges of my nails;
They rest
in my bones
and spleen
and skin
and roots,
pumped through
me
by the vessels
beside my
heart.