Persy's Promiscuity Pertaining to Poetry

18


an angry juxtaposition of affirmation, greed, and lust

"money is just paper
but it affects people like poetry"

I would sell my soul
for something like that,
for a break,
for a goddamned
breath--

sometimes I wonder
how much I would sell for.
to the dollar, to the cent,
if I would be some last minute flyaway merchandise
or they would leer over me and bid and barter
and frown--
if I was splayed out in my nakedness,
if wide hips
would be a commodity;

I am just skin
and bone
but I hope that someday
I will affect people like poetry too.

Spoiler

quote is from the movie Don't Tempt Me, which I haven't seen

19

I wrote myself a Bible last night.
I grew up
banging bibles against my chest
like a great beast of scripture
and servitude,
but last night I talked to angels,
I talked to parts of myself
I did not know existed.

20

we've broken down like old flat tires
threading and holy and
waiting on something like the side of the road,
where the dusk deepens, where the weeds grow,
where traffic
never quite stops, no matter
how long we hold out our thumbs.

21

the cold eats us like it does autumn.
the more we grow
the more room we have to echo.

sometimes I feel like a cavern.




21.5

perhaps you will remember me later on
when you are not so busy shivering,
when you are not so scared
of losing what you don't have.



22

on nights like these
I want to lay on my floor in the dark
and let the ghosts take me.

22.5

it's so scary to me how we all
learn to hate ourselves at some time or another
like it's bred into us,
taught to us in between "trust in yourself"s.

I feel like this hopelessness
has to come from somewhere --

I am not full enough
to give birth to something this strong.

This is a rewrite of 13-- anyone wanna tell me/give me feedback on which is better?

I could cut your fingers on a morning like this.
I move gentle, careful not to wake you,
trying to emulate dawn in its slow reach, spread, stretch.
Today stands on the edge of a knife --
there is a tremble, a trepidation rippling
through the sun streaked wall.

I can't tell if it is mine.

There are parts of me that are foreign,
ghost limbs, old things from an old store that sells mostly dust.
My fingers are short sighted, short stemmed
and fumble like doorknobs or clocks.
They move too slowly,
unsure, but wanting.

The rhythms of morning are bedsheets
and breath; they echo
around my room, my morning
like a cathedral.

This, you, morning is a song I know.
I don't cut my fingers on things like these --
I lay in them, rest in them, press my hips to them
and kiss, like dawn.

23

there are blossoms pushing their way from you.

sometimes, you're a storm.
the tremble driven angry parts of the night
when I tell myself
that being afraid is silly, but each drop of thunder
makes me want to disappear,
to chase after things
bigger than myself.

sometimes you're a soft sigh, a fog,
a gentle start to a cold day
I want to lose myself in.

there are blossoms pushing their way from you
because you are growing;
you are a season of storm and sun and foggy
mornings when I don't want to leave bed,

a soft sigh, a defeat, a victory,
you are tremble driven because your hands
make me feel weak,
because your mouth makes me feel strong,

because even when you are a storm,
or a fog,
even when you are gone away and I am stuck missing you,
I am, you are,
we.

24

maybe someday
you will see how thoroughly you left me behind,

how I'm waiting
and waiting, like a dog tied
up in telephone wires,

a missed call, a voice speaking to static.

I thought I made an impact
and the day I realized
that I was just another empty, quick voice

barely grazing past your fingers

was the day I stopped howling
the day I stopped trying to make any noise
at all.

25

I miss the rawness
that my words used to have.

I think that I used to stand around open mouthed and curious
a lot more than I do now,
sticking words and ideas
and sucking on them like a medicine,
like a child exploring things by biting and tasting them.

I've learned how bitterness tastes,
how it can leech onto the insides of you
and closed my mouth since.

I am dull.


I am dull like the knives that I cook with,
large, German things that people think are too clunky
for my delicate hands, but
flick and slice regardless.

They say you cut yourself on dull knives,
that a sharp knife will sink into your skin
easy as water, as the ocean cutting into the shore,
but dull ones hit the bone, they do things
that reverbrate, that last.

I don't want to cut people.
I don't want to reverbrate in a painful way, I
want to echo with something bright and kind;
I don't want to be bitter, I want to be open mouthed
and curious
and awe-ful, I want to greet each morning
wriggling my toes into my bedsheets and praying
to the sun, I want summer to live
in my closet, in my room, in my mouth
when I kiss, I want the sharpness
and the sureness and the openness
of how things used to be.

26

The only beautiful thing I've found about sadness
is its absence.
When you wake, stretch, taste the sun
with your curious fingers, and promise yourself
that today will be better.

27

dawn edges its fingers
over the sill
almost as if it is afraid to disturb me;

sometimes I wish I could bottle it,
frame it, pluck a thread from it
and keep its gentleness
for the harshness
of night.

28

I don't think I've ever really had a sense of religion to curse into my own bones but I cried during the last sermon I heard, dripping soft mournful things that spread down my cheeks like wishbones, pulling at each other until I heard something snap inside myself,
each day is another where I hide things from myself, in little pockets of bedroom, under the bed and against the wall where I find myself curled up in the morning, afraid of some nightmare that leered over the side of my bedposts -- I'm afraid people seeing my cry because they ask questions that I never really know the answer to, simple, one worded gasps like why why whyyyyy, and saying "I don't know," is so inutterably tiring.

I went to a christian school and sometimes when we sang I felt like raising my hands up to the heavens with the others, sighing out quiet sobs, praying over myself like I deserved saving even though god never really echoed in my heart; it was a ritual, a practice of understanding,

another place to hide something from myself, to distract, to maybe store some semblance of awe. I never did, I sat and watched and felt the color in my cheeks when they asked, "why, why," and I never really had an answer.

29

today I think about you in the light of your own soft thoughts. sometimes I wonder if I write things for myself anymore, and other times I marvel at my own selfishness with language -- my mouth does not open for pleasantries, it does not want, it does not need to be heard or validated because in its own sort of quietness, it is scared to be heard. I spent long hours practicing for other people: "this is how you say 'ay, ee, I, oh, you,' and you again, and you again-- I twisted my own language about on itself like a confused sort of kiss that pulled at my insides and then I mispoke and choked and wished to god that I could die.

there are only so many times you can say, "I love you," and not mean it, and then you get all sorts of stingy, the only time that your body will let you make those noises is when you're really overflowing with it, when there's so much light in you that you don't know how the particles of you are kept together, like the light-heavy episodal pressures building inside of you are like stars bursting apart into something that spills and spills and sinks into itself when my thoughts are only directed to one thing--

this is something that flutters and cringes and hides in the nervous parts of your heart. I used to think that I owed the world something, that I owed a kiss, a fuck, a word for someone who wanted it, like a glance in my direction should be rewarded with a bared shoulder --

the last time he kissed up my arms and shoulders and breasts, I cringed, I promised myself that I would not say it, I would not mean it until I really wanted to mean it and I suppose that's where I put the dam.

29.5

it's amazing how long I'm willing to wait for change in myself,
how content I am to sit on my hands and close up my mouth and see if the world will push me into place, as if depending on wind and rain could get me
anywhere;

it's like I'm watching my fingernails grow,
painstaking unsent letters that I refuse to send,
curling, browning, autumn growing on my skin like I could crack open like a leaf
when I'm really just growing mold.

last one was a collab with someone not from the site