Wisteria’s Wistful Woodland

On Repeat

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was OVER (AND OVER AGAIN) by Bronze Avery. I rolled freeverse using the song title!

If history doesn't repeat,
it only rhymes,
then baby we must be a Chant Royal
because we're stuck in the same five sounds,
contorting ourselves to fit.
And each time we swear it's the last time,
but just like last time we start over.
Back to square one.
Back rhyme A
Back to everything we swore we were better about
But it's just a silly lie between lovers
Because we still can't see the envoy
Rhyme A you love me
Rhyme B you need me
Rhyme C you hurt me
Rhyme D I hurt you back
Rhyme E you hate me
We break, we mend, we don't last
But we always come back
So let's start a new stanza baby
we still have more to go before we can rest.

Some Things are Possible

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was All the Right Moves by OneRepublic. I rolled freeverse on a song lyric. So, I chose the lyric, “The sun is shining everyday, but it's far away.”

I was always taught to stay positive,
that anything is possible.
But sometimes, the hardest lesson to learn
is that not everything is in your favor,
and life isn't won just by working hard
and trying your best
and lining up everything in perfect lines.
Sometimes you face plant because someone tripped you
or because the ground was too slick
or because your ankles weren't made right.
The sun isn't always shining
and sometimes there are clouds
no matter how much you prayed for sunshine.
So maybe failing isn't a more failing,
and losing isn't a sin.
Maybe it's not learning that everything is possible,
but learning to recover when something isn't.

Heavier Hands

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was London in July by Autoheart. I rolled refrain on a song lyric. So, I chose the lyric, “I never knew I could feel?/Stronger than concrete but vulnerable”

My hands are like asphalt.
Someone could skin their knees on my palm,
and the blood would be a fraction of my stains.
But you clasp them tightly in your own
and rub them like they're the finest silk.

My smile is like acid.
Your eyes corrode as you follow it,
but you follow it anyway.
You loop around and around like you're on a circuit,
and you protest when the wretched thing is hidden.

My face is like earthquakes.
It's deeply wrong within your soul;
you lose your footing in its wake.
But you giggle, call that love,
and ask me to hold on to you.

My love is like betrayal.
I was never supposed to let you get close.
I was only ever meant to be in the distance.
But you cradle my chest and say plans are best forfeit
because life knows when to take you a better way.

Heartstrings Hold Us Together

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was Amazing Day by Coldplay. I rolled rhyming using the rhyme scheme.

Come and lean against my side,
kiss the creases on my hand.
This love is how we be brave;
the solid rock on which we stand.

Come and lean against my side
and that'll be your perch to face the world.
My darling, be my strength
be my deus ex machina.
And I'll be your healer from above,
the ace tucked inside your glove.

Just don't make me something you can't speak of.
Shout my name from the rooftops, my ladylove.

Come and lean against my side.
Tomorrow will be our day.
My dearest wife, the most beloved
Together, there's nothing we can't withstand

On the Marquee

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was chosen by @Ley for the end of the mouth. She chose Carmen [/b] by Lana Del Rey and for me to write a freeverse poem based on the theme.

If all the world's the stage,
then people are just scripts,
lines of dialogue in an elabroate story:
no theme,
no purpose.

If people are just scripts,
then I am another trope.
I do my blocking like a dancer,
and my words drip with hidden meaning.
Call me the lead role the way I dazzle.

If I am another trope,
then I am the one who got away.
The night of fun burned into your memory,
but never repeated,
an object of your greatest desire.

If I am the one who got away,
them my entire life is leading you to me.
My body is a marquee.
Stranger's hands rush to pinch at the corners,
and I let them come as much as they want.

If my entire life is leading you to me
then my entire self is yours.
A communal park for late-nights
and every bad decision we could make.
Nothing is sacred; nothing is mine.

Play. Rewind.

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was Same Folk by Young the Giant. I rolled a Spoken Word poem based on the song’s theme. So, I focused on the theme of the continuity of matter and reincarnation!

In this world, nothing is original and nothing can created or destroyed.

The universe exists as a VHS tape. Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Me and you are recycled parts from Romans, Greeks, dinosaurs, stars. There is not a state in which some part of us hasn't existed before.

Your ancestor was a forest fire. Your ancestor was a drop of rain. Your ancestor was a supernova. Birth is just the ultimate butterfly net, capturing your atoms and putting them in the jar we call your soul.

Shake it next to your ear. Can you hear it? The thousands of lives and deaths and wonders make up the fiber of your being? Can you see the stardust in the ways your eyes sparkle? Or hear the T. Rex in the way your voice booms and echoes? Rewind. Play. You are the next cast of the world's never-ending movie.

It can make you feel small, can it? But it can also make you feel powerful. Like you have entire armies in your skin. The roots of the tallest tree. The base of the strongest rock. The mind of the largest book. The soul of the kindest man. And life is just taking these things and weaving them until you are their best parts.

Breathe. Hold all of the connections to the world in your hand. See the network you have been delicately placed in. Nothing is original, but some things are better recreated. Nothing can be created, so all the materials are in your hand. Nothing can be destroyed, so your spirit will never die.

was it better (or is it just unattainable?)

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was Younger by Imagine Dragons. I rolled author's choice based on the song’s theme. Today, I did things a little differently by writing a response to the song's theme of childhood being better!

was life simpler back then
or does saying life would be better
if we were kids again
just take the pressure off of us
to make our lives better
because we chose to believe it's impossible

maybe independence
and complete dependence
are equal hells because choosing between
having no power to control your life
and having all the power to ruin it
are both equally terrifying

i think the way we have designed life
has made it equally harsh to everyone:
the provided for and the providing
because everyone is scrounging up pennies
of care, patience, and safety,
and life is running out of change.

January Dreams

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was Everything Sounds Like a Love Song by X Ambassadors. I rolled Freeverse using the song's title as a prompt!

Everything sounds like a love song,
and every book reads like a happy ending.
Summers used to be our biggest hells,
but now it's our slingshot to the future,
I can't remember a time June made me this happy,
but now it's slowly carrying you to me.

From what-ifs
to one-days
to someday soon
to less than a year.
Skipping all the steps it takes to hold you,
to finally bear the weight of you in my arms
where you belong.

I've always hated summers,
but now this summer we finally line the dominoes
that will push you into my lap.
You'll finally meet my parents.
We'll fnally hold hands.
I'll get to stop sustaining you through imagination.

All we need is winter to blow through,
and your feet will land in my backyard's soil.
But this June is a start,
the launching pad for our future.
So now our story gets a happy ending,
and our lives are like a love song.

taunt and trapped

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was Hot Mess by Dodie. I rolled Freeverse and author's choice. So, I decided to incorporate the song lyric, "Let me go!"

our love is more like
a chinese paper trap
than anything soft and sweet
our pinkies extend at harsh angles
i think we would've pulled away by now
if we didn't think it was futile

you call it gravity
i call it woven threads of desperation
that stretches and pulls our bodies back together
the harder i try to get away
because it's better to feel our fingertips brush
than to feel the cold air of freedom and distance

but i'm tired of struggling
my hands have started to cramp
i want to find someone who will clasp them
not trap one finger to keep me still
i'm reaching for the scissors
let me go
so i can let us go

Blood and White Flags

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was Róróró by Of Monsters and Men. I rolled refrain based on a lyric. So, I decided to take inspiration from the lyrics "No one is to blame" and "(Do you want me to tell the truth?)"

We shake hands,
and the cuts on our hands mingle blood.
Our white flags stand across from each other.
We cancel each other out
and we keep fighting.

You have apologized,
and I have apologized,
and we are trying to point fingers at our reflections
but the blood smears the image
and we keep fighting.

What do we need to say to end things?
To lay down the arms fused with our hands?
It's neither of our faults.
It was all a misunderstanding,
and we keep fighting.

We fight because we want to be absolved,
but we are too guilty to accept it.
Obliteration is easier than introspection.
The white flags are all for show,
and we keep fighting.

Pressing Flowers

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today’s song was 2 Drinks Away by lovelytheband. I rolled a refrain based on the song theme. So, I decided to take inspiration from the theme of being so drunk you're on the edge of a bad decision.

Take a sip
Thumb along the pages we wrote
Watch the ink bleed out of shape
Cut my fingers on the corners

Read the surviving words aloud
Take a sip
Cry at the imagery
Try to relive the pages

Press my head within the contents
like a dead flower
Take sip
Call out for you to close the book

Weep until the ink is wiped clean
and the pages are pristine
Toss the book into the fire
Take a sip

Wolf vs. Extinction

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today's song was Too Polite to Fight by Autoheart. I rolled spoken word using the song's title as a prompt.

Drag me through the mud again and again.

I have pebbles between my teeth and worms circling my hoop earrings.

You watch me scratch out all of the muck from my scalp. I pull my hands away, nails dirty and broken and bleeding. You sneer, and down I go again. Face first into fertile soil for your lies.

The ravens tell me to snap. They want me to pounce like a wolf and bury you in the mud you have made your playground. To become the wild forest child, you call me in your taunts.

But I just smile and pick the rocks from my teeth.

You chortle. You spray the dirt with the hose and watch my feet sink into the ground. Your tongue spins quicksand, and I sink in the whirlpool of your lies.

The ravens tell me to float to the top. Float on my back. Become lighter than your iron-wraught falsehoods.

But I just toss the worms out as I'm engulfed.

You kneel over your pit and thank me. I ask if I've been good enough to be let out, and you walk away without a second thought.

The ravens dig me out to feast on my carrion. I feel the mud sinking into my open wounds. My blood tastes like earthworms and roots.

But I just look at the setting sun and close my eyes.

Take Me

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Welcome to Free Choice Friday! On a Saturday because we forgot to do it yesterday. I picked the song Not in Kansas by the national and wrote a poem based on the lyric, "My bedroom is a stranger's gunroom."

Take me home again,
where my room has carpet
and the kitchen sink has hot water
and the neighbors don't hate our dogs.

Take me somewhere familiar
where I can jump off the aqua benches
and huddle around the firepit
while Mom makes a drink at the bar

Take me to simpler times
where I can recognize my family
and nothing is disintegrating between my fingers
and I feel at home.

But home is someone else's now
We sold it for 400k
and split it down the line in the name of divorce
and we fled here as refugees

But familiar is a luxury for the unbroken
when everything cracks you find dry land
even if it's a stranger's
and it doesn't smell like safety

But simpler times are a precursor to difficulty
they never exist
only hold problems no one speaks of
until they burst from the seams and take everything

The Most Insulting Part is You Were Terrible

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today's song was Japanese Buffalo by Cage the Elephant. I rolled refrain and dealer's choice. So, I took inspiration from the lyric, "Like a cheap plastic knife"

Inefficiency is the root of all pain,
and baby, you're cutting yourself out of my life
with the same grace as cutting a steak
with a plastic knife.

Inefficiency is the root of all anger,
and darling, you're calling me jealous,
but cried to your new girl when
I stopped sharing my location

Inefficiency is the root of our end
because, love, you tripped over your lies
and face-planted in the bed you made.
Your silver tongue held the door open for me.

Self-Portrait

Today's Inspiration:

Spoiler

Today's song was Beats by AJR. I rolled a refrain and incorporating the song title.

I draw my life with charcoal,
marking each story beat.
I point arrows to all the different paths
that would have saved me from here.

I draw my life with acrylics
and dot red across my hands.
I said I had no choice.
Was I lying to them or myself?

I draw my life with crayons.
Maybe acting like a child
will make me love like one
instead of hating like a cynic.

I draw my life with blood.
I fingerpaint my ransacked empire
and the escape routes of my prisoners.
I burn the drawing and cry.