Don’t call me dead yet

No fancy theme or image, just an old lady writing seven silly poems. Hopefully.

Well. This isn't how I expected to start NaPo week, but I'm having a lot of feelings

To the "Man" Who Built the Playground

cw-language, innuendo, mention of SA

Spoiler

First,
Let me start this off very poetically:
fuck you
(and not in the fun way).

fuck you
for making such beautiful worlds
and stories that saved us
and then tear it all up
by being a perverted piece of shit.

it would have cost you zero dollars
to not be a rapist,
but I guess that was too fucking difficult.
You sick bastard (said very non-affectionately).

well, now that's been said,
here's what I really want to say:
we might be angry, and mourning,
but you cannot take our joy.

when the Them played superheroes in the quarry,
did the people who wrote Superman
have anything to do with that?

your playground may be why we're here,
but it's not yours anymore
(if it ever was).

this place is ours now.
the stories, the art, the friendships?
that belongs to us
and nothing you did can destroy that.

first we left,
then we cried,
then we screamed.

but in time,
we will laugh again.

okay so explanation, same cws as above

Spoiler

So for those not in the loop, Neil Gaiman was accused of SA in July by multiple women. I won't go into details here, but it's sickening. As a Good Omens fan, I wasn't sure what this would mean for the show, and I felt kind of icky worrying about that, but like this book and this show means a lot to me. No news until production was "paused" in September, followed by another story saying he had offered to "step back". There were rumors of cancellation, but nothing concrete until Thursday, when it was officially announced that instead of a full third season, they'll be making a 90 minute final episode. It sounds like it took a lot of behind the scenes wrangling to get even this much. I'd sort of made my peace with the probable reality of cancellation, so for me this was somewhat welcome news, though I"m still sad for what might have been and worried about how they'll tie everything unresolved from Season 2 up in 90 minutes. But ultimately, it will be okay. We'll keep writing and drawing and gathering together (I"ve met fandom friends IRL twice) and nothing this motherfucker "allegedly" did can ruin that for me.

Okay. Now that's done, let's go back to our originally scheduled programming.

questions for whales

why did you leave the land
and learn to swim again?

was being on land too much,
forever walking, forever hungry,
forever afraid?

when you slipped into the sea,
did you know you weren't coming back?

do you ever miss your legs,
the trees, the dirt beneath your feet?

when you paddled in tide pools
did you recall your foremothers crawling out
millions of years before
and wonder if you were betraying them?

when your limbs shriveled into nothing,
did you weep?

how did you learn to swim again?
was it hard, remembering how to move
like a fish, but your bones wouldn't let you?

if i dove into the ocean,
promising my world-weary body
that it would never have to walk again,
could i join you?

Now, a sort of continuation of one of my NaPo poems: ink spilled on atrophied wings and a somewhat facetious riff off of Fire and Ice

a non-concise rebuttal to frost

if you were correct, mr. frost,
the many passionate love affairs of my youth
(all one-sided, to be clear)
should have killed me.

but the tears i shed
for boys who never loved me
and girls who didn't know my name
were proof that i still lived.
i did not have, i did not hold,
but i wanted, and that was enough.

but even one-sided love affairs
can't last forever, and so i froze
in what seemed to be an eternal winter
of one-sided grudges
and a drive to fight entropy
that has survived since the first cell split
into two, into four, into hearts that beat
and legs that ran.

[i was so frozen, i tried to say
i had never loved at all, never wanted.
but upon further reflection,
i find that i was gaslighting myself,
claiming i never wanted love
because i know i can't have it.]

i woke up, ate,
slept, woke up again.
alive, but was i living?

when i fell in love again,
it wasn't with a person,
but a story. immortal, beautiful,
painful. i felt more in fifteen minutes
than i had in years.
my ice melted, my blood ran warm
again, my mind raced, and my pen
tried to chase it.

i still woke up, still ate,
still slept, still woke up again,
but the cycle had purpose.
i wanted again,
and it was everything.

all of this is to say,
that from what i have tasted of desire,
and grown numb from the lack thereof,
is that fire can't destroy us,
because as long as something burns,
it lives.

therefore i believe
that ice is nice
and should suffice.

(guys help this wasn't meant to be good omens related and then it became good omens related why am i like this)

Omg...

1. NO NOT NEIL GAIMAN. AHHHHHHHH.

2. Poems about whale evolution? INSTANT SUBSCRIBE.

3. Okay, but! The unexpected rhyming honestly made me smile:

therefore i believe
that ice is nice
and should suffice.

The dreams died figuratively but not literally

When I was with you,
I forgot to dream,
But now that you’re long gone,
I can’t stop.

In waking hours,
I have escaped you. Memories
Are now painless scars instead
Of fresh wounds. I am far away
In time and space, mind and body.

But in my dreams, I go back.
I beg for your forgiveness
And promise I will finish this time,
No matter the costs.

In the dream last night, you mocked me
For forgetting how to operate lab equipment
I haven’t seen in years. And yet your disciples
Didn’t know how to work it either.

And when I asked if you had my old samples,
The ones you faithfully kept for all my departed predecessors,
You laughed and said “of course not”.

Spoiler

So yeah I’ve had a lot of dreams lately of going back to my grad school and finishing my phd. Which is weird because I have no desire to do that. If I were to go back to school, it would be for something completely different. Anyway, in last nights dream in particular, I was back in the lab and being mocked for not remembering how to use some machine by my former lab mates, but they didn’t know how to use it either so that was really weird. Also, the freezers were absolutely full of samples from people who left years before, so the thought that they might have thrown mine away feels strangely insulting.

I absolutely loved the variety and powerful poems you posted this last week <33 thanks for sharing your voice. They all had some different tones, but I really enjoyed that and I think it shows how strong of a writer you are. Thanks for sharing these and making YWS. a better place