Blood Worth Bottling

Okay, I'm definitely late on this one, which was meant to go up yesterday >.> no idea if I'm still in the running for poem a day but trying to remind myself it's fine regardless. It's been a long week and we're only halfway through so this poem is DEFINITELY representing where I'm at right now LOL.

It’s that time where I can’t think of words to write
and I’m barely getting by
and there’s so much on my plate
even though my stomach is hurting and I can’t eat any more.

Vampires die in the sun, or burn at the very least.
That’s what all the myths say, that is.
It’s funny, the way you stay next to me in times like this.
I’m not in the sun, but I’m dying anyway.

I don’t think I’m against it, and I don’t think you are either.
You were built to watch me burn.

This one is definitely personal for me. I myself don't have HIV/AIDS, but there were so many people in the community who died from it, so their souls and potential lives they missed out on are definitely on my mind quite often. This poem is definitely a tribute to them. I'm always scared that someone has gotten completely forgotten and erased from history because of AIDS, and I want them to be remembered. The title is a reference to the HIV/AIDS huge quilt, with each square being a square made for a specific person who passed away. I also just think that it's gross that gay men still aren't allowed to donate blood, even if they're healthy and tested negative for everything and I wanted to highlight that hypocrisy.

ALSO I know I'm posting these like three minutes apart but I wrote them both and took the pictures, uploaded to imgur, etc., before beginning to post either of them lol, I promise I didn't write this poem in three minutes XDD

Okay winter you know I'm a fan of your poetry, but this recent one... the meaning behind it is so raw and honestly something I don't think many people think about (and they should).

I love how you took the theme of your thread and tied it into this sensitive, yet discriminatory issue. Amazing. Thank you for sharing <33

I think this one is very fuzzy-feeling-- in a good way, not a bad way. It makes me sad, and a little happy, and just a little fuzzy. I don't know. I think I captured some very specific emotions that I wanted to capture, but it's not too serious. Hope you enjoy!

Cackling and patchwork jackets and
smirks, like lazy, like teasing, like
predator, and they smile and laugh
at Michael, but they smile and laugh
at each other too, small glances and
punching each other in the arm like
little boys who don’t know how to
flirt in any other way than causing
pain.

Sitting with legs splayed and
Cartons of noodles in hand, constant
with those grins like flashing teeth,
and eyes narrowed but somehow
wide. It’s like you can see them in
the background, fingers wrapped
around faces, lips against lips, and
you have to wonder what they do
all night when they can’t leave the
cave without burning.

Marko dies
in Paul’s arms—off-camera, likely,
though he’s stabbed while we watch.
Paul exposes fangs and hisses that
they killed him, and he doesn’t say
there’s something more, but some-
times you can just feel it there. They
found solace in each other, or fun, or
whatever they considered whatever
it is they did or did not do.

I still feel
sad about them sometimes. Murderers?
Yes. But also just boys. How long ago do
you think their missing posters peeled off
lamp-posts, or melted away in the rain?
How long do you think it took their mo-
thers to stop sobbing themselves to sleep
at night, to know that their sweet, precious
baby boys were never coming home?

I honestly don't know. Another raw vulnerable one, but not too deeply upsetting? I can't tell what of it I actually feel and what of it is just 1am depression hitting me XD Something to unpack in therapy probably, I suppose >.> At the very least, I know none of it is a flat-out lie and I've at least felt it all before in my life, I just can't tell how much I've really healed haha, irony.

In The Lost Boys, Michael’s hand gets bitten and
torn apart by Nanook, the dog, and he wraps it in
bandages and goes to sleep with the girl he’s fasc-
inated with, like a typical teenage boy, and he
wakes up the next morning and unwraps his hand
and it’s healed—completely, as if the wound was
never there in the first place—and it’s like Rapu-
nzel’s hair in Tangled, in a way, this idea that
vampires can heal themselves from the most vi-
cious wounds, like wrapping hair around Flynn’s
hand after they nearly drown and then don’t.

My hair reached my hips before I cut it, and I’m
a tall person. I felt like crying tears of joy and
for the first time in years, my body didn’t look
like a stranger. I asked my dad if he liked it, and
he told me he’d thought my long hair was pretty.
He’s one of those people who just can’t bring
himself to lie, even if he knows he’s going to
hurt the other person. I love him through the pain.

I think some people thought me cutting my hair
would be like in Tangled, where she loses all her
powers, or maybe the love of God. I don’t think
so. Maybe they aren’t damned. Maybe God bles-
sed vampires with the ability to heal themselves
because people hurt them so much—some of
them intentionally, but most on accident.

It’s ironic that Michael is bitten because he’s
beginning to turn into a vampire, isn’t it? Then
flower gleam and glow and the bite marks fade.
I think about it a lot—the love of my F/father.

I fear it a lot—losing it.

Honestly I really don't love this one. It's depressing and it's not really what I was wanting to go for but I got tired and so this is what spilled out of my brain. Once again another situation of, I promise I wrote these at separate times, no AI or anything I hate generative AI so much omg I would never but the paranoid part of my brain insists I put it down in writing anyways, since it will look like these were posted only a couple minutes apart XD

Each time you post a new poem in this thread I'm surprised that you've managed to find yet another unique aspect/metaphor along the vampire theme.

Favorite lines from Self-Healing:

Maybe God bles-
sed vampires with the ability to heal themselves
because people hurt them so much

I think about it a lot—the love of my F/father.

I fear it a lot—losing it.

I noticed each stanza gets shorter until the last one is just one line, and my first thought as to why that my be is that it's like how rapidly vampires can heal. The poem starts off like a stream of consciousness, long and wild like hair, and then it's chopped off until there's just that one simple line. It's not a "healed" line, though - it addresses the heart of the narrator's pain/fear. But addressing it, speaking it out loud, is the first step towards healing, isn't it?

You're amazing, winter! Adore this thread so much!

@Wolfi thank you so much! : D I always smile seeing that you've liked one of my poems and are following along, and I always love getting to hear your thoughts!! :]]]

Honestly this poem was extremely cathartic for ME, which is... not exactly ironic, but poignant, I suppose? I feel pretty good about it and the emotions are feeling STRONG in me right now on this topic because I really do hate him with all my guts, and the more I think about it, the more I just get riled up LOL. Definitely a bit of a longer one, but I feel like I needed the space I took to say what I wanted to say and what I wanted to talk about, and I think I reached a satisfying conclusion? I have NO idea how people write really short poetry, it will forever impress me 0.0

The boys don’t seem to mind him—
the one who stripped them of their
lives and turned their skin to matches
under the sun. He runs the video store,
and he talks about wanting a family,
and he refers to them as his boys, and
you almost want to believe that it’s
true, that he took them in and turned
them because they had nowhere else
to go, and it would be such an easy
lie to believe if it weren’t for Laddie’s
picture on the milk carton.

He acts like he doesn’t know them
in public, like he’s embarrassed to
claim them, even though he’s the
one who wants so badly for them
to all be a family, and I think that
says something, even if I’m not
sure what.

He’s my least favorite and I think
it’s because of what happens when
they wander into the video store,
and he tells them to get out. I think
I’d feel a lot differently if he hugged
them then, or asked where they’d
been, or did any of the fatherly things
he never bothered to do because he
found them inconvenient.

At the end, when David lays impaled,
dead, and I want to reach through the
screen and cradle his poor, young face
in my hands—the face of a boy who
was likely kidnapped from his family
and forcibly turned and brainwashed
for what one can only assume to be
years, decades, even—in that moment,
Max places a hand gently on David’s
chin and tilts his face from side to
side, and he looks sad, but he doesn’t
look distraught, and that’s more of a
gut punch than anything.

I wish David, in that moment, could
open his eyes suddenly and vicious-
ly, in that horror movie jumpscare
kind of way, and I wish that as he
choked to death on the blood inside
him, the blood that wasn’t his, he could
look that man dead in the face, and
as Max pleaded his case and played
the role of the loving, doting father
that he never was, David could gather
just enough air in his collapsing lungs
to spit in his face. I want to watch
Max’s facade break and crack and I
want everyone to see the narcissistic
monster he really was, because he
doesn’t deserve people writing him
happy endings, and he doesn’t de-
serve a family that isn’t his, and as
David took his final, death-defying
breaths, I wish he could have yanked
his face away from Max’s sticky grip
and seethed with all his might, “You
are not my father.”

I wish I could see the reactions, if
he had done something like that. It
would have been an indescribable
feeling of catharsis, I think, for a
kidnapped and villainized boy to,
on his deathbed, get the freeing,
fleeting chance to tell his abuser
once and for all to fuck off, and

go to hell.

I. Don't even know. I am SO tired. I will see how good/bad this poem is in the morning when I have the brain capacity XD I barely got this one done and had to push myself to do it before I went to bed because I am still trying my best to adhere to poem a day for the whole month but omg, homework is KILLING ME right now (how on-theme).

Welp, I didn't want to miss yesterday but I was feeling so nauseous that I was worried I'd get sick if I sat down at my computer and tried to write a poem so I ended up having to go to bed. I'm feeling better today though, which is good :] I can't tell how I feel about this poem. I'll have to read it back in the morning and decide then XD

Why is it that period blood feels less clean?
Dirty, like muddied water, like infected,
and I really don’t understand it, because,
(not to be too graphic) but if you were a vampire,
what would be the difference, really?

It’s the same exact blood.

That’s not true. It’s different, somehow.
I don’t exactly know how, but I know it is—
not just physically, either, but as a concept, it’s different.

Dirty. Infected.

When women used to get their periods in the Bible,
they were segregated for a week and only allowed to see other
u n c l e a n
w o m e n.

They call us infected too—did you know that?
They’re saying autism is a disease now, and
they’ve been saying transness is a disease for years.

We’re infected, but I don’t mind.
We’ll seclude ourselves in this house,
television blaring, switching between channels,
watching all the gay little vampires and
trying to convince ourselves that we’re the same.

They say the rain is dirty too,
but that doesn’t stop them from dancing.

I'm not happy with this one and unfortunately it's for the exact reasons discussed in the poem XD I wish I were exaggerating my anxiety, but no, I am really thinking right now, "What if he somehow read this in the future and thought it was super horrible?" I think it's exacerbated by the fact that he's a huge reader and talks about reading a ton of books so it's always been a dream of mine for him to eventually read something of mine. So yeah, self-talk is pretty negative about this one but that's okay, I just needed to get a poem out.

Shayne Topp from Smosh has this
character he plays sometimes where
he raises his voice, high-pitched,
and talks nasally, and he says things
like, “Ooh, I hope this hot vampire
lady doesn’t try to me!
Oohhhh, that would be so badddd!”

I watch Smosh when I’m feeling
lonely, and I’ve seen nearly all their
videos in the last six years, maybe
seven. I don’t remember the expo-
sure, I only remember the impact.

It comes back to desirable, doesn’t
it? It all comes back to trying to be
attractive enough that somebody
won’t think the world would be
better off with you dead. I like
Shayne’s character because he
gives the power to the vampire,
and even though the scenario
is technically straight, it doesn’t
fully feel that way, because we
aren’t used to women being
allowed to do what they want.

I don’t know what I’m even
trying to say here. It’s like I’m
constantly putting on this mask
of what I think the world wants,
like right now, I’m thinking,
“What if Shayne Topp reads
this poem somehow, and he
thinks it’s actually shit, and
he brings it up on Smosh
Mouth and makes fun of it,
and I die on the spot?”

Vampires stay in their houses
all day and don’t see anyone
ever and even though they
live for an eternity, it always
seems like they never have
friends, or maybe they just
aren’t good at making them,
and so they try to make them-
selves desirable but the only
way to stay safe is to keep
your distance, so they toe
the line and people always
wonder but they never
know and it seems like
such a miserable exist-
ence, which is why I
know I’d be so
good at it.

I am half-asleep as I write this and was half-asleep as I poeted so I hope it's good LOL, or at the very least, presentable. I like it though :] it's a more abstract connection to vampires (might be the first of the poems where I don't outright use the word vampire in it?) though the connection is also pretty obvious.

Let’s hang from the ceiling from our feet
and view the world upside-down.
Let’s try a different perspective as we
swing in the air like bats
and say the world could be different, you know,
it could be better this way.

We’ll flip it on its head,
dizziness rushing through our ears,
world spinning before our eyes,
and say we have it all figured out,
like pressing our faces to a seashell,
listening to the sound of our own blood
and calling it the ocean.

I'm not even going to pretend like I like this one lol. At the moment, I hate it. We'll see how I feel in the morning after some sleep but I'm not sure my opinion on it will change that much. It feels very bland and not sophisticated like some of the other ones I've done that I'm prouder of. We shall see how I feel in the morning though, I guess.

I’m thinking of vampires in history again,
the ones who were buried in the rubble of castles burned and scorched,
like the Salem Witch Trials and the women poked and bled out,
and I think of how vampires must have been there too,
those places in-between, the sacred, the scared.

I’m thinking of vampires in history again
because erasure attacks those of today
and they removed the transgender activists
from the Stonewall monument.

I’m thinking of vampires in history again,
like I’m scared of becoming one, of being erased.
I’ve said it from the beginning, haven't I?

I’m so desperate to be entertaining that
I become the whole circus for you.
I’m on the television as you’re flipping through options,
killing myself trying to stop you from changing the channel.

This one, for anyone who doesn't know, is in conversation with the Carry On book series. (I actually haven't finished them yet, because I read the first before the second one was released, then read the second one before the third was released, and by the time that one came out, I had forgotten too much lol). I'm really pleased with the poem itself though-- I didn't know exactly where I was going at the beginning and ended somewhere strong, I think, which is nice.

He’s a teenage boy who hides in the underground
system of crypts and coffins at school, starving
himself half to death because he’s terrified that if
he lets himself start, he won’t be able to stop.

He’s a boy whose roommate thinks he looks tired
all the time,
who constantly looks pale and sick, who sustains
himself on the blood of rats, binging like Caprisuns.

Baz is a vampire, and somehow, he still seems more
terrified of being found out as gay, and he’s in love
but he doesn’t think he deserves love, and Baz is
a lot like me, and I think about the little rat bodies

in the catacombs often—piled in corners, or trailed
like breadcrumbs through a Hansel and Gretel maze
of dead bodies entombed in stone. It’s funny when
there’s an infestation, people say, “We have a rat

problem,” but when their little, tiny carcasses lay
shriveled dry in dusty hallways, nobody says, “We
have a dead rat problem.” Suddenly, when they’ve
disappeared, there’s no problem at all.