saturn is home, and all is well

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Thu Apr 11, 2019 4:38 pm

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niteowl says...

Spoiler! :

#12

after twenty-eight years,
you'd think i would understand time,
how it moves ever-forward,
always faster than you expect
(except when it kills you with its slowness).

yet still, every morning,
i let minutes slip away.
and at night, i am wide awake
until the morning,
when i wake up not even realizing
i had fallen asleep.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:08 pm

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Cadi says...

Wow, that list of prompts for the Zyzzyx Road poem is intense! Good work for getting all that into one poem! I like the bit about the goose stealing chips

I really like if you think of me at all - especially those first two lines, with the parenthetical. The conclusion of it, "I only hope that you are well", chimes with some personal thinking I've been doing about the people who fall out of our lives, and grieving those connections. (Also, so weird about the random mailings! Totally understand getting shaken up by something unexpected like that.)

I've been enjoying your thread so far this month, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the month!

"The fact is, I don't know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn't collapse when you beat your head against it." --Douglas Adams

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Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:03 am

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niteowl says...

Thanks @Cadi!

Okay this ones not going to be much, but I’m going out so don’t have much time. Will expand on this later.

It’s funny how I always want love
but then I see I am too selfish
to ever give it.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Mon Apr 15, 2019 1:19 am

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niteowl says...

#13

I live in chaos.
Day after day, I tell myself
I should organize, clear out the clutter,
But day after day, I fail.

The things I set aside “for now”
A million moments ago,
Still sit in the corner,
Waiting to me to bring them home.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Mon Apr 15, 2019 1:21 am

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niteowl says...

#14

I would love to write you a masterpiece,
the sort of work that spills out
all the longings of my heart
in perfect form,
words plucked out perfectly from the ether.

But all I have are unfinished stories
and words that will never say anything right.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Tue Apr 16, 2019 1:01 am

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niteowl says...

Okay this is a last minute attempt at April Madness, as well as a callback to something I wrote in a previous NaPo (ETA: shout out to @alliyah @fraey @paperforest for the references in the first stanza).

#15
the masters weave words
out of flowers, snow, city streets,
--all the colors of life.

i can only watch, mouth agape
as i study yet again
my jumbled mess of knots
and threads that never seem to find
the right place.

when i take a step back,
i strain to find the bigger picture,
but that was lost a thousand errors ago.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Wed Apr 17, 2019 12:30 pm

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niteowl says...

#16

if i am good at anything,
it is giving up.
i surrender at the slightest breeze
and cry in frustration
that i never move anywhere.

but this time,
i am determined
to fail at the thing i am best at.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Wed Apr 17, 2019 5:17 pm

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niteowl says...

#17 (tw for mental illness, brief suicide reference)

Spoiler! :

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Sat Apr 20, 2019 7:48 pm

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niteowl says...

#18
the stage is tilted towards you
nine years ago,
i was just trying to dance,
but you told me the truth
in a drunken shout you've long forgotten.

my therapist tries
to convince me you were lying,
but karma has punished me,
not you.

your life is Instagram-perfect,
while mine is just forgotten ruins.

i can't help but wonder
what my twenties might have been like
if i believed you were wrong
when you said
"nobody wants to be with you".

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Sat Apr 20, 2019 8:08 pm

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niteowl says...

#19
i'll be the actress starring in your bad dreams

congratulations, my friend.
i hope you're doing well.

i hope the proposal
was so perfect
she had it re-photographed
10000 times.

i hope she says it's not big enough
and you hope to god
she's just talking about the ring.

i hope the wedding
is everything she wants,
and you have to drink your way through it
when you realize you're waking up
to her valley-girl whine
every goddamn day for the rest of your life.

I hope that when you get sick,
it tastes like our douchebag-dare kiss,
and you're forced to think about my ugly face.

i hope when you two have kids,
you grit your teeth as you tell
the edited version of how you met,
because "we made fun of a girl
who was just trying to exist"
doesn't exactly sound romantic.

i hope sometimes
you think about the nightclub chandelier
you never noticed
and wonder what else
you might have missed.

but most of all,
i hope you wake up one day
and think that no one wants to be with you,
not even yourself.

Okay I think the previous two need some background, so I will enspoiler it here. Long and some language.

Spoiler! :

Okay, so back in undergrad, I studied abroad, and there was this guy I thought was pretty cute, at least initially. On our first weekend, we went out, and at some point, I was dancing. Maybe I was kinda trying to dance with him, but he said "I don't want to dance with you" in both English and Spanish. Okay, cool, I get it, whatever, kept dancing. At some point he must have gotten mad at me for being in his general vicinity again, because he shouted "NOBODY WANTS TO BE WITH YOU". Literally the worst thing you can say to anybody ever. It's destroyed me, to the point that I'm still babbling about it NINE FUCKING YEARS LATER. Oh and the best/worst part is towards the end of the trip, someone thought it would be hysterical for us to kiss (legit don't remember whose idea this was, but certainly not mine). You know how there's that homophobic "gag" in comedies where the two guys have to kiss and they're all grossed out? Yeah that was basically us.

Anyway, a few years later, I see on Facebook that he's gotten together with another girl who was on that trip. I don't hate her as much, but I know she was also talking shit about me behind my back. FWIW, I don't think they literally fell in love from talking shit about me, but I'm sure it was a bonding point and part of why they first became friends. Last fall, they got engaged, and it really hurt, not in an "OMG I'm still in love with him" way because ew, but more like wondering why karma hasn't gotten to him yet.

The bit about the chandelier is my favorite, but again needs some explaining. So one night, drunk me notices this freaking huge chandelier in the club and takes a picture. When I later posted pictures (silly me thought posting them being all drunk and sloppy would be my revenge, when I'm sure they loved it and laughed it off), they commented that they had literally never noticed it and made fun of me for noticing it. Yeah I'm not even making this up.

I know holding on to this is toxic, so maybe these terrible poems will help me "step into the daylight and let it go" to quote Taylor Swift again.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Sat Apr 20, 2019 9:38 pm

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Lib says...

Your poems are so goooooood!! <333

*insert quirky signature here*

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Sat Apr 20, 2019 9:43 pm

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niteowl says...

Thanks @Liberty500!

Okay so here is my poem inspired by some lines from @alliyah:

Spoiler! :

#20 on the shore

I am nothing without these memories
that have sunk me time and time again.

How many times have I surfaced
and hated myself for breathing
as the waves crash me into the rocks?

The old woman in the lighthouse
tells me that the pain means I'm healing,
that we can't rise again until we die,
and that one day, I will love myself more
with every breath.

I say that is impossible
and she shows me the scar on her left knee
that perfectly matches mine.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Sun Apr 21, 2019 2:45 am

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alliyah says...

Ah nite! I really like how #20 turned out! Your spin on those themes, is just really neat to see. One of my favorites of yours so far.

The middle stanza I enjoyed especially, "The old woman in the lighthouse / tells me that the pain means I'm healing". It sounds like an empathetic inner-voice or maternal figure giving that push of wisdom and encouragement that the speaker needs.

I've really enjoyed some of your short works too - where you pick just like a short snappy message, and just lay out the truth - like 11, 12, 14 & 16. They're succinct but deliver the message well.

I can't say I've been in the exact same situation as #18 & 19 - but the feeling of seeing exes or people who've hurt you run off and marry and have "picture perfect lives" Blegh! Yep, I've been there! And you capture that inner bitterness/regret/processing well.

I like what you do with condensing the narrative in 19, so that even without reading the explanation I feel like readers can get a pretty good sense of the story - I think maybe if it had a running metaphor going through it might amp up the poetic-feel of it even more. I do like the refrain of "I hope" in there.

You're right on track for finishing NaPo nite!! Keep it up! <3

you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now

but i have promised to return

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Mon Apr 22, 2019 12:46 am

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niteowl says...

Thanks @alliyah! Yeah I can see a metaphor helping that poem...maybe something to do with drinking or dancing? I mean it's a miracle that it's not just "Hate is a strong word, but I really really really don't like you"

#21

i feel like i don't have any right to cry,
but i am and i can't help it.

i haven't been in there since christmas,
haven't done a damn thing
to make it seller-ready.
i let my sister do all the work
because i'm useless anyway.

but even when i ran from it,
even when i thought i'd never come back,
it was always there.

it was never really mine,
i just lived there,
but it hurts to realize
i can't go back.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:17 am

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niteowl says...

Well I think I found my theme for the rest of napo lol. I’ll try to do better ones but right now I only have so much energy so I’ll try to keep this short. And so I don’t start crying again. On my phone so excuse the formatting.

#22

The rooms seem so much smaller
Now that they’re empty.

I know, you’d think it would be the opposite.

Maybe it seems less full
Without our things to fill it.
Maybe it’s because everything
Is painted in neutral,
A blank slate for a new family to fill.

Maybe it’s because for twenty five years
This was the center of the earth,
The base on which everything revolved

I spent so long trying to run from it,
But now I don’t want to let it go.

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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