grandma died today. ovaries like sunlight snake through the blinds and paint plaster negative ohms.
she was my mom’s first word yet i won’t be my kid’s.
carving her grave wormlike echoes ebbing down to her as testamental goodbyes:
“you are a declaration” of what life should be deemed.
time spent spending time alone stealing time never spent.
Spoiler! :
it’s called go dodgers because the bus i took to work yesterday flashed that and it was what i wrote in the notes app for a different poem i was workshopping. listened to Mallard by World’s Worst on repeat while writing, mostly for tonal reasons.
this one’s just mostly about wanting to be a woman. which is a known secret to my partner, who wouldn’t stop grabbing at my phone when i was typing up this explanation. she’s been incredibly supportive about it. but it’s expanding on the matrilineal chain on my mom’s side of the family. grandma bonnie went through a messed up American life, so did my mom, and now im struggling with realizing that even though ive been shaped by them, i won’t be them.
negative ohms is play on the most common blood type for cis woman, negative o, yet i want the color of her blood as a woman to be known as live and electric.
first words is meant to be “ma”.
this poem is meant for those last two lines, redundant but honestly something I’m proud of. im sure if I find a better placement for them I’ll use it again.
it’s my partners younger sisters birthday today so we’re getting Korean bbq and going to our favorite bar as seen in a popular TV show from 2010 and it’s going to be fun. thank you. better poetry later.
"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."
2. I scrolled thru pics of other people’s kids online
CW: I USE A NAUGHTY WORD
i scrolled thru pics of other people’s kids online. dude next to me — nodding off — i weaved into porch swings, monsteras, and awnings you’d hang yourself on in my dreams of home.
if you were mine, i’d have built your crib out of premonitions; occasionally you’ll move ahead, finding brief glimpses of beauty someone will have the strength to take.
he’ll have his reason. cherry stems you chew’ll find root in the gardens you’ve crawled. routine: undo f####ing ugly freckles marked by holidays and homecomings.
thumb sucking only stretches the space — you won’t know that. travel through telephone wire and find shoes unwound. abandoning rubber allows the body to keep score.
Spoiler! :
ALRIGHT. this is a lot and i owe a lot to two people in specific.
1. @Rook yr offhanded remark about the wrongness of using a picture of another person’s kid is super funny and intriguing. when this goes up to review ill use a picture of another person’s kid.
2. @LadyBug we have never interacted but ive had a review drafted for yr spotlight poem the last day or so. it’s hard to get off the mind. some of these concepts existed in other drafts about angst yet didn’t feel concrete. the decision to rip the three line four stanza structure and slightly off-mirror the first two line are meant as homage. imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. there’s a rule about never referencing better art in your own, which rings true here, yet they’re still quite different. thank you for your wonderful poem.
this is about voyeurism, largely, and how trauma discourse is still young in the grand scheme of things. and wishing that i knew things about traumatic events that somebody could have definitely told me but didn’t and knowing that people lost their lives young since they didn’t have that information and feeling residual anger. simple stuff. i wrote it off and on while working. now watching futurama and eating tofu.
if you have notes please send.
"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."
decolonizing smells of you and piss in my denim, i used to mark scars like yearbook signatures. quinn knew what was up. he knew nothing at all. idle hands move coors light to the front, ask what whippets are. i’d see sun break new ground every morning. emptied google docs dimly lit adorned his dorm, us learning living life through acts of aggression.
Spoiler! :
named after a punk house I’d go to while I was still in college.
this is about substances and transgressions intended as acts of healing. how we grow is understanding how far we are able to fall back. it’s not a good poem because I didn’t spend much effort on it but I’m eating these lemonade sour patch kids and enjoying my life so I don’t really care.
"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."
i love seeing how your poetry has changed and evolved throughout the years all the while maintaining a very distinctive voice that's very much strange <3
Previously Flite
'And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.' ― Friedrich Nietzsche
WOW I love #2. lovelovelove. And I echo Apricity, your voice has changed so much and yet stayed so true to your poetic tone and aesthetic and I love to see the evolution. it's truly incredible
he’ll have his reason. cherry stems you chew’ll find root in the gardens you’ve crawled. routine: undo f####ing ugly freckles marked by holidays and homecomings.
This was my favorite line. particularly "cherry stems you chew'll find root".
EXCELLENT work!!! Love keeping up with this thread
4. everyone ive ever beefed with on YWS has since been banned and im still here (the effect by Lucy prebble) spoilered for crude content. 18+ advised.
Spoiler! :
i measure friendships lost by “kill yourself”s never sent.
Spoiler! :
this is a loaded one. it accomplishes one of my favorite things, having a title that has more words than the actual content. the usage of “kys” is because it’s such a huge thing in zoomer lexicon to tell someone, and it’s an efficient way to communicate feelings. it’s colloquial in this context, not referring specifically to telling other users that on here or in real life. but those kind of statements that are really charged things to say to a stranger or friend. and by refraining (never sending) KYS because it’s a horrible thing to say or that it’s not worth to say something cataclysmic to someone, it’s a silent yet perplexed way to end potential friendships.
this idea came up during a wfp jam, talking about what it was like on this website ten years ago. i thought back to countless moments of acting out towards others on here, in various fashions, and being told heinous things while dishing it back out. then, like three years ago, i interacted with a user i used to butt heads with on here on a completely different social form. in really weird fashion they kept asking who i was and saying that i was never important or notable enough on here (???) for them to remember. strange thing to say to someone saying hi.
anyways, looking back on them and others that i used to be a butthead to and realizing most of them have been called out for doing terrible things, it’s like “am i still the bad person in this dynamic”? you can still be a bad person no matter what and should hold yourself accountable if you feel you must, yet the inherent impulse to look at dialectics in black and white will always dominate.
it isn’t meant as a serious thing and wanted to get something out. shaped other stanzas around these lines but this is the best it’s going to get.
"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."
yeep, you've got a concise and devastating writing style. you were one of the main reasons I started writing poetry in the first place, and it's cool you're still knocking it out of the park.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
5. i wrote this poem yesterday and its formatted in pictochat so when i dont have stuff going on i'll upload it as a whole here replying to the nice things below
Spoiler! :
@LadySpark@Apricity <333 y’all, and likewise. there was a convo in a wfp the other day about yws poets that influenced our approach, i mentioned both of y’all, and it’s cool to see y’all continuing to create work that’s easy to admire. (we’ve been on here too long though)
@LadyBug thank you so much! ive been enjoying your poetry quite a lot. you’re definitely onto something.
@TheSilverFox this means the world, even from you. reading your thread it’s so sick how you’ve matured into that style, in a way that never feels tiresome for either me as the reader or you. please keep it up (and let’s perhaps catch up)
"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."
Ariadne, leavened, rose again against better judgment. not enough pills broken up. smog is smoke is pluming like easters been always known.
Spoiler! :
i haven’t posted in a few days because i think ive just been depressed for like no real reason, and the poem ive been working on is a big paragraph poem ill be so happy to share in the next day or so.
this poems kind of about easter, more so about drug usage around this time. hyperspecifically about sleeping pills and how it’s always like walking on clouds when you wake up, knowing it’ll fade in about a day, then feeling compelled to use again. it’s been long enough where I’m pretty cold and unaffected by it, yet it’s a real feeling to recall and always comes to mind around Easter.
smog like smoke is that it’s my first Easter in this city with a really huge smog problem and it’s funny because it’s no different than the smoke I’d see on this day in my hometown or college town.
hope y’all are well. happy Easter and happy Passover. this is the second year I’ve celebrated Passover instead of Easter (have a lot of close friends that are Jewish and that moved down here//know nobody who is strongly Christian) and it’s been really fun. watching people love their faith is sick.
"Words say little to the mind compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds."
replying to the nice things below
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