i love how 17 doesn't have any periods until the very end! it gives it a sense of rushing and panic, but also control and calm. i'm not making much sense haha but it's very good! awesome job <3
For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. Romans 6:14 NIV
never apologize for standing up for what you believe in.
previously MomoandAppa, LordMomo, MomoMajesty, and dancingontheclouds
omg these are all so good! These don't feel rushed at all despite being behind. Hard to pick a favorite, but I think it's between 12 and 14 and 16. Always such a weird feeling going through your old poetry and feeling like you both are and aren't that person anymore. Rooting for you to get to 30!
"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci
@momonster - I usually omit end punctuation until the last line if at all if I can help it! I feel like it breaks up thoughts or adds a breath where there shouldn't be one! Glad you noticed that!
@niteowl - The last-minute-rush is real this year! Thank you very much - those are some of my faves too! <3
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
--- 18. what a cruel way to leave; quiet like the sun-setting, like the summer-ending, like a sparrow falling into the the bottom of the sea
Spoiler! :
TEXT: it's not exactly how I imagined the conversation going, ending in a pause that felt turned inside out like a question-mark. but isn't that always how we've talked - in circles and unanswered absences ? what a brutal way to say goodbye in all this unspokeness
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
--- 19. what, if anything, is essential to being human?
--- 20. human: a definition
human (noun)
1. there is nothing quite so perplexing as their will to survive - we have even observed some speaking to ghosts (see: faith)
faith - an essential element of the human-condition. a decidedly irrational tendency to believe what can not be seen. note that this condition has led some humans to believe their fragile bodies can fly, become birds, & live. (see: ghosts)
ghosts - humans attached by love to stars. (see: faith)
2. without exception, all bear the same strong temptation to blind oneself by staring at the sun too long - this may be related to a belief that the stars are connected by invisible strings to veins, roots, & other earth-bound matters.
stars - specks of faith incarnated into fire-light, spread across all the night. suspended across time, & space. unexplainable, but utterly ubiquitous.
3. they tend to love too much (see: faith), give too much (see: ghosts), & say too much (see: love) - all against their better judgement.
- interestingly very few "humans" seem to be concerned with what they are - but they do have an answer for every query posed so far.
love - has yet to be clearly defined; but also has something to do with stars.
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
--- 21. you are entirely too much, too much, too much & etc.
Spoiler! :
TEXT: maybe if i crunched all that i am into a sea-shell, folded these ornery dreams tightly together, and snipped those loose-ends of mis-matched love and such, i could be acceptably available for you to carry around or display on your dresser. not that i really want to be, but i am tired of letting you down, with all this "too much" bursting out of the seams.
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
i. she is loud. she was born to the blare of tornado-sirens; & that was the last time anything ever dared to speak-over-her. she was loud, & purposely so, because she liked to be heard.
ii. she is here. this spring entered to the sound of tornado-sirens, & telling us we had nothing to worry about.
iii. this is spring. (a haiku) Spring entered loud, mad – to the sound of storm-sirens saying, “i am here.”
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
i'm always trying to find myself in hollowed places drawing my fingers through the empty raven's nest, and carving my initials into the crooked frame with her photo missing, inspecting the wavered footprints that cross the snow - and hoping i'll find where i've been, and i should know better than to let myself fall in love with all these ghost-hauntings, i should stop expecting to see you where you've promised not to be, but there's all this dissonant hope in the silence and so i sing myself into it, even if i know you will not return.
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
~~~24. maybe we're not supposed to hold this all; but it is hard not to try.
Spoiler! :
TEXT:
would you let me take a lock of your hair for safe-keeping, just to fold into these pages here -
sometimes i imagine those ancient hair-wreaths being made from locks of hair, pulled straight from the scalp, & eagerly woven in place while the subjects patted smooth their blistering skin with a grimace - i know this is not how these things were done - but i can't stop imagining the scene of aging grandmother pinning grandchild at her knees with wrinkled hands & greedily pulling root & tangled hair desperate - to save a little piece of now. - &
maybe i know how she feels; clinging at everything not expressly tied down, & making claims to moving rivers, & rushing wind, & fleeting horizon-scapes & weaving my own hair, & veins, & roots, & spider-webs into everything i want to hold, (even though i can't, even though my fingers aren't strong-enough & my palms not wide-enough to hold everything in place) but everyone seems so quick to disperse, like a flock of birds hit by an asteroid fire-working into the sky, like dandelion leaves being blown into a tornado, like this tide-pool becoming a rainstorm stretched miles & miles across the land - &
maybe i just want to keep us here. maybe i know i can't. but maybe i want to try.
I actually find hair-wreaths kind of scary, so please note, that this poem is just for poetic-purposes, I am not actually collecting anyone's hair. thank you. :3
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
---27. i know this feels undone, i know this feels like learning to knit in reverse using your heart for a string, but some broken edges of life are not for us to hold | be gentle with yourself, even if the world is not
Spoiler! :
TEXT: there are so many people pulling, in their grief, at stray-loose-ends, like these unfinished edges are weeds rather than arteries attached to hearts, that i worry sometimes that we are not far from unraveling.
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
do you ever worry, your poems' subjects are reading over your shoulder, and asking what you mean? i am very much feeling that this month, & sometimes the feeling is so strong, that i feel like it might be better to delete everything just to be safe. so if you think this is about you, it is better to assume i am only shaking out rocks i've been carrying in my shoes that have been stirring around for longer than i have known you. which is a poetic way to say - this is more about me, than you.
--- 28. (version two) in case i get so paranoid that i delete version one
Spoiler! :
TEXT: i suppose we should start at the end. / maybe you could believe that my hesitation / doesn’t have anything with how i bright i think the sun is, / or how the warm day is - / only with how the stars seem cruelly stark sometimes in contrast with the night / & i am scared, so desperately scared, that you will find all my worry over stars, to be simply too heavy to hold / i am scared, that these broken edges worn into wounds, will let the light fall out at the gaps / & i only worry about this because, i do not want this to be the end.
i actually had an experience at the end of last month, where i found out years ago some of my ancient childhood poetry had been read & misunderstood by someone i love, & it was incredibly painful. feeling almost like a past-self had been betrayed & misrepresented. & i do think it has changed how i write, or at least is changing how i'm writing. - it is nice to be able to assume that poems can be poems, without needing to be your permanent life-treatise, or your final statement on the entirety of your belief about a subject. if all my poems might bear a permanent author's note, perhaps it could read, "do not take this as seriously as you do. and do not read if you think you shouldn't be."
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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