if i look back, i am lost
#extradirty
Mike Driver
@theartofmadeline
taylor price
Keni
blake kathryn
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Noah Kahan
oozey mess
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Jar Jar Binks Fan Club
Color Me Curious
The Bowery Presents
YOU ARE THE REASON
untitled
almost home
🩵 avery cochrane 🩵
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cherry valley forever
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@bookmark-poetry
on watching a parent age
i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening
OP, this is genuinely a masterpiece, three poems in one, moving and well crafted. Please tell me you have submitted it to at least some poetry contests, and if not, please do so.
From the book Cut these words into my stone: ancient Greek epitaphs (Wolfe, Michael)
I got this while scrolling on instagram to try to convince me to join threads and I—
We did it. We finally saved her.
Bawling my eyes out brb
-Majnuu
The above quote was from one of Qays ibn al-Mulawwah (Majnun’s) poetry that was recorded for Layla bint Mahdi (Layla) before his descent into madness // Story of Layla and Majnun (book) was written by a Persian poet "Nizami Ganjavi" who wrote this masterpiece based on a true story of a young man called Qays ibn al-Mulawwah (Majnun) in the 7th century when Arabs defeated Persia and Ctesiphon was destroyed and Persians built Iraq. // Originally the book was published in 1484 AD
anyways. ingeborg bachmann
hope is a skill
hope is a weapon you are trained to wield
favourite additions
You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.
Theodor would approve.
As fucked up and traumatized and emotionally unavailable as my father was… he fuckin tried. He tried so goddamn hard. Went to PARENTING CLASSES on HIS OWN. Taught himself HOW TO READ so he could read me bedtime stories. He taught me how to be independent. How to stand up for myself. How to fight back. He taught me how to not need men like him.
My dad broke down in fucking tears once because he wasn’t doing (in his estimation) a good enough job of braiding my hair before school
This fucking guy got dumped by my mom in the middle of the night. She just fucking ditched both of us. He became an alcoholic from the pain, can’t blame him. But then he saw the way it was hurting me. And he pulled his shit together. HIMSELF. No rehab. No AA. Stupid motherfucker went cold turkey at home alone except for me and I held his hands while he begged god for mercy through his DTs.
Dad would fuckin play Mockingbird for me because he was so bad with words and needed me to know how he felt.
My dad taught himself how to read at the age of like 45 so that he could read me Harry Potter as a bedtime story after my mom left and it still makes me emotional. Like he cared that much.
And also. You can tell when someone is either proud or ashamed to be a girl dad. And my dad was so fucking proud. He had trouble saying it, he’s maybe only said it once or twice to my face, but I can tell he’s so proud of me
After I came out to him as bisexual, I brought him a pride flag that I had gotten at a parade… it’s still, to this day almost a decade later, hanging on his dining room wall.
"Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds" - Ada Limón
someone could probably say something pretty about fossils, constellations, and stars in the sky
poem inspired by this rock and also by @two-bees-poetry
also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.
AND THE COYOTES HOWLED, Lev St. Valentine, Part I
AND THE COYOTES HOWLED, Part II
What if water didn't have surface tension and whenever you spilled some, the whole floor of your entire apartment was covered in a 2 micrometer deep puddle
you've taught me to count blessings I didn't know were mine
you're allowed to be held.
stepped on a plum (overripe plum) (barefoot) it was on the driveway got out of the car and accidentally (didn't know it was there) stepped on the plum (warm) (on the ground) (it had fallen from the tree) barefoot (no shoes) wearing long pants (too long) (need to hem them) plum viscera got on them (the pants) unexpected plum on the driveway (hot plum) (97 degrees out) already super hungover (throwing up all morning) (should not have been driving at all) and I stepped out of the car (black car) (97 degrees out) and onto the plum (unexpected) (didn't know the plum was there) and it burst (plum nightmare on my only good pair of sweatpants) still we find ways to keep ourselves going from day to day
guess what post just got read aloud in poetry club tonite by an unknowing club member as I watched on in terror
Achievement Unlocked: Meatspace Containment Breach
I am learning to imagine the future:
My sycamore tree began life in the gravel at the edge of a parking lot. If trees can feel pain, that is a painful, unlucky death. I carefully dug it up and put it in a pot I made out of a disposable cup.
Hello small one. This world may be cruel, but I will not be.
I decided to take care of it, not expecting it to survive, and when my sycamore tree unfurled one tiny leaf and then another, it chiseled a tiny foothold in my terrified brain, the kind of brain that doesn't remember a world before the atomic bomb and before 9/11.
I googled the lifespans of trees. My neurons had to stretch and expand to accommodate what I learned: My sycamore tree may live five hundred years. It's hard to think something so big. In twenty years, my baby sycamore tree will be three stories tall, and the home of many creatures. In five years, my sycamore tree will be taller than I am. In one year, it will be summer.
There's this concept called sense of foreshortened future where people who have lived through trauma can't conceptualize a future for themselves because deep down they don't expect to survive, When I look forward, all I see is fire and death, melting ice and burning sky. We were raised Evangelical. All we see is Judgment Day, except there is no heaven.
But now there is a tiny gap in the wall, a crack in the door of my cell
and on the other side, I see a tree
There is, in the future, a great old sycamore tree, full of clean winds and the stir of a thousand wings. A hundred years from now. Fifty years from now. There will be forests in that world. There will be a world.
It takes courage, but we have to imagine it.
Most tree species can live in excess of three or four hundred years. I think I'm learning something. I think there are ancient voices saying hello small one, touch the dirt and the leaves, for now you are part of something that cannot die
in 2030 I will be thirty years old and the world will not have ended and there will still be hummingbirds, and we will have photos of the stars more beautiful than we can now imagine.
I planted an Eastern Redcedar; they may live nine hundred years. There will be nine hundred years. The people in that time will remember us. Maybe we will meet the aliens (hi aliens!).
I will blow out the candles on many birthday cakes in a world where there are wolves in dark forests far from home. I am learning to imagine the future. I learned recently that elk were reintroduced to the Appalachian Mountains after over a hundred years of extirpation, and that they are expanding their range.
That tiny crack I can see through now opens a tiny bit more:
Maybe elk will pass through my hometown, maybe there will be a forest where the pasture is on the high hill that I can see from my home
say it, say it, say it: ten years, thirty years, a hundred years from now
I am learning to imagine the future. There is a crack in the wall of this prison, of this machine, of this darkness, and through it, I see a tree.
By Alex7
