crow poems

ezra✨ it's my poetry blog welcome hi -also if y'all ever need stuff tagged i will do that

[adorners]

hi! my name is DEADNAME i hear it resonate through my dysphoria i recoil from my body i desperately want to hold a match stick up to my birth certificate and watch every letter blacken into ash, when i grow up to be a tombstone i want you to burn me too ignite all the dresses i wore to church my name is WOMAN and no matter how many times i insist that it is not i will be categorized with a quaking punch in my stomach and i will throw up SHE no matter how many times i jam this hoodie into a washing machine it will reek of MISS i am cloaked with words of caution to the public (WARNING: GENDER-NONCONFORMING) in attempts to subdue the truth because if it unraveled i would be myself and myself will shatter minds and destroy virtue because my psyche is a crime scene my humanity is a dangerous opinion and my identity is a car crash it is a siren wailing magenta it wraps around my chest like police tape i wish i could use it as a binder those knuckles feel infinitely more therapeutic than the aftershock of FEMALE i would much rather be bruised and downtrodden and battered and beaten from every centimeter of my body than to submit to the declarations of GIRL i want you to punch me again please punch me again please punch me again please punch me again please punch me again please my name is DELUSIONAL and i heal paper cuts with bow ties because it’s as close as i can get to a suit when me and my wardrobe are confined within the same nine square feet of wooden floor and i still come close to weeping when i get my flu shot but fill that syringe with testosterone and by god you can slay me like a beast, skewer that needle through my skin like a katana and i will embrace it i will live for the torment, pretty hurts and by god i am a masochist, to mask the sting by god i will sing like a gospel, a gospel who gets called handsome by strangers and owns a voice deep as a goddamned ravine my name is SNOWFLAKE and i hope i give you hypothermia, asshole. my name is PUSSYBOY and i drank too much lemonade at the movie theater so i must make a choice whether to get scolded and renamed PERVERT or to get pummeled until i piss myself so i decide to just wait until i get home, i look in my desk during a geometry lesson and i discover a sticky note that threatens to make my name another hashtag, the beginning of a dozen breaking news articles titled TRANNY TEEN TO BE SCROLLED PAST (followed by either victorious chuckle or exhausted sigh) my name is YOUNG LADY and while filling out my passport application i flooded the box with an M beside it with ink and never told my mother and i smiled to myself for the first time that week and i still don’t regret it i will never regret it because no matter how many times i hear edicts of DAUGHTER she can never take that precious M away from me my name is SINNER and i am a disgrace to faith a mutant a freak an abomination a monstrosity not a man just a girl who aspires to mutilate herself into an excuse for one i am a shapeshifting sorcerer you see LESS THAN HUMAN little do you know i am a FUCKING DEMIGOD and i may be the owner of weeping willow twigs for arms and i may be left on the brink of passing out when i climb up the stairs but i will grip you by the collar of your shirt and haul you into hell with me on the other side of this mirror, by god my name is MATT. i found this out at age fourteen. i deciphered myself at age fourteen. it’s just one syllable. it is a firecracker mistaken for a gunshot and i will leave cisnormativity riddled with bullets and the pistol’s name will be MATT, a kid from middle school will run into me on the street and tell me they can’t quite remember what my name is and i’ll shamelessly rewrite history and remind them, it’s MATT, a lady at starbucks will ask what to write on my cup and i will say MATT and she’ll spell it with one T instead of two because you know how starbucks is but i honestly won’t give a shit, it’s good enough, i will scream my revelation from my fire escape at four in the morning in triumph MY NAME IS MATT and someone will yell back from their car HEY MATT, SHUT THE FUCK UP and i’ll take it as a tribute, MATT is a MAN and HE sliced his body open and poured ecstasy inside when a cashier called him SIR that one time at walgreens, MATT is yet another piece of proof that the assignment received by some fucker in a lab coat doesn’t have to be a prison and you don’t fully understand these boxes we’re crammed in until you break them yourself, MATT’S individuality is authentic HIS love is authentic HIS reflection in the mirror is authentic and its name is MATT, MATT found out the life expectancy of a transgender person is around thirty-two years old and you better believe that MATT will live to be thirty-three and HE will give a little bit of hope to trans youth who don’t even think they’ll be able to wake up to sixteen and HE will give a big ol’ fuck you to everyone who doesn’t think HE deserves to breathe in their world for that long, by god, you better believe that MATT will live to be thirty-three, you better believe that MATT will make it to thirty-three, you better believe that HE will make it to thirty-three, you better believe that I will make it to thirty-three

SYNONYMS FOR MATT (via adorners)

[crowems]

hello friends. i've been very inactive here. but please give me topics to write poems about. most anything is good. thank you

[voicemailpoems]

“My therapist thinks my name is Alex” by Alec Balasko

Listen:

My therapist thinks my name is Alex

and I’m too embarrassed to correct him at this point.

Like I’ve already been going there for over a month, and he still has no clue that my name is actually Alec.

At this point it feels like I would be inconveniencing him to tell him he is mistaken

Despite the fact that it’s actually his job to be inconvenienced by my problems

Yet I still hold my tongue.

It’s a trait I learned over years of being fine

of ignoring the screaming anger in my brain

of pushing away the thoughts of wanting to kill myself

of avoiding making anyone uncomfortable.

And I think that’s what it is.

I don’t want my pain to make anyone else uncomfortable

because hasn’t it already hurt me enough?

Why would I want to darken somebody else’s day with my shadows?

And so instead I try to take whatever light I have left inside of me

and put it on display

attempting to hide myself behind it like hiding a tsunami behind a sputtering match

And as the thoughts in my head weigh me down

like bricks in my backpack,

I try my hardest to keep standing up straight

Painting a smile on my face because if anyone else knows about these weights

They will try to take them upon themselves

So I hold out my light and say smiling:

“LOOK! I’M FINE! Look how bright and shining I am!

So I’ll just be here,

Painted-on smile filling with cracks

Bricks pulling me down until

I am under the tsunami of myself

Waiting for someone to pull me up and tell me

You don’t have to keep shining.

————————————–

Alec Balasko called us from Evanston, IL.

SUPPORT US ON PATREON voicemailpoems.org // 1-910-703-POEM

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[crowems]

here is the dull, here is the quiet dull. here is the silent persistence, the pernicious self. here is the mirror and the toothbrush, and the shower where you shed stomach lining and yellow paint like a corn snake. you simply need a place to breathe, yet here water flows like an unending ballad. here is the delicately sharp hope holder, and the glint of chicago behind suburban foregrounds and windchill. here is the crushing reality, the horrible and usual weight that is unbearable and here is the drip of water out of the fish tank like an explosively silent kick drum. holding your head in your hands, you ask the absent omniscience above or below: "Why am I me so irreversibly?" and they call down to you with the calamity of the stars, their voice like the still canvas of the lake. here you stand and ask and ask.

[mysharona1987]

Probably the best ever response to the “How/Why did you become a writer?” question.

[crowems]

once, i set my ringtone at full volume to wait for calls to wake me from dreams that were just the same. a Marimba of "i love you" and repurposed kisses. now he doesn't answer my calls and the voicemail sounds more like how i remembered it when we were something. at nights i lie to myself. i say that things fade out and in, the aurora borealis of life. i say that i wanted it too. "I'm sorry, the voicemail box is full. goodbye" and now i am the endless dial tone.

[crowems]

god sorry it's been so long since i've posted stuff here I'm applying for a summer program so I can't post any poems til the 17th. but they're coming don't worry

[boykeats]

36 HOURS AFTER CONTACTING THE SUICIDE HOTLINE

the moon with its holy shadows & scars sings to me as i brew my chai with extra cinnamon. the chipped tea kettle: a harmony. my moving hands: a harmony.

to think i might have missed this morning’s sight of daffodils blooming in february, or this afternoon’s imagining of my lover’s smile as he leans out of his window. yesterday while i sat with the phone in my trembling hands, someone ate a huge slice of birthday cake, chocolate & decorated with roses made of yellow frosting, their laughter

ensconced in candle smoke. someone bought their first acoustic guitar in a music shop teeming with vinyls of tender songs they might one day know how to play. a child just figuring out how to walk stumbled back & forth from one set of parents’ legs to another, grinning the whole way through, like i did once back when the only thing i knew about god was that foxes were bright red & in the summer damsons gleamed out from our front yard plum tree.

you’re not a burden, the person on the other end of the line told me. this pain is temporary & one day you’re going to know so much beauty that even your bones will shine with the light of it. so i hold on to my hot tea. this kitchen dances with a silence which understands that soon the sweet honeybees will be kissing the lavender sprigs again & a different set of constellations will start waking up in my blue patch of night sky.

i take my time drinking it all down. i feel the blood inside my body, this gentle constancy of my heartbeat. tomorrow’s forecast calls for heavy rain & you bet i’ll be standing right there in the swelling music of it, soaked through to the skin & alive, & wildly alive, & achingly alive.

[duncantargaryen]

[jamiemortara]

CNN Poem 02/14/17 . happy Valentine’s Day

[crowems]

humming daisies grow long down my throat until the stems tickle my stomach and ask to push through to sing melodies to the rain-damp dirt i am owned by the garden again and my cinder block self erodes away. my eyes are sundials following the time passing between old and remembered and my legs are only stable enough to keep the rhythm for so long. my blue and white patterns are called that for a reason. but even they break, and then what am i? a lonely flower pot filled with cold rain. the watering can stands empty.

[crowems]

cleav·age ˈklēvij/ noun 1. a sharp division; a split. 2. the guillotine to my chest tearing off pseudoselves 3. we don't talk anymore, we're done with, we're over, and you'll spit in my eyes if I look your way 4. 60 Bridge Circle and the drive past it each day on my way to work. Remembering why you can't go back is the same reason you're alone. 5. jealous heat, kisses that burn, and wax memories dripping down your chest 


[crowems]

i flick my devil tongue to your back spit fire to the ground and watch it catch and let the smoke filter in to your lungs i take a razor to nape of my neck and clean up the hairline edging around the curves like the walls of an ice rink i wrap myself in choking paper and wear the same t-shirt for days looking to my pile of clean clothes as if it were sacred and untouchable i paint my face sand and i speak like the canyons and am the earth i softly graze you and feel light and i let you wash over me like sunlight and curls

[crowems]

forest fire lit as i furiously tap the screen, sparks catching each other in a handhold and winding up my arms to lick under my chin or turmoil building in the pit of my stomach like a steady hurricane, and discomfort spirals within me to be named "Charlie" or "Truman". the waves crash into my chest and meet the blaze there as hot rage burns into pirouettes of envy. from my throat, a molten scream and a quiet drowned anthem: stay far from me do not touch what i have grown lay your embers away from my garden and drizzle on another field. look through me.

[boykeats]

A Study In Trans Masculinity by Keaton St. James

[crowems]

seen scurrying into caves, entrances draped open like shocked mothers, to lie awake and stare at silver ceilings and selves for hours hours hours.

love resides in a quite seaside town, with a small boat and a few neighbors. they send postcards to boys which land as lips on one another and they send letters to the beaches to coax salty hair into sandy fingertips. and affection can crash down down down.

wrapped in cable knit sense of connectivity, he sobs into himself. all he has is this and the green glow of the alarm clock ticking on on on.

fingers drip envious indigo that glitters sliding down the doorframe and spits into her drink from across the room, batting lashes as her nails endlessly tap tap tap.

the resident pink shone forth from the ribcage. press the budding and sweet feeling to my hand. call love into the velvet night and she’ll light the starts like lace through the drone of forever and ever and ever.

[boykeats]

speak the honey-thorn

we never say, saint judas. only say, devil judas, look at the unholy bruises on your neck. never say, maybe jesus wants to kiss you there and speak the honey-thorn name of forgiveness. only say, see how your body trembles dark- stained by the river reeds. never say, we all love with the same unbearable heart-stained hands.