fergutful

Mikey Jakubowski | Midwest US Songwriter/Poet | "Don't you forget that I am poetry, that I am not meant to be just read, but understood."

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To/From Self/The Self I Want To Be

This is how the story goes: I go. I go and I force myself to never test the water. I go out into the big bad world with my dry-erase name.

I use the eraser more than the marker.

This is how the story goes: I wake up and feel like I’ll vomit. I take a shower and feel like I’ll vomit. I eat food and feel like I’ll vomit.

I never vomit.

This is how the story goes: I’m depressed but I don’t know how to be. I cry after every time I laugh because happiness is like

all the earring backs that I’ve dropped in the sink.

This is how the story should go: I’m fine. I’m not golden, I’m not rotten; I’m just fine. Life becomes less coffin. Sleep becomes less life.

Sitting in the kitchen talking to mom and dad becomes what I need it to be: timeless.

This is how the story should go: I shake only when I am cold.

The image of ironing my brain stops being euphoric.

This is how the story should go: Birds are no longer too loud. I am no longer too quiet. I listen to myself and I speak when I need to.

I understand that I have depression; depression does not have me.

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To/From Self/The Self I Want To Be

This is how the story goes: I go. I go and I force myself to never test the water. I go out into the big bad world with my dry-erase name.

I use the eraser more than the marker.

This is how the story goes: I wake up and feel like I’ll vomit. I take a shower and feel like I’ll vomit. I eat food and feel like I’ll vomit.

I never vomit.

This is how the story goes: I’m depressed but I don’t know how to be. I cry after every time I laugh because happiness is like

all the earring backs that I’ve dropped in the sink.

This is how the story should go: I’m fine. I’m not golden, I’m not rotten; I’m just fine. Life becomes less coffin. Sleep becomes less life.

Sitting in the kitchen talking to mom and dad becomes what I need it to be: timeless.

This is how the story should go: I shake only when I am cold.

The image of ironing my brain stops being euphoric.

This is how the story should go: Birds are no longer too loud. I am no longer too quiet. I listen to myself and I speak when I need to.

I understand that I have depression; depression does not have me.

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Straight Boy

Straight Boy makes a joke about fucking his dude friend and i remind myself to get a sense of humor, maybe join in with them this time, man up, something. All the faces lift to release their laughter after forcing it in for so many HOURS, those poor straight boys, always being told to “make new jokes,” “nicer ones,” “less insensitive” —how are they supposed to stay sane, uplifted?

But not me.

I’m in the room thinking back to the first time I ever saw a man and felt butterflies in my stomach, told myself to “Quit it; you’re straight, you’re straight” until I was 15 and didn’t know how many more times I could respond to a god damn Straight Boy asking if I was gay and laughing when I said No.

I’m in the room four and a half years after coming out, telling myself to Get Over It when I really want to ask, “Don’t you know what it’s like to want to be something else?” or why I have to respect their insecurities but they don’t have to respect mine, or maybe why they think it’s so much harder for them to stop making fun of people than it is for me to keep hating myself.

Straight Boy flings his dick at me in the locker room, then makes a “faggot” joke in class.

Straight Boy bends his friend over to pretend-fuck him from behind, and I think of how inappropriate it would be if I opened up one of my girlfriend's legs and did the same.

Straight Boy forgets I’m gay and makes a joke about sucking my dick and I leave because what the fuck am I supposed to say to that?

Straight Boy slaps friend’s butt supportively at the game, then slaps it again later, winking and doing the Gay Boy Voice.

Straight Boy gets mad when I finally ask him to stop. Straight Boy doesn’t stop. Straight Boy won’t stop.

Straight Boy doesn’t know anything but his own story.

-Mikey Jakubowski

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Don’t Listen To Them

Parents are going to hit you, classmates clawing at the chance to embarrass you in middle school bathrooms.   Partners will treat you like you’ve been passed down in a will, teachers   interrupting you like cutting off the ends of your sentences will help them grow longer.   Friends will dispose of you like leftover dinner, but don’t listen to them: you are still important.   You are still a chasm of love and a canyon of worth. You still get to make the choice of stargazing or sleeping, of   saying or screaming, staying or leaving.   You are still important, so explode into the world with anger and fire and words and more fire and   make them know how they hurt you.   You are still important, so don’t take apologies, take trying and changing and remember that   you are meant to be kissed not cut, joked with not about.   You are meant to be your own property not theirs, listened to not lessened, savored not sent.

Take with you the ropes they used to choke you and tie them like a swing you can fly from

out over the lake and into the love you were never offered.

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Self love isn’t always about changing self image. Sometimes it’s about separating yourself from people that abuse you. Sometimes it’s about letting yourself miss an assignment bc you’re too fucking sad. Sometimes it’s about running to the bathroom to cry your eyes out. Just being there for yourself when it feels like no one else is.

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From my poem “On Hold.” Read the whole thing here.

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I spent most of the day cleaning my room. Then I saw my best friend and gave them a whole box full of random things they like, and little Valentine's cards. Then made an imaginary friend who went on a valentine date with me. How was your Valentine's?

Sounds nice!! Thanks for sharing. I went to breakfast with some friends and then played a gig with some other friends at a fancy lil restaurant. It was a good time!

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Tell me about your Valentine’s days, huns. Anon or not ~~

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People tend to think depression only manifests itself in people that are reserved and alone and timid, but depression is not picky; even the loudest, most extroverted, playful people struggle with it. This quote is from my poem “What Does It Feel Like To Be Hungry?”

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Thoughts on being an artist: It's difficult for me, as an artist, to grasp which parts of me are okay to disclose to people and which ones are not. I've always wanted to be the artist that says it like it is, that is honest and raw and human— not god-like or bulletproof or unbeatable; these things would only be an injustice to myself and everyone around me. I believe I've done a fair job of publicly displaying my wounds and, of course, only to encourage other people to do the same— to talk about their dark side, to be vulnerable (strong), to de-stigmatize being emotional. But often I have this sense of losing myself, like I have unremittingly given away even the most delicate parts of me. I know that, as an artist and as a performer, my job is to share my experiences, but how many of them? If I turn my heart inside out and lay it on the table, am I allowed to then cover up certain parts of it? If I take the bandaid off, how long until the air starts to sting? At what point does my honesty become self-harm?

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On Hold

Wait for Tambora to come flooding through the windows,

for the moment the wounds in your lungs become less

borrowed and more taken: this is when you

run, when you finally make the move to the telephone

–call 911, tell them your

buttons don’t button the way they used to,

that there’s never enough windows for all the walls you put up,

that semicolons are no longer enough; you need a period.

When Tambora erupted, it covered the world in ash,

induced a winter so long it caused a global depression;

sometimes I think it’s still here, stuck like a can in the ice

in the bloodlines that were never warm enough to unfreeze it,

—or maybe it was that they were too hot, bubbling at boil in

each of our chests until they popped, a thousand

diatremes spitting up onto themselves.

“911, how can I help you?”

“I tried, I swear,

I tried.”

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Poem For Not Knowing How To Let Go

Again, I make myself round for you,

shaving the hips, the shoulders down until

perfectly shaped for your hard hands.

Tonight I have had more wine than

expected, but for once I can see the life

in things again. I can, at the very least,

feel it within myself, buzzing in my belly.

Sadness, though familiar, feels far,

but the scarring, the cuts, they are still here.

They are red as the blood I’ve let myself let go.

Still, I find myself crying at the thought of you.

Still, I feel that hole in my chest, that

knife to the gut, rusty and engraved with my name.

Still, I am lost in the rotting forest of myself.

When I am done here, finished with all that

I have to give and take, will I be able to

tuck it away? Leave it here to forget about?

Will I be able to go out and find myself again?

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Morning smog written In sloppy handwriting Across my face. Irises blooming by the Kitchen door. Your arms still absent From my shoulders. A ghost I never Asked To brew my coffee.

the sorry you made of me (via fergutful)

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Sometimes you feel like a house leaking natural gas into the street

and you’re afraid that if someone whips out their lighter for a cigarette,

you’ll explode, but this is me telling you, “Don’t wait for the lighter;

explode.”

-mike ferguson

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Autobiography

This time it’s in my teeth, buzzing, clipping, whistling even, like the kettles of water I used to boil for the sound. It’s a nuisance to you, I’ve noticed, how quiet I am, lips curling open like old wallpaper, trying, revealing my discolored interior. I cry and cry about it each night and wastefully so, all that water leaving me—I want it back. But my life is not one to be filled, to be cared for, to be rocked in the kitchen in your arms as I spread tomato seeds into my cutting board. We give the baking dish to the oven but I wish it was me this time.   This time it’s up the back of my neck, a cowlick from too many ponytails, a knife poking out but feeling like it’s coming in. You follow me to the bed and I pull my leg away from you when I think you feel uncomfortable. But then you place your head to the back of my shoulder and all the books start flying around the room, hitting the walls and splitting, opening only to pages with the words “pain,” “regret” printed on them. When I get up to leave I’m stopped by my life story telling me to let go of loving you. I’m trying.   This time it’s around my chest, closing in, squeezing, choking, making it easier to give away my breath than to take it. In my bedside drawer I’ve kept an inhaler but each asthma attack is getting warmer and warmer, higher and higher, farther and farther away from you. On the wall, a note is saying “call Mom” in my handwriting, but I don’t listen to strangers and now you are there gripping my hand, my body bending, bargaining for air. For every wave of love you send haring at me, I find it impossible to return. I love you, but this is all I ever was.

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Leave Me Alone by Mike Ferguson

I’ve really noticed this year how sensitive I am to the way straight men treat so many minorities, including my own. It manifests in me in so many ways, but the most common is anger and, often, I don’t know how to handle that. I end up screaming at the people I love and eventually just shutting them out, and I hate that. None of us want to be that sour monster, seeking passive aggressive revenge, but it’s what oppression makes of us.

Straight men shame all these minorities for being “over-sensitive” or “offended by everything” or “too PC,” for being angry in our activism, but they never think to consider the fact that they are the ones causing us to feel that way. Heated political rhetoric may not always get us far, but it’s sure as hell justified.

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This week has been so shitty tbh, so I bought myself some flowers the other night and called it taking care of myself. It's nothing extraordinary, but these lil colorful things have definitely comforted me. 10 outa 10, u should definitely get one for yourself