bad poetry and aesthetic moronity

little musings, poetry nd bits of prose

[giventhemeans]

Sinking, yet Minor

(aka me trying to encapsulate the female experience)

Many things outline what it is to be a woman.  That sinking feeling, the drop of a heart, the adoption of another, finding motherhood in friendship,  seeking fatherhood in romance, the skin of your heels, knuckles burning, everything contained in a body.  Burning, aching, pulling, sucking, biting, spreading, spitting, anguished, languid, sex and the ethereal, hate and the ephemeral, machine and divine, dove and owl.  Punctuating sentences with actions, little words that spin into the air, to land right back into your head and seed themselves as flaws, sprawling instrumentals, silence. Guitar strings, strip poker, lips bitten and bloody, saliva over porcelain and the glory of another day done.  To be a woman is to be nothing and everything that has ever existed, to know the history of people you will never meet, never feel, never lay in the lap of, never cry with, scream at, love, kiss, touch, to know the feeling of power and subservience, to rationalize, to minimize, to shrink and feel so large, to take up a room yet never feel so small.  Nothing will ever compare to the ultimate oxymoron, of womanhood, streaks of what could've been in the dregs of what is, clots the size of coins laying limp in your purse, things that won't exist living bland lives in the mouths of those ignorant to sonder.  To be a muse, to be the painter, to be the solider, to be the war, to be the cat, to be the mouse, to be the tree, to be the fruit, to be the ivy, to be the home, to be the child, to bear the child.  To accommodate. To acclimatize. To wait, to wonder, to wander, to return, to burn.  A portrait of a woman can only capture one segment. The entire orange, the sphere can only be reflected in mother Earth, the only portrait of womankind is the portrait we violate, our eyes, our drills, our shovels, tears, and blood desecrate. 

[giventhemeans]

I hate your girlfriend

I wake up with vines around my neck.  I go to bed, the vines sing me lullabies.  They do not tighten after my mother's strangulation,  but her blue skin may graze mine when I start to choke. 

Adjustment works wonders, your  heart may be blue but your body pink  and you wander the world and nobody  may know your strife but their vines tighten all the same,  around my ankle leaves bloom but they won't stain my skin,  black ink leaves its mark consensually,  not as a show of strain but as a show of triumph. 

I would love to tell you you made it through,  your machete danced across those swarming vines,  made them thinner, easier to deal with, I would love  to tell you how lovely the sweater you wove with  the sinews of the ones you once lost looks on that  cerulean back of yours but your lips are purple. Green, blue and lilac  will never go with black,  your eyes, your mouth and nails  may roll forward, your brain stays stationary. 

So much happened when you were twelve,  but you are not twelve anymore.  You did not grow around your grief,  instead you grew inside your grief, and it spews itself into the vines you spread,  you transfer your grief, sap battery acid  from remote-controlled companions. 

[giventhemeans]

vodka on an empty stomach

TRIGGER WARNING IN GENERAL

Waking with wrists bound,  tossing and turning, in a bed wet with a cold sweat,  a pearl of intuition shining with red contusion,  you will not wake up for a week,  and you will forever feel unclean, as if the strangers you pass may breathe and the stench of blood and leather  will pervade their innocent, empty minds,  and your perception of the outside world will warp to fit experience,  and you will see those eyes in every gaze that lingers too long.  Your teeth with crush together,  your ears will wail, shaken by the silence,  begging for sound so profoundly that  it will make noise itself, through sheer force of will, it will, and  drowning out the noise will only make it stand out when the ears are given the torture of silence again. 

Crisis states will make the pearl shine once more,  a threat, a raised fist will make teeth clench,  will make blood rise through the nose again,  as if receiving a waft of a passing stench,  and it will cling. And you will freeze,  inevitably, you have been worn before  but no matter how rough the treatment  there was never a word shed as to  guide you, so your brain shakes  and shivers in its cold holster,  aching to be used, but you cannot  let your mind wander to your limbs, 

as you have woken up with your wrists bound again,  with a million whispers written across your skin  yet not a word to fill the silence of your expression.

[giventhemeans]

derealization as a dream

Nothing is connected,  only follows the same pattern,  the same code, facts of life as the ties that bind  continue to loosen, as they do,  and what tethers you to the mind,  to the optical comforts,  the pleasure of the rind,  a sharp tang of something  unwilling to be consumed, a kind of sickness that devours,  reluctant intimacy, become blind and get back up. Rise from bed, rewind the words you bled from an open wound  torn from your control,  something you could never get sick of.  It is sometimes quiet, never shared,  yet always present. 

[giventhemeans]

always the easel

i'll never hear anything worse than what i tell myself in the blue night, what i can't put down, euthanise like a dog that bites, what continues to be the only thing that relishes in me, what controls perception.

white flowers grow in my scars like weeds between cracks in the pavement, healing is just as painful as what hurt me in the first place but i can't seem to engrave anything else. there's no more room.

how i wish i could clean this dirty canvas.

i went to an art exhibition a few nights ago, and it reminded me of this old poem i wrote a while back. it's a vent one, somewhat near and dear to me?? idk, relapse after relapse it always reigns true

[weltenwellen]

Joy Sullivan, "Howl", Instructions for Traveling West

[giventhemeans]

when your heart begins to howl. good lord what a painful thing to express, how can something be so widespread yet so niche. seriously i love her.

[giventhemeans]

accusation

Almost twisted the way I wrote,  cursed your words, a barely-there relationship I smote, entirely, kissed thine hairline,  drew blood from a tongue to gloat how I had experience,  knew the hearts of men, I quote,  'I get around' to one who hated feminine,  shivering in a park, brought only a coat,  and I sat in his lap, words airy when rose,  he spoke like a curse, and his thoughts even worse,  cruelty and weaponry buried in prose,  a character played, a narrative composed where I needed comfort, I needed time,  he had the power, an emotional crime  where my feelings were mine without a moment of sharing, caring abandoned in a shell of heart-baring my teeth are out now, plucked out by sin,  deep in the pulse, smothered harsh within clouds of smog, smoke, virginity,  tales twisted amicably, agreeing just to win self-esteem back from what I gave to him,  it's my fault, I told him, took the burden under one arm, tucked it away, ate the lies as my hands shook and veins ran thick with bile,  I took the disrespect, handled it with softness,  kindness for weakness, an exchange to talk less,  more words that fly expose more that wasn't true,  more that only prove that that chance that I took with you was blind, provoked, poked in a cage of  spirituality, limbo, a moderate reality  in which afterlives are real, and they're tainted with mundanity,  no love to be found in a heart which pleads insanity, claiming to be a friend of me, just to get ahead of me,  a sickening display of power from the patriarchy steeped in it, his mind was, to put it darkly, pale lips spoke bigotry,  Nina's cries unheard to thee,  upon deaf ears doth justice speak.

[giventhemeans]

for an ex

one morning i'll forget how to love you.  i'll be standing in the kitchen,  sipping my coffee, peeling my orange,  and I won't set a slice aside.

and this town will one day kill me,  if i stay where kids smoke and where the creek continues to dry, one morning i'll up and leave,  and the rain will keep pouring,  but i won't be under it.

and if our paths cross,  as they inevitably will, tell me how it ended.  tell me how she broke you the way the last one did, and tell me you'd like to try again, because for one day i'd like the pleasure of saying no to you.

for the first time, i'd like to turn you down.