poetry of ash

ash (they/them) || buncha babblings someofmariesmusings: the wordpress edition

[hourglassfingers]

i’ve got so many dangerous thoughts locked in the trunk of my rib cage that threaten to climb through my tongue and become a parasite in other people dangerous, not malicious at least, it’s not supposed to be once i feel it climb through the catacombs from heart to mouth i frantically try to stuff them back in my dusty coat pockets and clip their wings there and pin them up in the darkest nooks of my mind for just myself to see in disgust all of it threatens to consume everything that might have been good everything else spills a glass knocked over a stuffed bag pierced a word slips, and i stumble it looms so much higher than me and threatens to topple over every tower i have built i can’t speak i can’t speak they won’t understand i don’t understand everyone turns away if i unlock this cage in terror of what threatens to flutter out those who have tried leave with empty hands and heavier hearts, a look of horror on their face

the time i took to wrote this speaks more than the writing itself

[hourglassfingers]

people are products we sell ourselves as something indispensable, new and improved, better than the leading brand one problem: everyone’s got the same campaign

a.m.m.t.

[hourglassfingers]

it’s against the rules to show people why your hands are covered in callouses with the inner workings of the ink storms in your mind but no you can’t! one look at your ramblings and they’ll find frantic tones that fit better in a hyperbolic mental asylum than on smooth paper built for prettier words, calmer this paper is meant for soft sunsets and pastel colors not dark ink and vitriol, sharp cynicism no one can see that they’ll read it the wrong way with pity and concern that’s not the point or worse – they’d tear it all down erase the creations and the products of an imagination cultivated over a life of loneliness and too much time spent thinking you can’t let them take their little white chemicals and arrow-sharp mind belittle all the crescent moons pressed into tough, tea kettle skin and all the purple acid stuffed in the choked esophagus of someone with a stomach filled with dragonflies every cramp in hand, every broken hangnail cannot go to waste just because you were foolish enough to trust that people would actually tolerate the paper you’ve become

all of my paper cuts

[hourglassfingers]

if you stitch me up i can’t promise that i won’t yank out the seams; not because the threads are vile but because my body still believes it is just another wound

a.m.m.t.

[hourglassfingers]

these words are for someone more eloquent

these words are for someone who doesn’t collapse under their weight

[hourglassfingers]

you promise you won’t laugh i promise you will because no one reads anymore because no one writes anymore because you’ll say my writing is the physical embodiment of mental instability and you’ll say it’s all sociopathic because it’s too open it shows so much i have to cover up like there’s a dress code for honesty “promise me you won’t say this again” “it’s just a bad grab for attention” don’t you see? i’m trying to breathe by painting art with words and you want my canvas blank drain my river you want my ink going to something concrete, not deep not something revealing with meaning you want rhymes and optimism without grit and dirt spilling and soiling the illusion of the joy in writing you wouldn’t want to see my work it is the dirt under long fingernails it is the gum on the soles of your shoes you don’t want to read everything i want to say you want to slap the ink tears out of me

my lips are not sealed

[hourglassfingers]

i don’t know what adults care about more: whether we make it out successful or whether we make it out alive

a.m.m.t.

[hourglassfingers]

no one can know that it hurts so bad to not let anyone see that you’ve seen them in ways no one else might

i am invisible affection

[hourglassfingers]

you set the stage and you have played us all for fools you made sure that we were thoroughly enthralled in your tragedy so that it really tugs and rips when you pull that hook straight through our cheeks in case you didn’t know: it hurts and it’s not as unnoticeable as you’d like to hide you ensured your failed subtlety in a manner of three steps on your checklist one - write in the lines people would crack open for a grasp of smoky tendrils of hope. everything between the lines to maybe reveal something between the sheets. (but god hope it’s much more than that) two - align the stars slightly off an axis for them to just barely barely get a hint of Something Else and barely barely poking at it with a graze of a fingertip to knock comets off balance and create collision courses to crack the fabric of ignorant reality and three - and this is quite the worst killer - sever all strings attached to such implications and brutally crush anyone who believes otherwise into smithereens of false hope then lights. camera. curtain call. congrats you have caught us in that millisecond that mocks a tragedy over and over in a dangerous and hopeful cycle

the hook dug into our palms

[hourglassfingers]

we sit too close to the windows  during lightning storms and flash floods and our nerves sing every time a spark of heaven snatches itself away from our eyes

a.m.m.t.

[hourglassfingers]

it’s not just scratches and scribbles on a page it’s a brain trying to claw its way out of a skull and a soul trying to tear off its fleshy cage

because this nonsense is all i have

[hourglassfingers]

i’ve run out of things to say everything looks menacing when every word silences its noise when every word unscrambles itself in the skewed lines of my brain all i’m left with are the shattered lines that i laid my heart on for no one to see the noise in my head may have been a nuisance but the silence roars louder than the aftermath of bombs because my mind has been obliterated “i’m busy” is an excuse because there is always time to think for fuck’s sake, i’ve only got time to think because my mind is not a clean slate, none of me is there are words sewn into the invisible atoms on the callouses of my hand and the cramps and ink stains from ages ago but i can’t think anymore when now everything is a cycle and i must censor everything because i once opened my mouth and a black flood came out and everyone hated my ink stained teeth

there is nothing worse than a blank page

[hourglassfingers]

you call it love, but pluck the petals from that dandelion and unfurl them from your hopeful palms crush them into exposed wishes and bury them underneath the soil that muddies your heart; that is where your love belongs it isn’t what you think so. stop.

a.m.m.t.

[hourglassfingers]

kisses shouldn’t feel like dirt, grubby faces covered in it while everyone frowns at how unclean it all feels and the shame sets in; suddenly, you want to bathe in the darkest parts of the ocean

shame is the layer of dirt over our coffins as they bury us alive

[hourglassfingers]

i have this feeling that i should write something happier less melancholy, less tragedy tinging every word how? humor is dry these days everyone’s jokes are self-deprecation and everyone laughs because they feel the same way it’s all…hollow and morbid how we all laugh the pain away except it never really goes it just stays and none of us have medication to numb the pain and fill our heads with chemicals that won’t make us crave an end make us laugh at something other than dumb jokes interchangeable with unaddressed death maybe one day we’ll be able to laugh at something other than the scars under our eyelids

this was meant to be funny

[hourglassfingers]

i am afraid of driving of whether i will crash deliberately or if i will drift along the highway with my eyes searching everywhere, not with the intent of control, but with the promise of fleeting  glimpses of the scenery blinking into another galaxy

a.m.m.t.

[hourglassfingers]

we settle for needles and tacks while others just get papercuts

they stick in every skin cell and build me a prison