iceandgravity @iceandgravity - Tumblr Blog

helplessness

My love for you has taught me many things that I didn't know, but I didn't know that it would teach me helplessness. It is so helpless to love someone so much while they continue existing outside of you-- I look at you and say, "Ah, there, there is my heart--see how beautiful is his face!"--and yet, I see the lines of sadness beneath your eyes and feel them blossom redhot upon my heart, for there, at least, we are the same. And what can I do but watch your pain unfurling like days and gasp, for air, for love, for words, for resurrection, for anything at all? I am helpless, helpless, against a world in which you must live separately from me, helpless, against Time which would draw a map to mortality with each fresh line upon your skin helpless, against a loss so deep that it pierces me even now when it is but a premonition of a shadow of the other side of love. Darling, sometimes at your feet the waves of love batter me against the rocky shoreline of my own separate soul drawing me down and down into a depth I did not know existed, inside of myself or inside of you or inside of love--I cannot tell and I cannot breathe and I cannot drown, either.

#for david #love poem #poetry #original poem #creative writing #spilled ink #burning muse #writing #spilled ink poetry #love #loss #mortality

Your hands are anchors as they touch my flesh– they tether me to myself.

I who have always known body as battleground, as territory invaded and pillaged and razed and left abandoned, even by myself.

I who have always known body as empty space, as permanent unfillable void, as something to be willed into forgetting, as a burial ground to hide my sinking shame, as a negative of the soul.

Your hands are anchors as they touch my flesh– sinking into my body, loving my body, writing wholeness like verses upon skin until I realize– here is where you love me. Here is my body.

Your hands are anchors, my soul an ocean, my body a boat, you within me, gentle waves, your hands, anchors.

#poetry #original poetry #spilled ink poetry #recovery #spilled ink #rejects corner #creative writing #writing #love

all these things i have loved

All these things I have loved, you too have loved. During the long hours of my isolation they held my hand and kissed my forehead as I know you would have done had you known me then. I like to think that that though we were alone, in our loving these same precious things--crisp autumn mornings, brash beloved books, haunting heart songs--depsite the distance and time yet to pass until our sudden meeting bright as revelation, in loving these same dear things, our hearts learned to love each other before I had even yet found your eyes, your soft, bright smile, how, together, we have loved.

#love poem #love poetry #poetry #creative writing #original poetry #spilled ink #spilledink #spilled ink poetry #rejectscorner #rejects poetry

awakening, transformed

i. I wake to thunder and the patter of rain on the sill. The bricks of the buildings through my window shine wet. I think of you. Sleep is still sliding from my bones when my phone pulses; I see your face. I hear your voice, wishing for me, wishing me good morning. The universe is a sweet nectar that flows thick from your mouth to mine. I tell you how good your voice tastes at the break of day. I breathe. ii. Put the phone down, now. Light candles to adorn the grey day. Make coffee to warm your hands because he is far, and they get so cold sometimes. Sit on your bed. Write, breathe. Bathe in the potential of this newborn day, feel the glittering nascent moments at the edge of being. Think of this old house. Think of the people who live here. Think of how you love them. Think of how they saved you. Remember the shards of Family you had to pick out of your heart like shrapnel. Remember how they helped tear the heartbreak from your flesh and loved you til you were new again. Let yourself cry a little because you love them. They are the stunning mosaic you built from what was broken. They rewrote the word 'family' again and again for you, until it was full of the love and grace that makes it shine now. Think of the man you've fallen in love with. Think of how suddenly you have relaxed into something so deep as this. Think of how the word 'doubt' has no more meaning in the place behind his eyes. Smell the soft candles. Feel the cool sheets. Look out your bedroom window at the church across the way-- Center for Divine Love. You are here. You are home. Heartbeat under flesh. You are here. You are home.

#poetry #creative writing #original poetry #spilled ink #spilledink #spilled ink poetry #writing #love #love poems #friendship #family #familial love #filial love

iceandgravity

I never fall in love with people who speak poetry

I never fall in love with people who speak poetry. It has always felt safer when the mothers that birthed our tongues did not meet until we were too old to hide the differences in the ways the places we came from sounded. The different shudders in the consonants on our lips are only shadows of our questions. Like— What do we do when there are oceans between where our hearts live? (I will build a boat out of my bones if I have to.) What do we do when there are borders carved into the landscape of our memories? (I will forget everything I thought I knew.) What do we do when my words have to go through customs before they can touch the soil where your love grows? (I don’t know.) I never fall in love with people who speak poetry. The first time my father told me he had never written the way I write I did not believe him. I assumed he was a word bank with a dam cracking and just waiting to break, if only I pushed a little harder. My father is not a word bank. My father is not a dam, but I didn’t learn that until my hands bled from tearing at the rocks of him. I did not learn that until I had exploded myself like dynamite in front of him. My father was never a dam, but I did not learn that until I had grown accustomed to setting myself on fire in front of people who cannot see my flame no matter how hard they stare. I did not learn that until I had gotten used to loving men who do not speak my language. Every mispronunciation is a promise of misunderstanding, a promise that I will never expect more than can be given, than can be forced out in a grammar that is always a little off, than can be crammed into a syntax that never quite fit him anyway. It is best when they mispronounce my name. It is best when their tongues cannot even form the shape of who I am. It is a reminder. Every time they call to me like they want to make a promise out of my syllables— I remember. It never sounds quite right. I never fall in love with people who speak poetry. I translate the fire in my veins over and over until I am nothing more than a palatable wisp of smoke—see? Now you can breathe me in easy. Now I won’t hurt to touch.

iceandgravity

now I’ve fallen in love with someone who speaks poetry he holds my fire between his tongue and the roof of his hungry mouth and tells me how good I taste

#poetry #love poems #rejectscorner #creative writing #original poetry #burningwords #spilled ink corner #spilled ink poetry #spilled ink

back here again, must have fallen in love

ten eternities between you and me suddenly, as i am, full of love poems you blur my edges until eternity is a very present thing pressed up all inside me against the other side of my skin and beyond into infinity in your arms contain me

#love #love poem #original poetry #poetry #rejectscorner #rejects poetry #rejects corner #creative writing #writing #burning muse #burningm

Memories are in the cortex. Clusters of neurons with spiralling dendrites and axons, close enough for chemicals to fall like snow through the space between, but never touching. But some memories are carried in the body, and all the drugs they give you can't erase them, not really. They are carried heavy and low in the belly, pressing down to the dark of the earth somewhere below. They rise when he touches you. But it's not this one, you think. This one is different. This one loves you. But what is love to a body with dark heavy things in its swollen belly? What is love to blood and bone and wet dark? What is love when the dark rises in you like a sick emptiness, almost like shame but not sharp enough, just dull dull decay? Bodies carry memories until they fester and turn to almost-death, never quite corpse. Love is not a salve. The sick still comes with the skin on skin, the slow warmth. Quiet repulsion deep as reflex, as one with you as body. All your unheeded "no" coming up when you want to say "yes."

#writing #creative writing #prose poem #spilled ink #burning words #burning muse #rape tw

maitreyi, my beloved

“Those who know do not speak and those who speak do not know.” How do you find your voice when you have tried so hard to be good and it only stirs in the dark places, the parts of you that you'd rather not claim. Those who know do not speak. But I spoke it so easily into the phoneline, asking for help for the first time as if it was effortless, gaining my first clue that perhaps my wounds have festered under the thick bandage of silence. Those who speak do not know. But I spoke anyway, for all of the years of not speaking have gained me a mouth full of dust. A time comes when you are so withered you break. What becomes of you then? What has become of me now? I am not myself; my self is breaking down. There is a weightless freedom underneath. There is truth deeper than self, blue sky past the clouds, and further past, something else-- but how to name it? What color is sunlight? What time is eternity? How can the knower ever be known?

#poetry #writing #creative writing #rejectscorner #rejects poetry

the stupid shit you want to say when you love someone

Someone asks, "how are you?" I want to say, "The way the Earth moves has changed. I shake with primordial grace, or is it curse? I no longer can diferentiate his body from the universe. His body is all around me. His body is full of heavenly bodies. His body is heavenly."

#poetry #poem #love poetry #creative writing #original poetry #spilled ink #spilledink #spilled ink poetry #writing

Your absence is the fullest emptiness. I think of you every moment. I will stay here, nursing the shadows of you in my mind and counting the moments until your light dusts them away and I am left with true, brilliant you. You do not think you deserve to be loved so ferociously. Tell that to my lion heart. It will devour every doubt you ever had about yourself. It will choke and die on your hand-made shams of inadequacies. It will come back to nuzzle into the wool of your lamb heart. That wool. I kiss it through your hair every morning I wake up beside you. I run my hands through it now as I am away from you. When I am done, defang me. Rip each sharp weapon from my wet flesh until my blood is nectar in my mouth. Wear my teeth like a promise around your neck, so close to your hot vein, exposed like my hopeless yesterdays. Bite me there until I am soft again. Take the lion from me, wear its pelt, become everything I offer you. Let me be lamb. Naked, shivvering. Shear me of everything.

#poetry #creative writing #original poetry #spilled ink #spilled ink poetry

I never fall in love with people who speak poetry

I never fall in love with people who speak poetry. It has always felt safer when our mother tongues did not meet until we were too old to hide the differences in the ways the places we came from sounded. The different shudders in the consonants on our lips are only shadows of our questions. Like— What do we do when there are oceans between where our hearts live? (I will build a boat out of my bones if I have to.) What do we do when there are borders carved into the landscape of our memories? (I will forget everything I thought I knew.) What do we do when my words have to go through customs before they can touch the soil where your love grows? (I don’t know.) I never fall in love with people who speak poetry. The first time my father told me he had never written the way I write I did not believe him. I assumed he was a word bank with a dam cracking and just waiting to break, if only I pushed a little harder. My father is not a word bank. My father is not a dam, but I didn’t learn that until my hands bled from tearing at the rocks of him. I did not learn that until I had exploded myself like dynamite in front of him. My father was never a dam, but I did not learn that until I had grown accustomed to setting myself on fire in front of people who cannot see my flame. I did not learn that until I had gotten used to loving men who do not speak my language. Every mispronunciation is a promise of misunderstanding, a promise that I will never expect more than can be given, than can be forced out in a grammar that is always a little off, than can be crammed into a syntax that never quite fit him anyway. It is best when they mispronounce my name. It is best when their tongues cannot even form the shape of who I am. It is a reminder. Every time they call to me like they want to make a promise out of my syllables— I remember. It never sounds quite right. I never fall in love with people who speak poetry. I translate the fire in my veins over and over until I am nothing more than a palatable wisp of smoke—see? Now you can breathe me in easy. Now I won’t hurt to touch.

#man it has been a long time since i posted here #been around the block once or twice since then #poetry #poem #original poetry #spilled ink #spilled ink poetry #writing #creative writing

I feel like spilled salt and collapsed lungs; crushed cigarette packet on the side of a high way, overturned Tuesdays and broken clocks, appointments written in red ink bleeding under the rain until I no longer know where I was on March 16th of last year. Maybe now is when I finally mourn or the way your tongue sounded as it wrapped itself around the words of my native language--I could not bare to correct your pronunciation because when you spoke everything sounded so perfect that I wanted to change the contours of my entire language to fit the shape of your mouth. You made me realize how many words I actually knew in the language that raised you-- but still far too few, because I want to talk to you until I run out of words and I have finally told you all of the new ways I have found to miss someone since you got on that plane. The last thing I heard you say was "I will miss you," and maybe those were the right words for you, but no words in any language can fill the shape of your absence in my heart-- believe me, I have whispered into it first thing every morning and last thing every night since you left, and it has never gotten any smaller. I sit alone in an empty house next to a cold fireplace with the TV murmuring to fill the silence. I have begun to hope that the floorboards creaking at night are ghosts come to keep me company. I want to take my loneliness and strangle it at the throat because I know that I have to be okay alone before I can love someone well, and I have never wanted so badly for love to work as I do now, with you. But I have a year of absence to rock my loneliness to sleep and smother it with a pillow. You are the only thing I would murder for. You have made me a bloody knife, and I love you completely, holding nothing back, like severed veins. Maybe our native tongues will never find a meeting place. Maybe oceans and history cannot be bridged, but the only language I ever felt fluent in was the one we spoke silently together with the meeting of our eyes. Maybe I am an unmade bed and muddied shoes left out to dry. Maybe I can only write well when I am sad or drunk. Maybe I am too lonely to live alone. But I will learn dead languages if that is what it takes to make love come alive on your tongue. Think of me every once in awhile. I miss you like hell. I miss you like 'hello.'

#poetry #love poetry #long distance love #writing #creative writing #spilled ink #rejects corner #burning words #long distance love poem #missing someone

I've been gone for a bit. Writing, just not posting. Life has been eventful. Thanks for those who stuck around.

i(am)Poet

There is a generation who grew from cradle to coffee shop. Watch them try to force excitement into their mouths like overripe fruit--or underripe, after awhile disappointment tastes the same in all shades. Eyelids droop now. They were wide too long, from the moment of birth to the moment they died for the first time. Egocentrism hides in phrases: "The forest is dead to us." They are dead to the forest. Remember--crickets used to call their names. Now the trees have been folded into textbooks and business manuals. The lucky trees grew into poetry books. The unlucky children grew into poets. Now they flourish, lonely fauna adorning café tables, breathing opiate verses, dropping underripe fruits. They are told to study science, so they make living their science, wearing their lives down to twine until life can no longer clothe overripe hearts and their ribs slice at open air. They are flayed now, skinless aberrations, writing the same story again and again about the forests who once knew their names and called them into each unpainted sunset like a promise. The promise is broken now. Not by the forest.

#poetry #poem #words #writing #spilledink #spilled ink #rejectscorner #spilled poetry

I hurt from running and I hurt from standing and I hurt from sitting and I think that maybe I just hurt.

#poetry #poem #writing #words #spilled ink #rejectscorner

In loving, I am always causing floods or building dams.

#ow ow ow #it hurts #poetry #poems #words #writing #spilled ink #spilled ink poetry #rejectscorner #rejects poetry #sad #love #relationships #family

I am unsure how to reconcile all that I am with all that I love.

#writing #thoughts #personal #words

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