These Are The Nights When Poets Bleed Out

~with scattered words and wasted ink we breathe~ I write because I don't know why (My main blog is overtakingmylife) © - Please refrain from using my work for either profit or non profit purposes. Any broadcasting, public performance, copying or re-recording without the giving of appropriate verbal or written credit will constitute an infringement of copyright. Selling without prior written consent is prohibited. Please obtain permission before redistributing. In all cases this notice must remain intact.

[inkskinned]

the men in my life are all good men, or, at least, they are men who are not violent - and that is enough for a man to be considered good; that he could be violent but is not.

the men in my life are good men. recently at a hardware store one of the men in my life let me stand behind him, just a little, in that ghosting way that girls can learn. the disappearing technique we master of shadowing behind our Good Men. this was to protect me from a man who was not-being-good.

i fall down. one of the good men in my life offers me one arm like a knight, we are laughing while i clamber back onto my feet. i give the good men in my life piggy back rides because i like to show off how strong i am. i give the good men in my life run-at-them hugs. i let the good men in my life pick me up like i am a sack of grain; i get the good men in my life coffee, i make them sandwiches, i teach them dancing.

i am a man-hater, obviously. i am gay enough the insult is sort of funny. waiting for the bus, where there are men who are not-known-to-be-good, i google how to make a fist. i can never remember if the thumb goes on the outside or the inside, only that it is imperative that i do not fuck it up or i will break my thumb at the same time the man tries to break me. 

i walk my dog around the track only-at-dusk and-no-later. i made that mistake once, in august, hoping i could take a later run and maybe see the stars - i romanticized the idea of being able to skulk like a fox. the man that followed me across three lawns, two road-crossings, and back to my car - he spent the whole time whistling. the good men in my life say - oh, do you need me to come with you? and are actually asking - do you feel safe?

i fall down in a supermarket. a man i do not know grabs the inside of my knee. i do not know if the man is good, but i am supposed to give men the benefit of the doubt, so i laugh while standing. a man trying-to-be-in-my-life says what, no hug? and i have to decide if it worth it to just take off or put up with it. a man who-might-not-be-good stares at me while i walk by - i have to calculate if he’s just looking or if he’s watching. other men have badly hurt me, physically. the casual remark made is that those men are not real men. but they were real enough, to me.

there are many men who are mad at me. an entire reddit thread once was dedicated to how to dox me for feminist ranting - it was kind of funny, when it wasn’t downright scary. i have been stalked and harassed and treated horribly. they are all good men, in their own lives, you know. they are not violent, usually, unless provoked, and all it takes for a man to be good is for him to not be violent unless provoked, and i am, of course, always provoking.

a man in my life rolls his eyes. “i am sick of hearing this. we get it, all men are fucking evil. get over it.”

a man who-is-not-good shouts something unwritable at me. i have to tell the good man i am standing next to - it’s okay, this is nothing compared to what-could-be, this happens, it’s really not that big of a deal to me. 

“but it should be,” he says. “it should be.”

[lisarayanne]

[inkskinned]

And sometimes. Even though you’re careful. Some dreams die.

Life happens and you gotta cut the slack out of it. Stop reading so much because there’s no time for it, get tired easier, find yourself misanthropic. Don’t enjoy movies in the same way because you spent it wondering if you should be doing work. Used to play sports but that was before sports started to hurt.

God, I loved dance! I grated my skin raw trying to make my curvy body perfect for ballet’s expectations. I got older. Chose other things. Got thicker, because that’s my framing. Still go to the occasional dance class and see: oh. I’m aging. Oh, I gotta take this slow. Oh, I have muscle and it shows and that’s not a bad thing.

I’m learning to close my eyes and forgive the soft spots. You never became an artist but you still draw. You didn’t run to the circus but you do have a friend who has offered to help you learn aerial yoga and isn’t that close to the same thing. You had to work instead of playing, and that sucked. at least now when you get to play, you appreciate every second.

And no. I can’t move like I used to. Takes me longer to remember what used to come naturally. This Saturday, I’m going to audition for Alvin Ailey, but I don’t have the hope of 17-year-old me. Instead I’m considering it a class. Taking my hits with humility.

And okay. We aren’t going to suddenly be what we wished we were. But sometimes we get to knock. Crack open the door. Close our eyes and be just doing it. No wish for success. Just us and our dream, hand in hand.

And oh how we dance.

[morganhessart]

“How long, you know? How long until I stop wanting big things and settle for a fold-out table making me happy?” @inkskinned

[inkskinned]

“someone tells me that teenagers don’t know what’s coming for them. how bad life gets. i wonder how good of a house they grew up in that they get to announce something like that.”

— r.i.d

[inkskinned]

i’ve been thinking of that video, you know, the one where she burns her face for the sake of an even skin tone. i watched it at 2 AM after having nightmares about churches. i thought i was still dreaming. she put chemicals on her body and fries in them. undoes in them. what a perfect metaphor for beauty worship.

is this girlhood?

oh we wanted to laugh. dumb bitch! in the comments. but i went back to sleep and i dreamed, not nightmare but not comfortable, of the cakes i will not let myself eat because of the cost of their calories. i started crying, woke up drenched in sweat, worried i’d somehow transported to the kitchen, worried i’d fucked up and actually done it. god, how terrifying. i remember the wave of gratefulness - no, no, this belly is empty, and it is good to be empty, like this.

how is it different. i’m not a dumb bitch; i’m a refined and self-controlled bitch, up on her shit. it is not dumb-bitch to starve yourself. to restrict. it is a respectable lady thing.

i think of her skin, swollen in the first week, while i go to work in heels and a jacket. my male coworker wears jeans. i think of her, waving at her face, while my hair goes up into professional-bun, stays there long after the headache. i think of her, watery-eyed and turning, bird-like, to look upon the damage she’d done - and i think of me, of my sunday-night facemask that “burns, but like, it works.” 

razors and waxing and eyebrow tweezers and picking at skin and sucking in and sitting properly and suffocating and curling smaller and self-denying and eyelash extensions and taping the second toe to the third so you can’t feel your shoes anymore and destroying, destroying, destroying

2 AM heard the first words i said that morning, softly.

“that’s self-harm”.

or it’s just girlhood. or it’s just beauty.

[inkskinned]

the yellow sun came down wrong. i was baptized in a light that never reached my core, that never healed me. i don’t know what warmth means. i’ve been doing happy wrong since i was thirteen. 

[inkskinned]

It’s a mistake that feels good in the making. There’s enough wild left in me I am going to fold the name of fucking up onto the back of my tongue. Yeah, I know better. But come on, now. You know I love to self-destruct.

[mxrcusflint]

“my arms are so full of this heavy kind of love. i want to set it down, set it out as an offering like fruit for gods - god, let me love you.”

— the jet lag chronicles / e.h.

[inkskinned]

there are all kinds of aware. the aware of 2 AM when you’re both half-asleep on the floor and your heart is up and the aware of 5 AM when you haven’t slept the night before and your guard is all you are. the aware of a sore tooth that makes small things on tongues feel big and the aware of first-food-since-i-forget that makes big things taste better.

aware, be/ware, the aware of halloween nights where the back of your skin crawls with again-witch, the aware of the first snowfall you watch alone, the aware of a paper cut, the aware of knowing the cat is in the room but it doesn’t like to be pet so you just have to watch it. the aware of pen lights, of fridays, of cracked ribs. the aware of i hurt you once, i won’t do it again. the aware of first time holding hands, the aware of nine hundredth circle on her spine, the aware of spotted zoo animal and the aware of an open blue sky.

“how does she make you feel?” you ask.

aware, i guess. aware so much i feel alive.

[buttonpoetry]

“You wanna know my name? You never call me by it anyway.”

— Olivia Gatwood, from New American Best Friend

[inkskinned]

Talking to you feels like coming home

hey remember when we were half asleep on your bed and we were talking on your pillow and our bodies were on fire but we were pretending not to like each other and halfway between sex jokes and personal confessions i finally said the truth and it hung between us like a bad taste in the mouth and you said “do you mean that” 

and i swallowed because this was supposed to be a casual thing so we both put our walls up and felt our way through and then i pulled the covers up and said “yeah, sometimes, when i think about you”and you looked at me and said, “god, thank god, that’s terribly true”

[inkskinned]

“my name is BABY and you lean out of your car and spit at my feet it lands in a puddle in front of me and i am thirteen and in a suburban neighborhood on the way home from school and i gag and run with my backpack banging like the echo of your words against my back like you are chasing me all the way home my name is SWEETIE and i am fifteen in the city with my friends for the first time and we get a little lost and you follow us for a full block you name my friends HONEY and DARLING and WHY THE FUCK WON’T YOU TALK TO ME my name is NICE ASS and it’s two in the afternoon and i still feel my heart slam against my ribs because i am under a hundred and fifty pounds and i have weak lungs and weaker fists and while you saunter down the steps, swinging the beer bottle in your fist, my father who is walking behind me shouts, “she’s seventeen, you dipshit” and maybe i’m near my family but i don’t feel safe until we’re home again my name is JAILBAIT and my friend is laughing and we just graduated high school and we feel like we are on the brink of something beautiful and terrifying and she is in heels and about to throw up and you name her DRUNK ENOUGH and i have to physically drag you off and when we go home she cries for four hours because a night that should have been just teenage fun almost resulted in the end of her trust of humans my name is LOOK AT THOSE TITS and we are on a college campus and the boy i am with holds onto my waist just a little tighter while you drive up next to me. you name him THUG and throw a bottle at his forehead. i can’t stop shaking until long after it’s over. he says “it happens,” and i say, “it shouldn’t.” my name is DAMN GIRL and we are walking down the street. there are ten of you and two of us and you snap a picture when you think we’re not looking. you tell us to either come inside or you’ll fuck us on the street. you all laugh like this is funny. this is compliment. this is just something boys do to get ladies. my name is LITTLE LADY, my name is FINE MISS, my name is FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR FRIENDS, my name is LOOK ME IN THE FACE, my name is STOP FROWNING, my name is SMILE, my name is WHY DID YOU EVEN GLANCE AT HIM YOU WERE ASKING FOR IT, my name is THIS IS A COMPLIMENT so i looked it up according to Oxford that’s “a polite expression of praise or admiration” i think you’ve got the definitions mixed up my name is PRETTY THING, my name takes nice words and make them into bullet wounds my name is NICE BODY and no girl i know has dated a man who catcalled her, my name is GREAT RACK and it turns out that if you shout things at a stranger, they sound like knives more than flowers, my name is WOMEN LIKE YOU NEVER KNOW THEIR PLACE and every single “nice” thing you say to a woman is something you’d never utter to another man because you know that it’s derogatory, my name is PRINCESS and A REASON TO GET PUT IN PRISON and if another man spoke to your mother sister girlfriend like that, you’d kill him my name is SEXY and every time i hear someone raising their voice i am thirteen again and i don’t know who you are and i’m running home with a weight on my shoulders and your words like a slap to my spine and your laughter like a hanging, i am scared and alone and suddenly so small, and compliments are supposed to make me feel good not afraid for my life, compliments are a way of saying “i care and i appreciate you and i thought you should know it,” and if you really meant it as a compliment, you’d care about how i would take it - but you don’t mean it like that, you mean it to show off, you mean it to make us object, you mean it to shove our names into your back pocket so you can tell your friends “i saw the HOTTEST LITTLE THING yesterday” and they can groan about how we just walked away because you don’t see us go home with keys in our fists and all the lights on and we keep 911 dialed just in case and we triple-check our locks and we don’t fall asleep at all because your compliment knocked us over and took who we are if we are all saying “it doesn’t sound like a compliment, it sounds like a threat,” if you really wanted to make us feel good - wouldn’t you stop doing it?”

— COMPLIMENT =/= CATCALL // r.i.d (via inkskinned)

[buttonpoetry]

“If I hadn’t found punk I’d be dead but also my jaw would work.”

— Neil Hilborn, The Future

[inkskinned]

you open up your palm and inside is ugly so you close them again, quickly, before you see the things you let go of.   today you’re thinking about people you lost touch with. some of them you’re not sad to see go. it’s her birthday today. maybe you should leave a note. remember that one time you tortured me for sport?   but then some of them swell up inside you because you know it’s your fault. what, are you supposed to saunter back into their lives after so many months? just tip your hat and say i know you’re happy but what if i came around again   you let them go because it’s better if you don’t call them up. if you don’t make things awkward. if you don’t act like you know who they are or what they’ve done. it’s better you give them space, right. better you sail off on your own.    oh, her engagement looks gorgeous. you send her a note. it’s a very forced conversation. nothing flows. okay. okay.    you look down at your palm. it’s time to let go.

[inkskinned]

when the sun went down we didn’t cry for our mamas because she one time said don’t hollar for me when you made your grave so deep so instead we lie in them, in the coffin of our beds, fake vampire shit, watching our bodies turn into husks and telling ourselves, tomorrow, tomorrow, we’d wake up and it could be okay, and that made it worth living but damn, hadn’t we dug ourselves down, down - made no room for a nest, too much dirt in our legs - come on, then, trim the edges of our bodies until we’re sculpted into something unfamiliar, that fear of mirrors, that fear of who we are when we’re alone again - i want to be in a place where i forget how it feels to be sad but i’ve never made it to the place where i remember how to be happy, so come on. cry on my shoulder and we’ll both suck the venom out through the love bites life gave us and we’ll both live on, and live on, and live on.

[inkskinned]

you were picking blackberries and her lips were stained and you couldn’t stop staring. she kept reaching to cover her mouth. “is something in my teeth?” she kept asking, and you kept just saying, no, no, no, i promise.

right now the two of you are dancing around a something-that’s-not-nothing and it swells up between you, too vague to know the shape of it yet. how do you tell her without scaring her off that she takes up a whole house in your head.

you’re scared of the might-be might-be because what if this is the moment and you miss it but worse what if it’s not the moment and you mess it all up, so you watch her and you pick blackberries and you don’t say, holy shit you’re goregous