axar n.

FREE PALESTINE poet, writer / queer, disabled / 31 [ID for blog picture: mirror selfie shows me posing in a restaurant bathroom with one arm raised and propped against my head. i am wearing a black tank top with blue jeans and a red and black checkered belt. i am brown skinned, have a buzzcut, and am looking into my phone, vibe soft and hard at the same time. /end ID]

[pwlanier]

Frances Arno Saphro (Ukrainian, 1877-1962) 2 Art Deco Tapestries, 1940s

Material Culture

[maldarchive]

21:24 - The most beautiful sunset in the world every time

21:25 - I remember the other most beautiful sunsets in the world I had the chance to see so many of them alone and so many of them with my beautiful friends whose faces I have lost in remembering but whose laughter I remember, a hand pressed against mine in the metro, or a cigarette shared between us as we weave in and out of a crowded street.

21:26 - It was so long ago how can I still know these details but I do somehow in fact I remember better than ever the long-agos the missed-outs. I crossed out so many letters from my text but they were still there when I counted them. Well that's enough for now isn't it. Sweet sweet love that never ends.

21:27 - Falling out of love is quick but falling back into love is difficult it requires overcoming many hurdles. I am not accustomed to this laborious task but I work dedicatedly towards it, I know I can do it, how, but I know, but how, but I am certain that I can, and it is this certainty that I lay the tracks down on.

21:28 - I understand the passage of time the same as I ever have the same as the first time I conceived of time. It came easily to me even though it was meant to be challenging but I know the difference between minutes and seconds because I watched the numbers change on the microwave screen.

21:29 - The first of my beloved machines into whose face I would peer and watch the bottle spin in the golden light and then press the button right before the DING! to check the temperature. Then climb the steps down from the microwave back into the groundspace, the housespace, surface shared by everyone else.

21:30 - Today the smoke across the horizon covered and sheltered the sun I thought it was like tufts of cotton S thought it looked like a war scene we were both right in our own ways.

[maldarchive]

23:57 - I'm very into you are you very into me or have we slipped so swift into this spiral we are sliding down into the throat of time where we will be gulped inwards and forever lost. Are we so into each other we are no longer apart and thus no longer together.

23:58 - Prodigal daughter missing all their fucking calls if I never get to speak to my father again I will be all the better for it. It should have happened years ago the branch snapped before I leaned any weight on it.

23:59 - Instead another grand betrayal of my lifetime another misstep I will have to hold on to, hold myself against, hold against the world, I will have to bear this weight forever, the weight of not-forgiving. Somehow the more difficult one.

00:00 - I am somehow the more difficult one in every equation as much as I small myself as much as I deter myself. The largeness of my desire terrifies and shames me which is not what I want to feel at this age. I do not want to cower in the face of consequences I want to throw myself into any sea that can take me.

00:01 - In that I want to be free. Free from what? From responsibilities, tethers, caregiving, etc.? No, but free to touch, to feel love, to feel loved, etc. If I could go back and restructure our entire framework I would because I know better now I know myself better now.

00:02 - You would have seen me through / but I could not undo my desire. In the kitchen the words spoken for me. Already you know and I know and I want to leave some room for doubt but doubt is the room we stand in. The floor is sweating doubt, the counters are floured with it.

[maldarchive]

19:24 - My urges are not impulsive as in untrustworthy they are instinctive as in they are instructions from god. Within half a day I rearrange my house I shave two years' worth of hair off I begin a book that is made of nothing.

19:25 - What does it mean to start writing a new book how do I know if this is the one. This is the one I know it. To me it has the feeling of tearing a fruit apart. My hands are sticky and the air is sweet. It's unforgiveable. Impossible not to think of birth, which means it is impossible not to think of death. I love the end.

19:26 - I love. The end. Holding hands with my friends is the best story I ever read. How many more how many more times will I get to rest my head against your shoulder. Beautiful new friend who clatters around my kitchen in the dark at five a.m. what did I do without you what did I do before you.

19:27 - Cleaning the same house I have lived in for years makes it new the same way shaving my head makes me new the same way waking up and looking out the window makes the world new these are such simple and perhaps petty truths but I love them I do. How easy it is to start over. What am I hoping for when I reach out in the darkness who is going to be there to press their cheek against me.

19:28 - Old friends and new they will be there with their arms open and their memories charged with decades' of knowledge that has slipped me by. I have been told so many times that I am full of lies that I no longer trust what I have said, done, thought, been through, but my record keepers are faithful, they remind me of me, they are me sometimes more concretely than myself. I write in the most unbearably small hand.

19:29 - So many years apart but I knew in my heart I knew it with such belief that we would trace the same arc along the horizon me and you who are inevitably bound to one another. This I know is love too but it's not a love that I want to encourage it's a love I just have to live with.

19:30 - A love I live with the way I live with my limp, one leg dragging behind the other, my knee that collapses without warning, I live with it, I anticipate its failures, I go so far as to even accept it, I take care of it, that's what it's like to love you now, I don't have a choice but to tend to it.

19:31 - But if I had a choice would I rid myself of it. I tried and tried but I could not. There is no point in thinking about what would happen if I had a choice. I do not! I never will! That's the kind of beginning I want to write: stuckness, flowers in hand, catching my best friend's tears on my tongue like snowflakes.

[maldarchive]

10:14 - How could you how could I how could I what how could it at all. The moment lapsed time yanked its skirt back up to reveal its long-long limbs. I have no choice but to bend over for it. I didn't know it would happen again like this why did I not know. 10:15 - Endless refrain of my life: It is only in my aloneness that I am alive. I shrink when overtaken by others, I shiver when pressed, I am only at ease when I am with myself, and then, from there, from that origin, set off.

10:16 - Gertrude Stein says to act as if there is no center. I agree, there is no center, the arcs flow from anywhere I load my weapon, it could be my shoulder, my waist, my elbow, it could be my solitude, my dark delicious solitude, it melts on the tongue, it's bewildering and beautiful. 10:17 - I just knew it I just knew you would change too if I changed. In some ways you are as you have always been as you have been for more than a decade my ideal companion. You change so rapidly so abruptly only I can keep up, I who also changes so rapidly so abruptly with no warning whatsoever.

10:18 - I am scavenging for your new name are you scavenging for mine. Do you want to know what my hands are like now they are stronger than ever. I want to know what your hands are like now I want to know what you smell like is it the same enchanting perfume or is it something new. Would I find it repulsive now.

10:19 - Our youth is over but our you keeps going. So many years separated no contact on this plane and yet when you pull at the thread that ties us I feel it, I pull back, I tug harder, you respond to my message, you are so far away, can you feel me, I know you can, I know you can.

10:20 - I know you can because I can too, I can feel you all the time. I barely remember your face, your small (?) eyes, your crooked (?) teeth, your large (?) nose. Is your hair long or short. Do you have a soft belly now or is it blank, flat, grumbling.

10:21 - Because you knew how to hate me I know you knew how to love me unconditionally, whatever of me I gave you you had a powerful reaction to. Parsing through old text I realise how much I pushed back at you, how honest I was, how I said: I imagined my future and it stunned me to think that I would spend my life with someone so insensitive. 10:22 - I said: I want to be alone, I cannot do this. I just don't want to. I don't know how you responded because all that remains of the archive is my side, your text is gone, you are gone from it, there are blanks where I can imagine what you must have said. 10:23 - How I would have loved you if you were a woman, well, did you become one, are you one, were you always, did I challenge that in you, did I push something too hard, did I hurt you. It doesn't matter, we are both where we always were, in opposition, which is unbelievably intimate.

10:24 - In opposition to you I find your absence which is confronted by my own absence. I am losing myself to something, someone, all the time. Where are you where am I where are you --

[tennesseewillams]

hiiiiii it’s been a while and tumblr deleted my art blog, but i’m planning on taking some commissions this summer, if anyone is interested!!!

i make little hand painted (not digital) watercolor portraits of pets/stuffies/anything you want

* lightfast paints and 100% archival ink (you can hang them up without them fading)

* 100% cotton watercolor paper

* i mail them out you will get the real thing (US-based)

BUSTS: $30 // 6x9in

FULL BODIES: $50 // 9x6in

GROUPS: $40 per figure // 9x12in

if you have any questions, want to see more samples, or you’re interested please feel free to reach out on here or at my email [email protected]

*ALSO if you are interested but my pricing is too high please let me know and we can work something out. i raised my prices this time around cuz of The Economy but i really want people to have them if they want them*

4/4 slots open

[maldarchive]

writing all these silly lines could have been easier but for now i’m imagining a wildly different life that hurts to snap out of

[maldarchive]

a decade, more, again, i’m mid-air, Y, and you’ve thrown my sky the grandest affair

[maldarchive]

b r usH ed t he ma ne Of ev e R Y mon st Er m Y

lo ve W e tr ieD i t

A ll n O lo ng er Fr i end

i c an cA l l but

I fe el Y r he a rt & fe el

m Y he ar T

le ash Ed

to Y rs

[maldarchive]

5PARTYPOEM

Button's got four holes ready to be filled, diagonal/crossed, up-down-up-down, thrilled

to be pleasure-swilled like that, 'solutely drowned, Button sucked, strapped, struck, beat, bound,

boys surround him, if two's a party Button's got 'round twenty now, he's slick, swanky, he's hot

-shit clanking his tin head against the cage, don't get him wrong, Button's dead-serious, he's aged

here, in the "scene", underground, where dark eyes find openings 'nd needles push thru sound, the guys

know him inside-out, they kiss his reddened scars, they make love to all his mouths, they don't care

who Button's been, for real, they see him, they get him, they stuff him to the brim, don't mistake this for some shallow thing, it's Button's whole life on the upswing four holes agape, it's no joke, it's how he attaches himself to surfaces, sows

himself in, latches part to part, a simple heart, then start

over, Button, keep that chin tucked, crossed/diagonal, down-up-down-up

[bloomingonionbitch]

Excerpt of "East Boston, 1966" from God's Silence - Franz Wright

[maldarchive]

4PARTYPOEM

Aren't ya running late Button? O says Aren't I making you sooo late you second-rate freak tied

up so small. Button mewls as he unsprawls eyes dazed crawls across the dirty room. I'm AWOL

he laughs, I'm A Wall, ha ha, I'm blanking out e'ryone these days, other than you O, I'm devout

to your whip. The fuck off your knees O commands Get your ass to the soiree. My hands my hands,

Button tugs at the rope with his teeth, gets free, admires the burn, O I love hope, I love indignities,

ha ha he he, O, kiss me hard before I go, O o O, kiss kiss! Then drives to B's house in a rush, turns missed,

soooo late, whatever, who gives a fuck Button's all out of luck all the time all the way. I called

B says I's worried 'bout you why didn't you answer. Button shimmies to the floor singing I'm yr tiny dancer

out come the moves The Worst Moves he calls them clacking hooves, springing little twigs, skirts the hem

of the room with his long-long broom wipes the edge clean draws another line up his buttonnose fledg-

ling verse of song hedging bets against himself. B says It's been a while where ya been. That's another secret

I'll never tell XO XO. Button Girl. Ha ha ho ho Button squirts incandescent spurts of wisdom

from the top of the stairs. F opens her mouth to catch. A & A laugh and laugh. Oh is that pointing South

no it's North you idiot. Where ya been Button where we thought you'd moved again. Nah just busy here & there

Button yells Stop talking man let's shake our pants pop these pills let's tremble dawn we're all transplants

in this fucking beautiful world did you see the light did you see it. The Best Light. Who's that lady I'd

dreamt her up last night I'd kill for her I'd die for her mid-flight I'd do anything am I her kinda guy

let's find out. Button shoots his shot far-out across the Milky Way. She chasing clout

man she only linking arms with the band who cares Button come away and and

did you see it. What. The light. Did you see it the shadow light. No I missed it where were you did you see it

I was gone awhile did you miss me. No but Button did you see. See what. The dark light. No I was looking at her she

moved like a trout in the sea. Button baby calm down here's a handkerchief for your nose it's bleeding.

What did I miss this time. Nothing nothing. You just told me I missed it. What. The Best Light. Oh right. oh right.

[maldarchive]

15:26 - Curling inwards. Cats cradle. What the fuck do I do from here, when all of me points in one direction so relentlessly, while my life leans strongly how it has always. 15:27 - Facing rushes did I make the wrong decisions or did I make the right decisions just too quickly. How can I forget how it felt at first. I want so much to be ALIVE in every way sensually activated. Did I not feel that before. Or how can I feel it now without enforcing solitude. Or can I enforce solitude without giving up. 15:28 - Everything seems "worth it" to me who am so far across the line that there is no semblance of winning or losing there only is a vast stretch of land before me. Stop holding me back I want to say to the world stop slowing me down I who am so fast so reckless.

15:29 - I don't like to leave things incomplete I like to see them through all the way to the very end. Is that always possible so far yes it has been. Then what fails me now that didn't before. I remember so clearly the feeling on being on that road, so many years ago, that road still throbbing under my feet, so many lives ago.

15:30 - I always listened to myself why do I not listen to myself now. I can see it so clearly in my mind: a small house a small bed and perfect lighting. I'll knit the lampshades myself. I'll buy a record player myself.

15:31 - I will have a corner to read in and another to write in. When I fall in love I will call them over at night and make the room smell so good. The temperature will always be perfect and the sheets so soft. I'll organise my closet so well this time I will always know where everything is. I'll open myself up I'll open my house up so good.

15:32 - There will always be some kind of breeze some kind of movement. Sunset hours beautiful light through thin cotton curtains. I'll listen to the same album on repeat every morning I'll wash my own dishes and wipe my own surfaces. This is a life I always wanted my own life designed bit by bit.

15:33 - What takes me away from my current life which too is my own life? Why can't I live it as such? Something barricades my desire to clean up, to fix things up, to do what I want. I want always to do what I want I don't know how to express that as a need and not a naivety. 15:34 - To be seen for who I am to be loved like a cat curled up against a windowledge. To be loved just as I am forever as I am forever changing forever inexact. How can I make that happen and will it ever be worth it to lose what I have. I never want to lose what I have...

[maldarchive]

17:14 - I know now many things I did not know before such as how to handle my finances (roughly), how to cook (well and without tasting), how to speak my mind without walling myself in. 17:15 - These are polite gestures. I am filled with gratifications. I am nothing nothing with a bow in my hair. I am nothing nothing I can see it in my beloved's eyes the pain it causes my emptiness. 17:16 - I will check and get back to you ma'am. Boy's done now she's thrown her hands up she doesn't want to be my puppet anymore. What about me what am I meant to do. In the midst of a world of war and pain my own spindly little pain legs. The fuck is wrong with you. No Boy you you. What did you do now. 17:17 - We are fighting over the last scrap of bread. There is mold behind all our paintings. Will the tension break somehow. A loud clap or a pill shoved all the way into the back of my throat. I am lifting no fingers I am making no promises. I am writing from the gargle of my stomach. Boy don't do this don't go. 17:18 - But Boy goes where she wants. I don't go where I want, I stay put, I am solid and loyal, I am predictable and tame. I am not Frida wild and delicious. I am nothing nothing my eyes glazed over my past like a shield wrapped within me. I tremble to the touch again! 17:19 - Cruel repetition of the year. Refrain of April: what happened once must happen over. When will she let her claws out my skin. Will I make the mistake. I have always saved myself at the last last minute the final juncture I have swooped in and dragged myself off the track. Boy don't distract me like that.

[maldarchive]

11:14 - Churn of sickness yearn of sickness of what purpose this sickness that draws me in and spits me out endlessly. I have a new body now it is not my old body returned, it is brand new, its muscles are new, its shape is new. 11:15 - Its capacities are new. I am surprised suddenly to be able to swing weights across my chest in large swooping motions where a year ago I could not even lift them. I am surprised by my openness to new touch in a way I have never felt before. On the other hand the other hand.

11::16 - The other hand being that I am locked out of my old life desperately trying to find the key. Where the fuck did I put it. Can I break this door or window. Someone bolted every possible entry from the inside. Who is this someone is it me. Did I want this did I do it to myself. 11:17 - I can't tell what role I've played or wish to play. All I know is decadent solitude thru which I can access any transformation, any trophy. I could line the shelves. I could be so devastated. 11:18 - Cost of what against cost of what. I am trying to find new modes of spending my day I am looking for a sustainable way to earn a living. I need to feel freedom, freedom from what, freedom from whom. Freedom not from but to.

[maldarchive]

19:46 - I am trying to say that an archive is painful again. What have I collected and what have I displaced. I am eating the hands of the clock I am waiting for some kind of surface to give. 19:47 - Coming back to the same spot I notice nothing is different so many years later I am using the same words to describe the same feelings. I am questioning whether people still experience talking to me as talking to an object in that I do not respond I only absorb. 19:48 - I am trying my best to respond without retaliating. I am keeping a burning secret that is destroying my buoyancy. I am feeling sinking feelings every few seconds the earth opens up and lets me in a little. What else is there to think of I can only think of myself and when I think of myself I think through pain. 19:49 - I am drawn deeply to my solitude I am drawn deeply to my writing and work. I am interrupted by the work of others, that is, the work of money, the work of the house, the work of partnership, when did I collect all of these strings, how can I set them down for a moment, I haven't taken a breath 19:50 - for longer than I can hold. A tremble in my body as my friend holds my arm in her sleep. Guilt [?] or fear [?] or what. Interpretations confuse me I only want to live moment to moment. I cannot believe it 19:51 - when I am not seen for who I am or understood for who I am because I am instead perceived as who I am vs. who I was. I was never anything I am not! And yet I am different each day. Can you love me nevertheless. Can you love me nonetheless. Can you love me forever and ever. 19:52 - Twilight hours. Strange bird calls. Cicada swarms. Crunch of leaves. I did it, I bared myself, I brushed my teeth. I bent up and down and up and down and up and down. 19:53 - Tiredness overtook me. Why is it so quiet suddenly. What if they were to kiss. I wouldn't mind, I really wouldn't, just keep me out of it please. I am so sick of my sickness.

[maldarchive]

3PARTYPOEM

Button's got their goddamn arms flung across the dancing farm they are painting candyfloss

stealing "wives" from "grooms". The fuck's that smell in the restroom, man -- a line cut's a line dispelled --

but Button said Not again Not again. Yet here we are, A-G-A-I-N, F's got her one arm debt-

ed to their carriage thru troubled waters then Button mutters absolute Garbage Nonsense

and tries to kiss her. Cut it out Button I told you not like this, I'm a lesbian I want bliss, F moos

like a sow into Button's long ears. I'm a woman too Button laughs and wags their tail, how could you

understand with your limited views F. I'll drop you home and I'll block you Button, you slop

you mess. Button take a guess, miss the bell, proclaim they've kissed more girls than any "man", hell,

they've kissed more "men" than any "man". Hit me with yr best shot Button says. I'll part the Caspian Sea

with my puny wings. F kisses Button's salty cheek. Head of Button spins record-like makes creaky

sounds it hurts, It Hurts, what hurts, Button, O says, tell me. Everyfuckingthing. O knows better than to play

this game. Turns the camera off puts a tight lid on the nightpot. Gives Button's ass a right slap, yawns,

burrows deep. You stink, my love, you smell like shit, O whispers, drooling spit

into Button's gaping mouth. Further south sticky hot you're the best I got Button. O o O but you're the best I got.