Fractality.

Charlie Awkward-Dangerous O'Grady. A self-professed dandy, reluctant nihilist, perpetually angry queer, singer in empty houses, and arrogant nostalgic. Bad at writing bios on a professional basis. Confirmed Harry Styles' favourite writing blog in all of tumblr. Currently an editor for Sydney University's "Carillon" journal, poetry sub-editor for "ARNA" journal, and a reporter on culture and gay things for Honi Soit. DISCLAIMER: Harry Styles has never read this blog. SERIES AND COLLECTIONS. | Poetry. | Prose. | Short stories. | "Essays". Things about writing. | Thoughts. | Music. | Charlie Reads. | Life Things/Not Writing (also here).

[ohyegrimlady]

Started a dream journal as a longterm daily poetry writing exercise: follow charmandreaming for softdoom poetry business. 

[ohyegrimlady]

Kaleidoscope @ m2 Gallery: Writer's Note

Kaleidoscope @ m2 Gallery: Writer’s Note

(From the program note for Theatre21’s production of Kaleidoscope, the first run of a show which will hopefully run many, many times more.) It was October last year when Finn Davis texted me out of the blue to ask: “who’s your favourite actor in SUDS?” Fearing a trap I asked why, to which he replied, “you’re going to write a one person show, I’m going to direct it, and we need someone to act in…

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[colonizationkills]

not gay as in married but trans as in buried

(source, jen’s tumblr)

[ohyegrimlady]

Out

(From the collection I'm self publishing this year) It's becoming this thing you can't nudge away, nosing Its way around corners until you remember the ice of Its hands. You forget, forget. You try. It's nightlife and he's seeing a shattered windshield in an empty wine glass, he's seeing his own eyes, he's seeing her. It's a long night and you're seeing cracking tiles On the floor of someone else's bathroom, wet hair, dripping the smell of someone else's soap. Open the door and outside there's some happy scene. Open the door and the lights are all out. Open the door and it's some feeling you don't understand any more. Everything's the same as it's always been, you're just feeling it all backward. Open the door. "You could just," It whispers, creeping fingers. "Not like they'd notice." Everyone's feeling like themselves for the first time, maybe ever, crash landing into their bodies, but you've never felt more made up of someone elses. "Isn't being sad great," you say. "Seems like the worst thing in the world," he says. "Yeah, that too," you say. "Still here," It says, noses your ear. "I've got you." You remember.

[ohyegrimlady]

not-poems

I wrote some poems that looked like screams, you remember.  You said they were nice, but not perfect, and traced the letters with your hand over mine around the pen. I wrote poems that  could not be called poems because they had gaping maws and teethfingers and nightmare sheen but you said they'd be poems, one day. Now I scratch out screams on everything, inelegant turns of phrase sobbed into pillows, the sleeves of my sweaters til they fray, clumsy cliches, and you're not here,  you're not, the only hand controlling the pen's knife edge is  mine so now nothing ugly will ever become a poem again.

[ohyegrimlady]

theory of body (a poem)

(A piece from a collection on queer transness to be released June-July this year.) it will come for you in aisles of merino wool floor-to-ceiling bleating insults “wrong shape wrong size wrong boy” it will come to you static sparks stinging touches to soft things wrong touch wrong body wrong boy wrong

it will come for you in the bark of the gallery guard even in your best boy clothes it will co…

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[ohyegrimlady]

[untitled]

You do not fit inside your body. It is not the wrong body, but  you have outgrown its shape.  You forget to feel beautiful.

But remember:

You use your tiny hands to write tired poems about your tiny hands 

You use your voice to explain that it is hard for you to use your voice, Judas voice, tunnel voice, that it sits in your throat like a stone

You use your chest, ugly, horror chest, to breathe in, fill the dusty cavity with future, and when you breathe out, you make things you are making

You cut shapes on walls with your  unfamiliar shadow

You use your hands, your arms, feet, legs, misshapen you, secondhand, borrowed, ill-fitting you, to dance

You take this body that chokes you and you use it to love

You take your tiny hands and you raise flowers from the dirt

[ohyegrimlady]

it's about mourning, you say

you were a dead boy before you were even born, too stupid brave to keep your mouth shut and now you're a murdered daughter.

they thought the woman was dead, who went through the hospital backwards. the cemetery,  the mortuary, the ER, life.

the dying comes backwards. first, you're forgotten, right names lost on lips still too sad. then you're mourned,

wrong names on sad lips repeated like rosaries until the girl  forms again, breathes again, until the girl is alive again, and you're still the dead boy.

there's not a thing in you death hasn't played with and handled back crinkled up from careless use

and when they talk about you it's about someone else who's not here any more.

[ohyegrimlady]

Every morning the lights go on, every evening the lights go off. Ths morning they are hospital glow flickering on rows on half price pots and pans, the ones which were delivered after you left. You always took your coffee with a half sugar because you said you were "watching your weight", and I never understood why you didn't just get skim milk. In lieu of a problem I can fix I walk in circles around the store running bitten- down fingers over the things I know you've never touched, because there is no fix today, just the lights which go on and off. There is a blank in here l ike glazed white eyes, like fists clenched around five cent coins,  like skim milked poured into coffee  no sugar we are not sweet smiles  and How Can I Help You today. I can't stop thinking about how I am breathing and you don't.

You taught me how to gift wrap. You told me that, now you'd decided you didn't want kids you would start travelling more. You'd already started planning your next trip. I'm sorry about the empty pages in your passport.

The lights go on, the lights go off. Everything today is hospital white but I will always remember you in orange.

[ohyegrimlady]

[Link] Honi Soit: We (can't) exist

Honi Soit: We (can’t) exist

So this week I wrote about Arcade Fire’s new music video for Honi Soit.

It’s somewhat fitting, but mostly just ironic, that the first piece I wrote this semester was about a woman who made the world listen to her story, and how that made me feel a bit less alone–and the last piece I write is about what happens when someone doesn’t get to tell their own story, or…

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[ohyegrimlady]

"Everybody Knows I'm a Motherfuckin' Monster"

“Sasquatch, Godzilla, King Kong, Lochness, Goblin, Ghoul, a zombie with no conscience Question: what do all these things have in common? Everybody knows I’m a motherfucking monster” Jay Z in “Monster”, Kanye West (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy)

I feel like if you want to be talking about Yeezus–about Kanye at all–you have to be talking about monsters.

Covert art for Yeezus, 2013.

Yeezusbegins…

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[ohyegrimlady]

a rescue mission

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my body.

It may not mean much to say that, because in a way I am constantly thinking about my body. My body is a battleground that I don’t get to stop fighting small wars on, on a daily basis. Even when I’m not thinking about it, I’m hypervigilantly aware of its every detail. What I should probably say is I’ve been thinking a lot about what my body means, and…

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[ohyegrimlady]

Last night I won a prize (a Hugh Grant biography) for performing a poem about moderateclimates, who won a prize for performing a poem about me. So basically, we won the award for being cute.

[ohyegrimlady]

are you transgender?

I dunno, are you?

[ohyegrimlady]

[Image: handwritten note, "They called me Pinocchio / Because I wanted to be a "real boy"]

Possibly the realest shit I have ever written (if only I knew how the rest of the poem goes yet).

[ohyegrimlady]

Will be slamming it once again tomorrow night (with possibly video footage to arise from that), get keen everyone.

[ohyegrimlady]

WEDID(IT)!

As another long (yet frightfully quick) year concludes, I am once again faced with the inescapable thought of "holy shit, you said you were going to do so much writing this year and you didn't you piece of shit".

Hence I have invented a thing--it's called "WEDID(IT)!", or "Write Every Day In December (It's Terrific)!"

Of course, I could just write every day this month without needing to announce it--but then I wouldn't get to use a fun and apt acronym, plus I think giving something a name makes it more official and thus increases the guilt when you inevitably fail (as I did when I tried to do this last year).

Now, given that it's the 2nd today because I forgot about it yesterday, I've already failed! I will not let that stop me, however, from writing on all the rest of the days of this December. I'm planning on keeping a tally of the number of pieces/word count I write, probably on this blog. Some of the stuff I write may also end up on this blog--other stuff will be on my personal blog, or I'll put it away to try and get published.

All are welcome to join me in this venture using the tag 'WEDIDIT', which is the tag I'll be using for anything I write. Probably no one will, but I'd love it if you did!