Sometimes I just agree with people so that they can stop talking
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@poetryfeels
Sometimes I just agree with people so that they can stop talking
The Period Poem by Dominique Christina
Drunk Text Message To God by George Watsky
Iâm not trying to brag or anything but Iâm going to tell you about my night last night Had a couple beers, ya know Yeah, got a little tipsy Got a little existential crisis-y Last night I drunk text messaged God I just wanted to tell him Iâd been thinkinâ about him A lot And to tell him Iâm stalking a church I meant to write starting a church No one spells drunk texts right, anyway Last night I sent out a buttload of embarrassing texts and then copied them to everyone I know Like âYoâ Like âSupâ I was out sinning Curled in a bed The room is spinning Itâs all in my head I canât get to sleep And the weight of the world Is the weight of my sheets Hereâs the great thing about my church: You can keep your religion âcause my church is for those of us who grew up wishing we believed in an afterlife And for those of us who were so close to god we could practically lean over and make out with her My church is sick of bloody crusades to the march of drum corps Iâll start a church that gets pissed off and starts thumb wars Maybe a church that gets Mondays off for religion reasons A church that throws phone parties in elevators to learn about praise The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire Weâll dance as it burns for 8 magical days That was a Jewish reference No offense to Gideon bibles but my church goes into hotel rooms and fills up the drawers with chocolate pillow mints And my church, if you choose to come to Sunday school, you donât learn about hell Hell no You eat Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert shaped potato chips and watch Chapelleâs show My church had 10 commandments, 5 precepts, and a workplace abuse handbook but we partied hard last week and I think we left them in a restroom at Chuckie Cheese Now we just go by a picture of a heart that I found on a bar napkin My church tongue-kissed your mom last night Um, Iâm just kidding She left 5 red fingers across my face We hung out with the creator I think she loves you Sheâs beautiful Sheâs got âdaughterâ tattooed on her left bicep âSonâ on her right My church is at the center of the planet and has the most amazing stained-glass windows The glass is the floor of the ocean The colors are where you look up and see blue and a manatee I love manatees And the forest canopy Tony Montana comes to my church and forgets he left his cocaine in the car We play âStairway to Heavenâ on Hendrixâs broken guitar My church gets fucked up on communion wine Asks lamp posts to be our Valentine My church bar hops together And my church, if you donât blow yourself to smitherines, you get 17 virgins in a room to yourself Or you go and play Starfox together My church got beat up by the skateboard kids for being a rollerblade kid But rolled to school the next day on one skate and 2 crutches True to the fight With a fist in the air Screaming âfruit Buddhas unite!â My church can feel itâs pulse in itâs fingertips Has 3 stomachs because our fear is hard to swallow But love always has room My church has a love bladder and always asks to go to the bathroom There are drawbacks of course: My church will not resurrect your dead hamster My church will not play for keeps Wear Versace Give out baby Jesus Tomagachiâs And Tom Cruise thinks my church sucks balls Iâm not Jesus Christ But I can turn water into Kool-Aid And Iâm not Jim Jones But my church is like, totally a cult And everyone drinks the Kool-Aid And everyone dies! But for some people the Kool-Aid doesnât kick in until youâre 105 Surrounded by everyone who matters most to you Yes, some of us go early, but at my church you have to think about that possibility âCause my church makes you scared Iâm talkinâ like waves of fear Like youâre lying awake at night And you pull the blankets up to your neck And your covers are like a tsunami of fear And you start hyperventilating Thinking about how youâre getting older way faster than your dreams are getting accomplished About how skinny your arms are About how fat your tummy is About how much itâs gonna suck to eventually lose the power to think about all the badass stuff we do at our church Donât fall asleep yet Contrary to popular belief, thatâs not where dreams get accomplished The body of Christ is your body The body of Buddha be your body Your body be usable Your body be suitable Your body beautiful You donât need anything different Keep your broken cell phones Donât delete your text messages You might read those stupid-ass, Badly spelled rants over on a Sunday morning With a pounding headache... And have a religious experience.
Neil Hilborn performs his poem OCD
Liars, All Of Us by Chad Anderson
All the poets that you love listening to
love lying to you. Iâm not that egocentric to make you believe that Iâm not one of them. I lie all the time, mostly up here. See, Iâve been doing this for a little while and Iâm starting to understand things: poetry is not about telling you the truth. Itâs about telling you the version of a story that gets the most reaction, the one that flows the best on the mic, the one that has all the lines that the audience is going to like.
See, maybe the truth isnât supposed to rhyme so well. Maybe it doesnât have to rise to a crescendo. The truth never sounded like sound bites and name dropping.
I promised myself I wouldnât write poems about poetry, but I woke up at 3 AM the other morning and started spitting out all these lies that I couldnât roll off my tongue and thought that maybe at this hour I could write a poem about honesty without having to choreograph the hook at the end.
I woke up at 3 AMÂ and Iâm having trouble remembering how to spell the word âwouldnâtâ.
Four years ago, I featured at a youth slam in Jersey City, and tried to show some children how poetry is supposed to sound cool.
Jessica sat in the front row thinking I could teach her about spoken word. I lied to her, in metaphor, for a half hour only to hear the silence of a fifth grade explosion; Jessica explained it to her thirteen year old peers how rough her fatherâs beard stubble felt when her was drinking and how a foster family is just a fresh coat of paint over stucco when youâve been running against the wall.
She didnât actually say all this. Not like I can. But I could hear the inhalation of truth in between breaths of her poetry. Her name is not really Jessica. I donât remember what it is. But for a moment, I can make you care about her, even if sheâs not real.
Donât ask me. You wouldnât know the difference anyway.
I donât write poems about honesty. Iâve written three poems this year to make me sound cute to girls, but not one about the medication that Iâm taking because there are some things that I donât fucking talk about. Why am I 33 years old and still trying to sound cute to girls?
A couple weeks ago, two friends asked me how my roommate is doing.
I use the word âroommateâ instead of referring to her as the girl Iâm afraid of falling in love with because she is the most beautiful overturned school bus that I have ever seen and I slow down sometimes to watch the trauma.
And because she knows me. Like how she knows that I look in the mirror too much, and I always eat the last peanut butter cup, and I fuck girls with my poems, and use the word âroommateâ too loosely.
And the poet in me shouldâve told them sheâs doing just fine, but I hadnât memorized all the lines yet. My best friend is not doing fine, and I canât fix it.
The students in my class like me because I say the word âbullshitâ during my lectures and let them out early.
They donât see that fear has me losing focus on the bullet points when Iâm thinking about how many slit wrists Iâll return home to tonight. My roommateâs not suicidal But it sounds sexier than saying that she closes her eyes sometimes when sheâs changing lanes.
I lie. Because it keeps me driving to work instead of holding her all night and crying.
I need somebody to talk to but poetry helps you meet people who want to fuck poets. Who do you talk to when your best friend is biting off her cuticles, while other girls are sharpening their nails?
I need to go to bed now. Iâm sorry I lied. Iâll write the rest of this poem tomorrow, when I can differentiate whatâs none of your fucking business and write poems with hooks that rhyme. It doesnât matter what you believe. Iâm tired of being the strong one all the time.
A Lot Like You by Rudy Francisco
I was told The average girl begins to plan her wedding at the age of 7 I was told She picks the colors and the cake first By the age of 10 She knows the time, And the location By 17 Sheâs already chosen a gown 2 bridesmaids And a maid of honor By 23 Sheâs waiting for a man Who wont break out in hives when he hears the word âcommitmentâ Someone who doesnât smell like a Band-Aid drenched in lonely Someone who is more than a temporary solution to the empty side of the bed Someone Whoâll hold her hand like itâs the only one theyâve ever seen. To be honest, I donât know what kind of tux Iâll be wearing I have no clue what want my wedding will look like. But I imagine, The women who pins my last name to hers, Will butterfly down the aisle Like a 5 foot promise I imagine that Her smile Will be so large that youâll see it on google maps And know exactly where our wedding is being held The woman that I plan to marry Will have champagne in her walk And I will get drunk on her footsteps. When the pastor asks me If I take this woman to be my wife I will say yes before he finishes the sentence Iâll apologize later for being impolite But I will also explain to him That our first kiss happened 6 years ago And Iâve been practicing my âYesâ For past 2, 165 days When people ask me about my wedding I never really know what to say But when they ask me about my future wife I always tell them Her eyes are the only Christmas lights that deserve to be seen all year long I tell them that She thinks too much Misses her father Loves to laugh And sheâs terrible at lying Because her face never figured out how to do it correctly. I tell them that If my alarm clock sounded like her voice My snooze button would collect dust I tell them that If she came in a bottle I would drink her until my vision is blurry and my friends take away my keys I tell them that If she was a book I would memorize her table of contents I would read her cover-to-cover Hoping to find typos Just so we can both have a few things to work on Because arenât we all unfinished? Donât we all need a little editing? Arenât we all waiting to be proofread by someone? Arenât we all praying they will tell us that we make sense? She donât always make sense, But her imperfections are the things I love about her the most. To be honest, I donât know when I will be married I donât know where I will be married But I do know this Whenever Iâm asked about my future wife, I explain her As best as I can.
She always sounds a lot like you.
Iâm never gonna wait that extra twenty minutes to text you back, and Iâm never gonna play hard to get when I know your life has been hard enough already. When we all know everyoneâs life has been hard enough already itâs hard to watch the game we make of love, like everyoneâs playing checkers with their scars, saying checkmate whenever they get out without a broken heart.
Andrea Gibson
cancer statistics
My five-year-old cousin David thinks one out of every five people dies.
It was hard enough to tell him at three years old that the sky isnât
always blue, but it was even harder to inform him
that actually, five out of five people die.
Sometimes I want to divorce this body
and leave the custody arrangement up to someone else,
just so I donât have to be responsible
for this skin. God knows I could talk about the time
I fell in love with a cancer patient named Michael
and made love to him slowly, at the speed of a tortoise,
for three hours because his bones ached so badly
but he still wanted to hold me.
And I have walked into over 34 bars in the past two months;
each time a drunk man laughed and asked me
what the punchline was. I replied that there wasnât one,
because if there were, Michael wouldnât really have cancer
and David would know the truth.
But I still remove Michaelâs IV on the good days when he
asks me to, and we ride up and down the hospital hallway
on his wheelchair until he commands me to kiss him
instead of chemotherapy.
Eight times out of nine, my mouth does the trick.
My heart was too big for my body so I let it go and most days this world has thinned me to where I am just another cloud forgetting another flock of swans but believe me when I tell you my soul has squeezed into narrow spaces.
Anis Mojgani, Come Closer
Please Know:Â
Whether itâs the days you burn more brilliant than the sun
Or the nights you collapse into my lap, curling your body into a thousand broken questions
You are the most beautiful thing Iâve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.
Itâs just so strange. You used to love me, and now youâre a stranger who happens to know all of my secrets.
-Clementine von Radics
For Those Who Can Still Ride in an Airplane by Anis Mojgani
Iâm twenty-eight years old and trying to figure out most days what being a man means. I donât drink, fight or fuck but these days I find myself wanting to do all three. I donât really have a favorite color anymore, but I did when I was a kid. And back then that color was blue, and back then I wanted to be an astronaut, an artist, an architect, a secret agent, a ranger for the World Wildlife Fund, and a hobo. When I was six years old I used to always throw my clothes into my blue and yellow hot wheels car carrying suitcase and run away to beneath the dining room table. Iâve made out with more girls than I wish Iâd had and not nearly as many as Iâd like to. And Iâve been in love three times so I doubt Iâm going to try that anymore. And I spend most days making pictures or thinking about making pictures or masturbating or thinking about masturbating. And Iâm trying to find God everywhere and figure this thing he made called a man. And the TV tells me its bare-knuckled bombing, so I guess if I had a tank or a missile my penis would be huge. And thats what I want because thats what being a man means or at least thats what they keep telling me. My pops, he takes care of us. He puts the garbage out twice a week. He drives forty-five minutes to water flowers. I sit on the bus when a seven year-old boy sits down next to me and asks me my name. âAnis.â Thatâs a nice name. âThank you, whatâs yours?â Quentin. Anis, do you want to read Robin Hood with me? So tell me what my fists are writing, Mr. President. My fingers, they open up like gates when I type and the wind is swinging in the wake, mother fucker. I lift bridges with poems and forests grow in my motherâs eyes. âI am looking for God, Quentin.â âWhile this world says âfuck youâ for trying. For this world hates your eyes, Quentin. For they are simple and pure. And this world hates your fingers, Quentin, little like the stems of flowers. For not being able to pick up the things you have left behind, because you are still learning to do so. I donât drink, fight, or fuck but these days itâs only two out of those three I donât do, Quentin. And I fall in love three times, so I donât want to, want to, but I still do, Quentin. And I want to find God in the morning, in the tired hands of dusk. But, instead, I drive sixty through residential streets praying to hit a child so that they may stay forever an angel and forever red and forever full of light and crayons and simple outstretched limbs⊠..Trying to pick up way too much way too fast, forgetting what it means to be a person. In a world where egos are measured with tabloids, where automobiles are like morals, where beliefs are like naps, you leave them behind when somebody touches you. And in a place where oil takes precedence over life, I find myself sitting on a bus, when a little boy floats down like fresh water, carrying a book I used to read and asks if I want to see what he sees if only for a little while. Then asks if I want to give to him what I see if only for a little while, then says to me heâs going to show me the world. And starts moving his fingers beneath the words, not always noticing what is written, sometimes skipping whole sentences, sometimes skipping whole lines⊠âŠbecause his fingers are moving fast and I wanna tell him, âSlow down, Quentin. You can see it all if your finger whispers on one word. Slow down and hold what you see just a little bit longer.â For in a world of fast faces, Iâm looking for God everywhere, trying to figure out a little better this little thing he made called a man.â
First Readings - Neil Hilborn - âHow to Get Beat by the Copsâ
âSo the thing about punk shows is you get all these half-deaf, depressed kids, you get them in a room where they all hate the same thing: themselves. And when the cops show up, all that hate has somewhere else to go.â
Unrequited Love Poem by Sierra DeMulder
You will be out with friends when the news of her existence will be accidentally spilled all over your bar stool. Respond calmly as if it was only a change in weather, a punch line you saw coming. After your fourth shot of cheap liquor, leave the image of him kissing another woman in the toilet. In the morning, her name will be in every headline: car crash, robbery, flood. When he calls you, ignore the hundreds of ropes untangling themselves in your stomach. You are the best friend again. He invites you over for dinner and you say yes too easily. Remind yourself this isnât special, itâs only dinner, everyone has to eat. When he greets you at the door, do not think for one second you are the reason he wore cologne tonight. In his kitchen, he will hand-feed you a piece of red pepper. His laugh will be low and warm and it will make you feel like candlelight. Do not think this is special. Do not count on your fingers the number of freckles you could kiss too easily. Try to think of pilot lights and olive oil, not everything you have ever loved about him, or it will suddenly feel boiling and possible and so close. You will find her bobby pins laying innocently on his bathroom sink. Her bobby pins. They look like the wiry legs of spiders, splinters of her undressing in his bed. Do not say anything. Think of stealing them, wearing them home in your hair. When he hugs you goodbye, let him kiss you on the forehead. Settle for target practice. At home, you will picture her across town pressing her fingers into his back like wet cement. You will wonder if she looks like you, if you are two bedrooms in the same house. Did he fall for her features like rearranged furniture? When he kisses her, does she taste like wet paint? You will want to call him. You will go as far as holding the phone in your hand, imagine telling him unimaginable things like you are always ticking inside of me and I dream of you more often than I donât. My body is a dead language and you pronounce each word perfectly. Do not call him. Fall asleep to the hum of the VCR. She must make him happy. She must be She must be his favorite place in Minneapolis. You are a souvenir shop, where he goes to remember how much people miss him when he is gone.
Private Parts by Sarah Kay
The first love of my life never saw me naked - there was always a parent coming home in half an hour - always a little brother in the next room. Always too much body and not enough time for me to show it. Instead, I gave him my shoulder, my elbow, the bend of my knee - I lent him my corners, my edges, the parts of me I could afford to offer - the parts I had long since given up trying to hide. He never asked for more. He gave me back his eyelashes, the back of his neck, his palms - we held each piece we were given like it was a nectarine that could bruise if we werenât careful. We collected them like we were trying to build an orchard. And the spaces that he never saw, the ones my parents half labeled âprivate partsâ when I was still small enough to fit all of myself and my worries inside a bathtub - I made up for that by handing over all the private parts of me. There was no secret I didnât tell him, there was no moment I didnât share - and we didnât grow up, we grew in, like ivy wrapping, moulding each other into perfect yings and yangs. We kissed with mouths open, breathing his exhale into my inhale - we could have survived underwater or outer space. Breathing only of the breathe we traded, we spelled love, g-i-v-e, I never wanted to hide my body from him - if I could have I would have given it all away with the rest of me - I did not know it was possible. To save some thing for myself. Some nights I wake up knowing he is anxious, he is across the world in another womanâs arms - the years have spread us like dandelion seeds - sanding down the edges of our jigsaw parts that used to only fit each other. He drinks from the pitcher on the night stand, checks the digital clock, it is 5am - he tosses in sheets and tries to settle, I wait for him to sleep. Before tucking myself into elbows and knees reach for things I have long since given away.
When Your Boyfriend Asks You To Strip For Him by Nicole Homer
When your boyfriend asks you to strip for him, ask him âWhy?â When he is in the middle of a word like beautiful or lovely, cut him off. In a voice like an eighth grade bra biting against your spine, ask him about the particulars of your body. Now whatever he says, no matter how many times he uses the word perfect or forever, pretend you did not hear him. Pretend it is not true. And when he tries to tuck the question back into his pocket, distort this small act of kindness into a confirmation.
You are nothing. You are worthless, even to this boy, with âperfectâ and âforeverâ etched into his retinas. Decide not to trust him enough to relax, only enough to follow through. Then pick a song - pick a song with a beat you can pretend to dance to. Stay away from your favorites - they are all sad. If you are feeling adventurous, if you need a new punishment for owning this traitorous body, pick a song that encourages a costume, like a maid or a cowgirl. Buy the costume at a sex shop with blacked out windows. The front door will warn you: this is no place for children. The store will remind you of your body, each aisle a dirty finger, a freak show, of what you are willing to do. Practice for the stage by avoiding eye contact with the salesgirl. Find something small, see-through, cut out, fishnet. And when she compliments you on how well you wear the nothing you are trying on, know that she is a liar who works on commission.
When you leave the store, plain white plastic bag in hand, think of the boy. How your body has always contorted his mouth into a smile, his hands kinder than mirrors, his voice a life jacket inflating. Then remind yourself, nothing is free. When you get home, find the most unforgiving mirror in the house, fill each lamp with one hundred watt eyes, take a permanent marker to the parts of yourself you hate. Start with your face. Your nose, its bony bridge; your chin; every dirty pore; your two, small, A-symmetrical breasts; your stomach, all of it. Each leg, each ankle, each large foot. Do not stop until you are all stained.
Know that you have at least one good use. When the boy comes home, finds you a pile of ink and fishnet, hide your face, open your legs. When he strips the disguise from your body, when he wipes each inch of you clean, when he pushes your knees back together, ask him again: âWhy?â And when he says he doesnât want to see you, donât cry, donât wail and shred the sheets. Let him speak.
He only wants you to see you as he does.
There is the biggest parade moving through my streets the sky is exploding with ticker tape strangers kiss on every corner their kisses are what make me live forever this is how she makes me feels like honey and trombones like honey and trombones
Anis Mojgani, This Is How She Makes Me Feel