Do not go gentle into that good night.

side blog for my semi adequate poems I follow back as @apatheticskeleton

[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. 

[flowercryptid-deactivated202407]

excerpt from said the changeling to the girl | q.l. | read the rest here

[streetsiding]

somewhere is a boy suffocating in the dirt (holier than the sky). some things are always true like his hands caked in mud, like skinned knees and my mother says listen, listen, somewhere in a city is a boy who is more sunflower hands than breath.

god looks to me when i dream. he asks me about my heart in the fields. my tears in a jar. the strand of hair caught in the drying paint.

“some things are always true. the fall-time misses the spring. a city is drowning in light.

somewhere i am more boy than myth but more myth than human. i guess what i’m trying to say is that there is a little bit of holiness in us all.

that is the truth- you made it so.”

-some sunday things // c.l

[sunsounds]

late-night exorcisms

this isn’t a poem / it’s an exorcism / hunger running fingertips inside my flesh / ghosts licking at my mouth

tell me this is how carthage burnt / salt & scorch the earth of my organs

i don’t want to start a revolution here / but make the inside of my ribcage something good / make me something good

& i’m mixing my metaphors but / this poem is a metaphor / this poem isn’t a poem / it’s cutting something out of me / hot water & soap pouring in my guts / like scouring every rotten thing away

just execute me / & call it salvation

this isn’t a poem, not like this / it’s an exorcism / & listen i don’t want to be what i am / i don’t want this to be what it is / so let’s call it a metaphor / let’s call it palms scrubbing at the cavities opened beneath my skin

this is not a revolution / no gods with hands wrapped around swords & flames / & this isn’t anything clean / but it’s trying to be

i don’t know what this is just / what it isn’t / i don’t know what i am / just what i want you to make me

i am nothing good / make me better than this

[quaint-caterpiller]

you went running, you remember that?

the way the rain slanted everything just a little, hiding your tears for you (as if god was looking down at your red heart) and all the lights in the whole town were suddenly forgettable.

and the world forgot.

forgot the headlights, and the streetlights, and the lights that were supposed to be on the sneakers you threw at the sun, the light in your eyes and the one in your heart, pouring yourself out to save something.

i said that all the lights went out.

and that’s true.

and while i was busy wishing for light,

light was busy rushing in.

two lights on a car you didn’t see.

two lights on a car that couldn’t see you.

you, in the road with a dead bird in your hand, wishing it back to life.

pouring yourself out, mixing in with the rain, all the lights back and too bright,

and me screaming your name, screaming

“please god do not let that boy die”

and he didn’t.

instead he took my legs for a while, and i swear those casts itched more than anything in the world.

more than the questions, and the praise and the tearful gratitude, as if i made a choice to do that. to save you.

the one thing you weren’t worth saving for was that itching.

we don’t talk about it, i close it up inside a lockbox and drown the box,

i keep you from talking about it, because it makes you cry.

you talk about it anyway.

and after you move too far away to talk about it, you write about it instead.

i take all the letters and lock them up to, but i keep this one safe.

in the end, it’s the space of the matter.

all this wide open space to be small into.

all this wide open land to become something, under our feet kissing the ground like a lover.

[quaint-caterpiller]

I’m not good enough for this. What I mean is I’m not good. Or enough. Or I’m too much, I can’t tell. I’m gonna ruin it, I know it and I’m already sorry. I just. It’s been so long and I’ve been breaking for three years and I’m sort of fucked up. And everyone who knows me already knows me, they’ve unlocked things and heard me crying and listened to me not do anything about it. What I mean is I feel like too much for you. Like maybe no one could live with that except me. What I mean is I burn like a forest and everyone I love is a tree. Or something. Stupid metaphor. Stupid poem, stupid breaking heart. I already want to apologize for being this way. But I don’t know how else to be, or what else to be, or anything at all really. I want this, badly. But I’m worried maybe I won’t be enough. I’m just a little worried, you know the kind of worry that starts in you belly and crawls up your throat?

[quaint-caterpiller]

the weekend came too quickly.

at five pm you start to leave your house with a bag in hand

before you remember that nothing like that happens anymore. and suddenly you remember her house always smelled like coffee.

like saturday mornings and running way too late and the sun rising way too early. like coffee. you wake up on a sunday, with a new tattoo and empty pockets.

in an empty house, in a bed you recognize but can’t remember. you make coffee the way she likes it, too dark and strong. you drink a whole pot before you know where you are. come monday time slows down, but time always goes slowly here.  Molasses-slow.

Like the first taste of a peach in summer, when the sun melts itself down the sky, molasses slow. like tasting your own heart before someone has a chance to rip it out before you are ready. it’s midnight. she is making coffee. you tip her a smile and say it’s midnight and she tips you one right back and says

but don't you remember, silly? time is an illusion, and caffeine doesn’t have any deadlines. You smile once and turn out the light.

[quaint-caterpiller]

a brief list of feelings. 1. those nights that are made of glass. the kind you don't even meet until you're an almost-adult and some things are starting to make sense but they're all just pieces of cloth you can't quite grasp.

2. the adrenaline rush that comes hand in hand with hurting. the sort of cruel twisted pride you feel in a hospital bed.

3. the illusion of doing it right for once. you managed a month and then it all starts crumbling again. coming away from itself like charcoal.

4. there are so few things that still feel good.

5. wanting to come out of all of this unscathed

6. knowing that last year it was all different and you'd give anything to go back even for a day just to get away from this, like the world has been sitting on your shoulders the whole time and you've only just noticed except you keep noticing and it just doesn't stop.

7. not really wanting it to.

8. not really ever asking for help.

a list of feelings, part two 1. the kind of tired you only get at airports. static from the tvs and stale air. where everyone is trying to get somewhere else, but they're all stuck here, with you. 2. the night sky after a rain storm. the night sky after an atomic bomb. do you think we'd feel guilty if we both survive. 3. maybe you're warm enough. maybe you'll keep the shadows at bay, maybe things won't get dark this time. but i'll light these candles, anyway. one for every heart break. 4. the sounds of glass breaking but it's happening behind your ear drums. 5. something you can't quite name, always sitting too far down your throat.

6. that sort of loneliness that holds you like something alive would. that rages and wants against you. the sort of thing that quietly falls asleep but never at the right times. 7. saying good night and meaning it

8. saying i love you and meaning it

[quaint-caterpiller]

this is the moment of giving up, this is one second where the world gets tilted the wrong way, and everything starts changing. 

i was alone, walking on a beach made of glass before its glass, and the water looked like glass. the sun cutting itself into shards on the surface, my life a mosaic for once. there was a mosaic in the first house. and it looked so out of place, among the shabby, function-made clothes and the worn furniture. it was a picture of some battle, some war i didn’t remember. none of the people had faces. that month was the hardest month of my whole life. so hard, most days the sun went down like something was forcing it to. most days i didn’t see the sun at all. and all through that i never gave up. but then after that there was another house, and more mosaics, turning battles into victories instead of just bloodshed. 

turning people into people with faces. another month of not giving up, of holding a ball of steel in my stomach, getting used to not sleeping. all that and more. the first day of paradise, i wasn’t ready. i knew what everyone else had wanted of me. and i knew how to give enough of it without losing myself. but this one was different. all the walls and the floor too were bare. no battles. no bloodshed. i wasn’t ready for it. i went six weeks without giving up, and without being asked to. when i finally did give up, it was a very gentle thing. more gentle that it had ever been in my entire life. more gentle than i thought was possible. when i finally gave up, i did it unbound, un-coerced. uninhibited.

[quaint-caterpiller]

have you ever wondered what the aliens think of us? this blue planet all the way out here, full of us, who are lonely? full of us who are weak, who are smart but can’t get along? do you think they’d hate us? do you think they pity us? (i would) out here on this earth that keeps hurtling towards something we can’t even imagine, we wish on things that burn and fall. and we keep burning and falling, burning bridges, falling in love, whatever you want to call it.there’s something dead here. i mean there’s a part of me that went and got itself killed, went and asked for it. is it possible to be alive if you’re part dead already? how much of a person can die before we behead them out of mercy? (i’d pity us) if a person gets cheated by gravity can get still be caught? is that why we send ourselves into space? where nothing has happened until we started happening. we’re here, right now, trying to deal with all this consciousness, trying to put together a puzzle that doesn’t have a picture. trying to figure out how much time we have left. here, with each other, hurtling towards something we haven’t invented yet

[quaint-caterpiller]

it’s empty here. i mean it’s so cold it’s empty and no one else can see it. welcome to the land of the forgotten, heavy things rain like amnesia here, like hit so hard you can hear things bleeding, beat dirt down our backs, there are train  tracks where wings would grow. and sometimes the sun doesn’t rise. i mean some days it’s so dark we can’t see, and we keep losing parts of ourselves, blinded by rage and water and dirt, we’re losing ourselves. falling down warm cement gutters and into piles of rotting leaves that god, i swear they looked fresh. i only went in once. i just miss when it wasn’t like this. i miss the sun, yknow? welcome to the land of the forgotten. everything here is made of metal and glass, and sand that used to be glass, i mean yes, we eat the glass, there’s nothing else to do. and us, wingless, soggy, missing-parts us, our feet like bricks in mud, our hands like broken gears, our heads rolling, i mean literally rolling, we’re all walking around with no good head between our shoulders. remember mama used to say if your head wasn’t screwed down you’d lose it too, just like everything else you lost. we keep getting lost here. listen, we’re lost, so lost, like a teddy bear that sits on the edge of your memory, like a teddy bear that got buried alive. it’s a murder scene, can’t you see that? i feel like this night has been dark and stormy for longer than we’ve been here. welcome back to the land of the forgotten. today the sun rose. today the rain stopped. today we all stopped shouting at each other (who’s fault was it, then? if it wasn’t me and it wasn’t any of you, there’s no one left to blame but the rain) today, of all today’s,  you are back. you came back. which means the parts of ourselves that were so lost they were broken came back. which means the sun came back. which means the leaves came back to the trees, and rain back to the cool embrace of the sky, and the mud back to the ground. you came back. which means you remembered the way. which means we stopped getting forgotten.

[quaint-caterpiller]

they’re holding hands and they don’t let go and they keep not letting go, because this is it, this is the end of the line, the end of everything and they’re so close to being something else entirely. something larger than themselves and they don’t want to forget but they do, and they keep forgetting but they also keep not letting go. they’re in love and they’re in love and they’re in love by nothing makes sense like the air around them turned to static like panic happens in a tide and everything is just gone and nothing survives. except them. they survive, in this world where things keep changing and they keep surviving and they keep crying for help but they also just keep not letting go.

voidfish

[quaint-caterpiller]

there’s a heaviness here that keeps letting the birds inside the house that sits on my shoulders. leaving the cobwebs where they were built , blowing out a candle that i lit, opening the curtains that were falling apart anyway, biting into my knuckles, bright as a sunday you waited for. wanting something from me that i don’t have, holding my hand (or not), drinking coffee like kissing someone, sitting on the ground with me, on the ground, saying honey, saying darling, saying did you miss me there’s a static up here, dusty as an attic that everyone else forgot, disappearing and falling in love, touring a life as if it might be worth it to give me a chance. knowing it absolutely won’t be. there’s something alive in there, taking up the space where common sense used to sleep so recklessly.

[quaint-caterpiller]

you, waterfall heart. you, bruise like a peach colored sky. you, hands made of glass, made of prettier things than i. you, secret, small love. i rush in. i mean i go running for something that doesn’t even exist and may need exist and probably won’t exist but i’m still running because i can’t seem to stop, because i can’t seem to stop. and i, being sorry. i, sparrow-boned. i, weak and small and pitiful. i, made of sweet tea, i, yellow sky, and it doesn’t matter what time it as long as it’s still snowing. the blanket stillness of snow, the first time you look out your window and there’s snow. wanting to stay inside because staying inside is such an act if there’s snow on the ground. you, candle. you, match. you easy equation. you fire hazard.

fantasies

[quaint-caterpiller]

for the first two years, it’s not worth it. the first two years, things happen around you but not to you, things happen slowly and in black and white. there are cracks in the linoleum, you can see cement underneath it, supposedly there to keep you standing. there are cracks in the walls and the ceilings and in you, cracks forming in you, in your skull for the first two years, all you can do is rebuild. up and never out, you leave your life tall and narrow, like a fire escape. the first two years, you are trying to escape, you are running, you’re running away, you’re on the run, you leave the water running. for two years you run from something everyday.   for two years, your keep your back straight and your elbows up and your chin high. and the third year, you finally get where you’re going

push through to get out

[quaint-caterpiller]

you made my heart feel like an empty hallway. the kind with brackets built in for candles, the kind you'd find written into a book about lost places. you made me feel like a cobweb, like a teddy bear sitting on the edge of your memory.

like a teddy bear that  got buried alive.

like something lost: nostalgia with an iron grip on my throat

and i wish i'd never met you it's only when we aren't speaking that it hurts. but you haven't spoken to me in two days and i feel like i went to jump off a cliff with wings made of cardstock and glitter glue,

a little kid that's hasn't learned how

hope can tear you apart faster than the wind if you let it. you made me feel like an empty wedding dress on Hollywood boulevard, all dirty stars and dreamers and women who've just seen too much, who are furious and unmovable, who put on lipstick, so they can forget how much they miss the 90's. like an all-consuming reach for something passed and unreachable. you made me feel like coffee stains on benches, and pennies in sink drains,  

and the almost-gentle slope of a curb as a cabbie flies around the corner,

too caught up fixing his dashboard meter to notice a sunset outside

that would make a little boy from Texas cry.

(and this is the American dream, unfiltered. like a cigarette you ripped out of the package too quickly.)

you made me feel like i lost something i can't remember

like a fire with no oxygen, choking on itself. you made me feel like that. like the red-raw end of the world coming at you, rushing in, whole nine yards,

just like that.

if it gets worse before it gets better, all i need to know is how much worse is it gonna get?

because tomorrow keeps coming and it's not getting better.

and we keep not letting go but it also keeps not getting better.

[quaint-caterpiller]

come here, look at this starving sky. come closer. look at the way this wide open plain is closing its fist. look at the palm of the thing. pages folding onto themselves, entire books closing with half a story left to tell. there are forests here, being burned, still burning, half dead. if a tree is lonely does it cry? if a forest is lonely will it call to someone, is that what people hear when it’s midnight and the fire is going out and someone is sleeping thirty feet away? is that why the trees whisper? do you miss me? and listen, i know it’s a silly question. but i’ve been tip toeing in this glass house for two weeks and i’ve got a fistful of stones and a fistful of sorrow, and which should i throw first? which one is gonna bring these walls down faster? do you know, darling? will you tell me?   look now, the sun is setting, the sky is huge, is open, is endless. the fields are turning themselves over, tucking into a bed with a half empty stomach. the sunset is melting down the hungry sky. and there, do you see it? over there, just past where you imagine a horizon, can you see it? the forest is burning. someone killed the forest.