subpar poetry

posting poems here bc my poor notes app is overflowing. all posts are original unless otherwise stated! --svh

[quiet-feeling]

i’m literally posting into the void on this account and tbh i love it 

[quiet-feeling]

“today is sunday and the thought of a new week starting tomorrow fills me with an existential dread. while complaining to my mom i told her our responsibilities are all man made concepts; what first seemed glimmering opportunity now seems a sentence as i am shackled by the omnipresent society. i lie in my bed face-down and wonder what it would be like to live a life unchained, to be free of obligation and only do as i please. it would be the happiest existence i could have, i think, but it’s too good to be true. if everyone were uncommitted nothing would ever get done and this I know. still, I wish for a moment of naivety where humankind need not be concerned with progression and larger-than-us. imagine a world where we could simply exist, making art and indulging and laughing without any qualms from our dues and our projects and our, the dreadful word, ‘careers’. though, i must admit, it is so sadly and superbly human that our suffering is all caused by our own creations. instead of forming to the world, we decided to form the world to us- i would say it was a mistake, but that decision led to all there ever was. it is irreversible at this point, too far gone, as if i’d want to change it anyways. we did form the world but that is the only world i know. some adaptions we have.” - svh

[quiet-feeling]

in a museum of the street, a crowd gathered to look at one particular piece, a girl who seemed to exhale esthetics. her hair when straightened was elven in its beauty, yet she preferred it natural, unruly and wavy. she donated all the clothes that had made her look ethereal-enviable and replaced them with ones that were 20 years out of trend. she took the rosy pink lenses, that once matched her cheeks, out from glasses and crushed them under her unshod heel. she grasped the ornate golden frame around her body and forcefully pulled herself out, declaring she’d had enough of being art.

oh but darling, chimes the critic, don’t you know you painted it yourself? don’t you know even your demurral is part of your (subversive, post-modern, meta-ironic) charm? aesthete by nature, by virtue or curse, you are forever art and you are forever on display. you say you have, but you cannot free yourself of the need to be categorized. remember, you painted it yourself.

— svh

[quiet-feeling]

sometimes i feel like writing is my lifeblood, like pen is carving into my skin and bleeding ink into my veins, like it’s intermixing (is ink even soluble in blood? i can’t imagine anyone has found out before; i am my own sick experiment of how much art and 15 second videos one can consume before she goes utterly insane). i think my heart pumps music and my mind-current produces words and i’m not sure how but i can hear my voice in my head, and i can hear music that’s not there. it’s always been a mystery to me how sound can be stimulated inside the mind, almost as if the mind can stimulate everything. my equilibrium is a symphony orchestra. my thoughts come flowing out in a myriad of ways- as messy words on a paper or uneven vibrato or a music theory exam i had to edit fifteen times to make sound right. music is my heart and words are in my blood. and everything else is inside of me somewhere, but the vitality is right here.

—svh

[quiet-feeling]

i put on my schedule that today would be my day to write poems for two upcoming competitions i want to enter. i woke up today & its raining, a thunderstorm. i drank some mocha. i’m at school, listening to jazz & wearing a corduroy jacket.

it’s definitely a writing day.

[quiet-feeling]

if i eat enough pomegranates, will you call me your persephone? queen of the underworld, goddess of all things green? i suppose it’d be unfitting for a so-called angel such as me— but then again, when have i ever fit neatly? i am neither heaven or hell, but something intermediate. i am the siren with wings, the nymph that sings. or something, i must be something. for there is a storm brewing in me, one i don’t think my body can take. it’s weathering me. i fear i’m becoming too pretentious for my own good. i drink protein shakes in anticipation and cry, sensationalize me! make me a martyr, a muse! give me an identity outside myself, anyone, anything, so it can contain me when i burst- in all my girlhood i never got any better at tending fires.

— svh

[quiet-feeling]

reason for a face

I pick at my scabs over and over

My mom raises an eyebrow with well-worn concern and says, “You know that’s going to scar, right?”

I say “I know” and “I’ll stop soon”

But everyday I find myself breaking promises;

Scratching at my face, peeling off the layers of dead skin and wiping away the blood that comes with it

Scrubbing clean any chance of healing with bitten fingernails

Everyday I think I shouldn’t be doing this, but I do

Looking in the mirror, I am filled with sorrow for the scars I’ve helped to create,

my scrawny arms and my rigged nail beds.

When face to face with my rawest shape

I don’t feel glamour, I don’t feel wretched, I don’t feel prolific or invigorated

I simply feel small.

I think I don’t want to feel small any longer.

I think it’s time to stop prying my wounds open,

to be gentler with my skin and bones and whatever else I am

I think it’s time to let myself heal.

[quiet-feeling]

i worry that i am bleeding out from the inside

that the entirety of me is rotting; that it always has been

and in this moment only two things are certain:

i love you and i have failed you.

— svh, “failure is”

[soracities]

“the world was kissed And laid in sleep–These wild, sweet, perfect things Are little miracles your memory sings, Till heart on heart makes us one music again.”

— e.e. cummings, from “Sonnet” (Poem #19 in Uncollected Poems), Complete Poems: 1904-1962

[quiet-feeling]

cog in the machine

cracked lips &

acne scars adorn my skin

messy hair &

it’s like i can never win

against shards of glass &

pretty, perfect girl’s eyes

point mine at the ground &

wish for a disguise

distorted photos &

inversion is what i tell myself

clean up stray streaked eyeliner &

pretend i wouldn’t be anyone else

there is a guilt on my shoulders &

it’s seeping into my pores

i crawl, i shiver &

i try but i can’t ignore

the shame is grown in us from the inside &

it’s all an eternal, universal, never-resting lie

[bnmxfld]

“I can’t exactly describe how I feel, but it’s not quite right. And it leaves me cold.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

[quiet-feeling]

journal entry turned out kinda poetic today

[to-be-okay-deactivated20221112]

“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try accepting yourself and see what happens.”

— Louise Hay

[confusion-and-cake]

Reading your old writing is either ‘my god, I’m an undiscovered genius’ or ‘welcome to CRIIIINGE CITY folks’ and there is no in between

[quiet-feeling]

Sabrina Coleman was one of those girls that nobody knew, yet everyone knew of. She was intensely reserved, and if she had been any other person, she would be easily forgettable. But there was an unusual allure about her, one that both drew people in and pushed them away. Some said it was her unnaturally bright blue eyes, which stuck out against the rest of Gray Cove’s chipped-paint-buildings and overcast weather. Some thought it was the way her blonde, salty hair never sat neatly against her pale complexion, or how her clothes never quite matched, or the calculated, detached way in which she spoke. Others simply wrote the girl off as crazy, a lunatic at only sixteen. For whatever reason, one thing was universally agreed upon: Sabrina Coleman was strange. But the strangest, and consequently the most notable thing about Sabrina Coleman was her ghostlike presence that always resided in the same place– Her beloved wall by the sea.

-- intro paragraph of a short story i'm writing

[mentalquotes]

i love chilling with people that make me forget i have a phone.

[quiet-feeling]

“stomach dropped”