[rapid-trap-castle]

“i chew the dawn, i eat the day. i sink my teeth into every goddamn piece of cake and shove my nose deep into the roses. i swivel on the dance floor and slide around on ice skates. i hoard sunbeams and star constellations. i’m gonna be happy even if i gotta fight monsters with my bare hands and my tired feet. i’m gonna love me until people get uncomfortable to see it. i’m gonna squeeze every last drop out of life until it begs for mercy. i’m gonna get to the place where i stop feeling empty, so hand me a slice of that party, that art piece, that beach. call up good memories. tell them i’m perched like a hawk on the horizon. tell them i’m riding with a bullwhip in one hand and a sword of fire in the other. tell them i’m coated in brilliant armor. i don’t care if the night’s dark, i got a lantern of the people i love. i don’t care if i make mistakes because everyone does. i don’t care if i gotta punch my demons right in their sharp teeth and strong jaws. i don’t care if the battle’s bound to be bloody and tough and terribly long. i am ready. bring it on.”

— I CHEW THE DAWN, I EAT THE DAY // r.i.d (via inkskinned)

[rapid-trap-castle]

“sisyphus, if you can hear this, it’s 2015 now and the boulder’s on my shoulders too. somewhere beneath these heels you’re slaving up a mountain while i sit in spanish class and pretend i don’t remember the conjugations of my father’s language because then I won’t have to speak up. is the boulder your name, sisyphus? or is it just your mother’s sad smile when you tell her, “no, i didn’t get that project done. i don’t know why. i just didn’t.” is it your friends on a friday night pouring you a shot and saying, “please, just take it, we want you to have fun, you think too much.” is it the blunt edge of a spoon at the bottom of a bowl of ramen noodles, your face reflected back unto you while your lover on speakerphone begs you to just leave your room for once, or is it just the single red eye of a hand-rolled joint that you don’t want to inhale. is it the “missed call” alert where your sister who is growing older is begging you to come back home, or is it just your dog, underfoot, and the leash that is somehow of too great a weight to use. sisyphus, i have a rock too. my mountain should be worn down now for want of climbing it. sisyphus, you and i: we watch everything roll away from us. we stare at the bottom of the glass and we think about ripping ourselves apart with only our teeth. we think about how good it would be to walk on the peak and see the world open up for us like a wound. but we don’t ever get there, do we, sisyphus? the top is not for us. we are only ever bleeding palms and long nights and endless struggle, or else we are chasing our lives as quickly down the drain as our feet can carry us. our dreams aren’t up there anymore, sisyphus, and we wouldn’t recognize them anyway. they’re the old ex-girlfriend with her beautiful lips like rose petals - you kissed her once and felt your heart leave this planet - and how she laughs on the arms of someone new now with her new haircut and expensive nail polish. when you think about her, doesn’t that stone just weigh a little bit more - but she’s happy, sisyphus, we’re supposed to be glad about that, remember. our dreams are dead, sisyphus. they’re your fifth grade english teacher who believed so much in you and thought you could write the book that would change the face of literature. how do you face her, sisyphus? how could you tell her that you never amounted to very much? sisyphus, our dreams are our lover’s beautiful green-blue eyes and small freckles and smile so kind it tears us open. sisyphus, he is waiting to be crushed by our burden and one of these days, we will slip and fall and he will be the one at the bottom with his arms open and his body broken. sisyphus, it doesn’t do to dream. it is better to imagine you’ll never be there, that you don’t deserve it, that success is only given to the best and we were only liars and half-baked poets. we don’t belong there. i don’t know we’d even feel full if we got it, anyway. sometimes i think we’re trying and sometimes i think we’re just addicted to the heartbreak. i don’t think we know how to live with our hands empty. we’re scared of being made light suddenly: what if we’re really just the rock and the mountain and who we are as a person means nothing? what if this is all there is to us: no ending, just journey? maybe one of these days we’ll break that hulking mass down into small parts and digest it in the pit of our stomachs. we’ll make the friends we always wanted and speak up when our opinion matters and publish our writing and finish what we’re doing. we’ll make a life on a flat plain where there’s nothing but grass and room for running. we’ll make plans for the future without wondering if the future is even coming. i promise you. i’m gonna snap all of my fingernails and all of my teeth chewing this thing down so it is no longer heavy. but for now, sisyphus, i carry it with me. keep pushing, sisyphus. keep pushing.”

— atlas would say we have it easy // r.i.d (via inkskinned)

[palehand]

I hope my back didn’t break your knife.

[rapid-trap-castle]

“It’s a beautiful thing to have lungs that allow you to breathe air and legs that allow you to climb mountains, and it’s a shame that sometimes we don’t realize that that’s enough”

— (via honalie)

[inkskinned]

“Can you write about a good girl losing her innocence for the first time?” // r.i.d 

[rapid-trap-castle]

“Brother, is the cave as dark As your insidious heart? Burn her, you said The world smells of skin half-baked and little girls’ tears Sugar, spice, half beasts and beautifully aged wine Forest trails of half eaten candy hearts Do you remember the warmth of your arm inside my chest? Brother, you were born to destroy and carve Axe hands swinging harder than a knight’s sword Magnolia trees and pigtail braids, all mere game (Papa said beauty can turn a man’s blood mad) Hyacinth limbs and smiles darker than the crescent moon The shadow of a lily; wolfsbane and wolf’s scream Brother, I too was born from the axe I too was born bear; oaken jaw and a waterfall mouth Complete forest, all dead and brilliantly burning Like a storm tossed ship we came out of mother Don’t believe a word when they say the witches have all been burned Monsters exist, brother, and not all live in gingerbread houses”

— Camillea (via maelinoe)

[rapid-trap-castle]

“Brother, is the cave as dark As your insidious heart? Burn her, you said The world smells of skin half-baked and little girls’ tears Sugar, spice, half beasts and beautifully aged wine Forest trails of half eaten candy hearts Do you remember the warmth of your arm inside my chest? Brother, you were born to destroy and carve Axe hands swinging harder than a knight’s sword Magnolia trees and pigtail braids, all mere game (Papa said beauty can turn a man’s blood mad) Hyacinth limbs and smiles darker than the crescent moon The shadow of a lily; wolfsbane and wolf’s scream Brother, I too was born from the axe I too was born bear; oaken jaw and a waterfall mouth Complete forest, all dead and brilliantly burning Like a storm tossed ship we came out of mother Don’t believe a word when they say the witches have all been burned Monsters exist, brother, and not all live in gingerbread houses”

— Camillea (via maelinoe)

[rapid-trap-castle]

“you are pacing your room in your slipper feet and you need something to chew but not something to eat and your skin is all ripped up by your fingernails and you feel like a train that has slipped off its rails like a child who has gone skating for the first time in their life and you can’t catch your breath like a groom who has just seen his wife and your heartbeat is chasing that car down the road but it hurts more each time it hits a pothole and then suddenly you're sitting with your head on your knees and trying to slowly remember what comes after three and you look at the clock and forty minutes have passed and your phone is still blank, not like anybody would ask, and the faster you rock, the worse that it gets and the tears that fall on the carpet are hot and they’re wet and you think maybe you should sleep cause nobody would understand. you don’t know that you are bleeding until you wash the blood off your hands.”

— panic attack monday (k.p.k)

[dreamingthemaze]

When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are. When I have a thought about you, that’s something I’ve created. I’ve turned you into an idea. In a certain sense, if I have an idea about you that I believe, I’ve degraded you. I’ve made you into something very small. This is the way of human beings, this is what we do to each other.

Adyashanti (via mindful-amy)

[inkskinned]

I respect the opinion of my elders, but just an open query about the charges brought against my generation:

For not working hard enough: where is the evidence. When we were younger you told us you started from a small job and climbed your way to the top. When we are flipping burgers it’s because we didn’t apply ourselves. When you did it, it was shouldering the future by suffering in the present. When we ask for the money to buy bread, it is shameful. When others went on strike in the name of labor conditions, it was heroic. When we ask for more, we never deserve it. So how did you get here? Did you never sit up and demand the world give you what was rightfully yours? How hard working is hard enough?

We are illerate, use slang instead of language, shun poetry: did I just imagine the “rad” bloom of the 70’s? Is it because you can’t catch our tongues in your hands? Is it because our poetry is now published beyond books, beyond the control of one voice, beyond you? That our language doesn’t need your approval to evolve? When you drew political pictures of us asking how to turn a book on, you laughed at our ignorance. When the tables turned, when we were shown to be the most literate and well-read generation on record, you scratched the mirror. You said it was our lazy nature. A body rotting. Because we read trash, or we read into things, or we write loudly and it bothers you. Why does it bother you?

School is too easy: What was it like going to school without being worried about a shooting? Did you ever cower like we have, like I did, like our friends, crying muffled in your hands because you love your parents and now have no time to tell them? What was it like, dear, in a world where my standardized testing scores would have broken your curve and I didn’t even get perfect. What part is the easy part. Is it the highest recorded level of anxiety? Is it the rising teenage suicide rates? Is it the eating disorders, body dismorphia, self harm, self destruction? Tell me, have you seen - there’s a show called “Are you Smarter Than A 5th Grader.” It’s very funny. In it, bright young kids show adults that what we’re learning didn’t even exist in common knowledge while they were in school. Tell me. If you were up against our 5th grade curriculum, who would win? No, I’m sure you’re fine. You learned it all in high school.

We want too many free things: What was it like to want for nothing? What was it like to have a certainty that hard work leads to a bright future. What was it like imagining being rich instead of imagining just being rich enough to eat good food. What was it like, not being worried that a broken leg would cost you an entire apartment? Do you know they hate us so much they would rather see us die than bring down the price of an EpiPen. And since I know you love the idea of us abusing the system, tell me, where do I go to expose the lie about my life-threatening allergy? How do I fake it, because I’d like to opt out of it, and while I’m at it my mental illness, and while I’m at it can you take my chronic pain please. And since I know that the answer is to go to school and get a degree so I can be worthy of not dying, just another question: are you aware fifty thousand dollars a year is equivalent to a house. I could buy a house instead of going to college. Since you’re good at this, while we’re talking, I have two siblings. Which of the three of us gets the money? Go on. Look at us. Choose. Who goes hungry?

We’re entitled: yes, please, give me a deed, give me land, give me better than winning the lottery. What I’m entitled to is life, liberty and the pursuit of profit, am I not? So where are any of the above? Where did the jobs go? Why do you jail people for small crimes but free the criminals? And my life? This life? I end where my body begins, I am cut off from the nation’s decisions about what I can put in or take out of me. And me? I’m safe because I’m white-passing. Don’t the bodies pile up? Aren’t we entitled to justice? Aren’t we entitled to an answer? A response from the government? More than just speeches about how riots won’t solve things? Aren’t we entitled to a fair trial? To freedom of speech? Was it not our common fathers who fought for these things?

We’re lazy: Where? Who has the money? I’ve been working since I was 12, am I just an anomaly? Or do you just ignore those who don’t fit your story? All those student-run engineering projects that are changing history. All those protests. The art world, shifting. All these adults who demand more - do they count as lazy or as entitled? What were you doing at our age? Did it really look all that different?

We don’t listen to real music, don’t like real art, are loud, are too busy partying: We changed and you didn’t keep up. Is that’s what’s so startling?

We are sucked up into the Internet, wouldn’t drop the phone if the apocalypse was happening: my phone has my family on the other end of it. Do you not save pictures from a burning building? Do you really care so little for others you’d stick to the old ways entirely instead of texting? Oh sure, yes, a letter is pretty, I love them. But just asking for a friend: What do I do in an emergency with only a pencil. And I don’t mean to downsize the problem because I mean it’s not like you took Polaroids of your friends at sunset - right? - and it’s definitely wrong of us to want memories of a really nice night, but, just curious, did you post that opinion on the Internet? Was seeing others on the Web what made you upset? Maybe - this is just a crazy idea that popped up into my head - you should go take a walk, go outside, disconnect.

We do everything different: Yes. Because we were raised on the cusp of the next great Renaissance. We are in somewhere new, a galaxy of expansion that doesn’t rely on you. That knows more than you do. That doesn’t function the way you expect it to. How rose-colored is the past to you? The place where you erase AIDS and drug abuse in an effort to tell us we are a terrible youth. Where you don’t talk about the marches that happened around you. How painted do you picture it, simply because you had to physically look in a book to learn something new? How do you turn your eyes to a world where war sits on our necks, our earth melts, our populations swell, our people starve, and we are powerless in it all - and say, “It’s your fault.”

It’s our fault. The housing market, somehow related to our obsessive need for safe spaces, I’m sure, because our dreams no longer lie in yards but rather something big enough for at least a bed, and hopefully with tasteful curtains, and you have no idea what a safe space is. The certain failure of the two-party political system, maybe somehow due to our political correctness - we are, after all, rude enough to never open doors for old ladies or just let you be racist - how we controlled the media, how our desires drove this. Our request for trigger warnings and correct pronouns is a burden, and I see that now, because our special snowflake syndrome really does hurt you as a person; while your ongoing use of torture in corrective therapy is only a problem if you’re actually looking. You’re so right about so many things. When you beat us to correct us, it’s your child and it’s your right; when it’s our bodies we ask to have rights over - well, what did we expect? It’s our fault. The crushing debt, the companies that own our government, the privatization of prisons, the unrightful searches, the human trafficking and abuse of sex workers, the gun violence, the pharmaceutical industries which control our doctor’s choices, the climate change you only just started to admit is happening, the extinction of species worldwide - we are responsible for both pollution and poaching, the lead in our water, the death in our streets. So what do you get from it? From dismissing us? From quitting on us before the race begins? From forgetting who exactly raised us kids?

Now, I was told that the problem is that we too often point to bigotry. That we hide behind pointing out your sexist comments instead of realizing the truth your words wrought. I was told we are so focused on our victories, of a world that rallied for marriage equality, for gender expression, for the safety of survivors, for a healing nation - we call out instead of calling on. So I’m calling on you, Generation X kids. Here’s your free one. No bigotry spoken of. So speak. Explain what exactly you mean.

I get it. We asked for a country. The land is borrowed from your children, they tell me.

Now why are you so afraid when we show up and start collecting?

[inkskinned]

before he sells the beans to jack, he is born in a house that smells of ceder.

his name is Tiffany. a bold bright name. a stardust name. a girl name. but he is not a girl. he knows this, even if others don’t. his mother puts him in dresses, teaches him how to sew, chastises him when he lets his voice get low.

“my great-aunt’s friend’s sister,” says his mother, with her red lips tight, “once knew these girls that spoke and diamonds came out of their mouths. you know what happened to the nasty one? she got toads. that’s your future if you don’t figure out how to be a nice little girl.”

so he speaks gently. but the whole time he is wondering: who gave them the language of gems. who gave them the language that rolled out of them. it must be magic. and if there is magic, maybe there is hope for him.

he takes off in a dark night. a sad night. one where the fire was too low and he was sick of mirrors. he leaves his mother a note: gone to find where the gems grow. 

in the black woods, he cuts off his hair. wears his father’s clothes. feels, at last, whole. runs and runs and runs until his air comes out in a wheeze. walks for weeks and weeks.

he finds the old woman carrying water. she is ugly, her mouth all twisted angry. but she carries the water alone. 

the boy does not have much. but he has shoulders. a good back. hands that work. when he takes her burden, she says, “thank you, young man.” and he smiles at her, but doesn’t say anything.

her house is damp. she feeds him stew, apologizes. says she used to make lovely foods but the price of milk and eggs got far too high. she says: if you carry my water for five weeks, i will give you something special. and he agrees.

she talks for him. spends a lot of time telling him of people he never met. girls with lips blood red. girls with white fairy dresses. boys who fell in love with swans. 

the boy says little. just nods. sleeps on the floor of her empty barn. when she’s not looking, he darns her clothes for her, keeps the floors swept, fills the lanterns with oil, makes her a blanket for the coming winter. 

on the end of the fifth week, she gives him the beans. tells him that they have been passed down in her family, that this was her portion. she says that she is too old now for such adventures. that she hears the beans will bring treasure. fortune. all the things of greed. she says: i will give them to you, for what you have done to me.

in the morning, he takes off. he feels the weight of them in his pocket. he thinks of the old woman and the stories and the sight of her tired hands. he stands in the market for a long time, unspeaking, simply staring at the cobblestones beneath him.

jack’s voice is the last call in the evening. a beautiful cow, young and thick and healthy. 

the boy has no money. he bounces the magic bean in his pocket, and thinks of treasures. 

“wait,” he says. 

jack turns. 

transaction complete: one cow for a handful of magic beans. the boy walks the cow home to the old woman, gets there in the morning. they are both very tired. he falls asleep beside the beast in the hay. dreams of the foods the old woman can cook now that she can get milk.

when he wakes up, he is changed. it is as if he simply turned into who he was made to be. not a new body. familiar. the body he could always see.

the old woman stands at the door of his barn. she says, “good morning,” and then she says a new word. a word he’s never heard. a name. his name. a boy name. 

he repeats it. it is a jewel in his mouth, so he says it again. another diamond.

“time to fetch water,” she says, winking. the whole way, he whispers his name. it never quite tastes the same, always beautiful, always a fine thing, always his. the something special he was lacking.

in the back of his pocket, there is one last magic bean. he will fetch the water and plant it. and he will carry that old woman to the castles she has never seen.

[inkskinned]

what i have learned from angry fathers and bad birthdays is that happiness grows wild. even when we sow it deep, even when we beg the soil to give us just one little sprout so we can dig in our toes and feel clean - happiness doesn’t bloom where we want it to. sometimes it starts in the wrong boy’s teeth or on a pretty girl’s lips (father forgive me) or when you’re writing something racy you don’t want your mama to see.   the funny thing about happiness is that the only place you can plant it proper is in your neighbor’s yard. when you try and bake it into your own cakes, into what your parents want for you, into the perfect person everybody expects you to be - it don’t grow good. but when you tuck it into your smile, when you hand it out in little things that you can manage; carving slices from your own bones; it leaps out into this world. and it grows.   there are people who don’t like it when others get something good. they look over at you and try to pull your garden out, even though it barely growing. and that’s just fine, the happy will die in their hands before they can replant it, so all they got is a little dirt patch of other people’s wiltings.   what i learned from the people who hurt me is that love isn’t about what you want for yourself. love is about everybody else on this tiny planet doing cartwheels around the sun-who-loves-us-too. the truth is, happy is a magic thing even despite that willful nature. because when you give it out, when you turn your blood into a little water: you watch it grow in other people. sprout right there between the two of you; turning puddles into rainbow mirrors, turns birds into freedom, turns her garden green.   and something i learned from myself, from this mean old head that tries to get me to really do something bad and make myself for-real the soil: if you keep this up. if you just keep it up no matter how tired you get or how often your hands hurt from it or how much your mind is saying “you’re a worthless burden and leaving here is the best thing you do,”   one day you look out and you see: the little card she left you to thank you, the way he remembered how you like your coffee, this here little post you left me because all i did was say that life is worth living even with all the bad things. and maybe they’re not the big rose bushes or the frilly trees or whatever everybody else pretend they got in their garden. but they are strong, although they are small, because they are real. and maybe the whole thing is wild and raw and dizzy to look at, maybe there’s still bald patches, maybe you worry you’ll kill it all, but it’s yours. and in every flower there’s a moment you didn’t notice being so nice to look at it’s like looking into the sun-who-is-love.   one day you look out onto this eden, where if you close your eyes you hear the wind whispering, “i’m here for you.” and you realize it’s okay. you’re gonna be okay. because maybe only a little bit of that happiness was planted by you, but so much of it is beautiful because it’s not, because it’s just the small seeds people can afford to scrape out of their own blank back yards and give to you for no other reason than because you were raised by your mama to be kind.   big bad men and lots of bruises later i learned something important: a lot of people got bare gardens that choke them for all that dirt. and i don’t got a lot. but when you’ve lived with nothing, seeing that little seed sprout up warm strong leaves:   it’s worth whatever i got to give you to help it live. to try and give you happy.

r.i.d // buy my book phobic / Compass (via inkskinned)

[inkskinned]

i. you called god and when she answered you asked her only, “why?”   ii. silence comes inside her palms. the only quiet place left on earth is when she’s in your arms.   iii. the car is spinning out of control and for a moment you think of letting it so your father’s face can never see you kiss a woman on the pulpit.    iv. forgive me father for i am sin.   v. if only we were born ignorant instead of so capable of a love strong enough to break us. you write her last name on a napkin you don’t let the barista see. she undoes you from the inside, and the world undoes you from your skin.   vii. there are loves that are born raised and die in the dark.   viii. you no longer know if the world is ending. if even your neighbors are terrified of your love. if judgement day will come.  if god will finally answer the phone and say,    “because i knew you were strong enough.”

r.i.d (via inkskinned)

[inkskinned]

a contronym is a word which is the opposite of itself, having two meanings which defy each other, two reverse Janus faces. for example, when you look at her she is both your whole world and why you are massively and horrifically empty. for example, kissing her on a sunday both feels like prayer and hellfire. 

for example, you are your own contronym. someone who is solely intent on self-destructing while somehow also the only one working to save you. it is the mornings you can’t get up contrasted with the nights you can’t fall asleep. it is the way you feel everything at once like a meteor is reflecting off the solar panels of your bones while also feeling nothing at all. it’s that you want to be in love and you’re also not good enough. it’s that you’re terrified that tomorrow won’t come and you’re also terrified of what happens if it does. 

for example. one shaking hand dusts to remove dirt, white gloves around a white throat, or one can dust dirt over a grave to replace it. a contronym. you are alive and yet completely unsure if this is living.

[secretworkings]

The Ritual of the Cigarette and 3 Coins

Look for a crossroad.

Light a cigarette.

Invoke the three headed mother.

Your own words will do.

Invite her for a smoke.

Ask for wisdom.

Listen.

Leave 3 coins.

Don’t look back.

[ipoetried]

I don’t like sleep. I like glassy, red-tinted, half-shut, blurry visioned “fuck me” eyes. I don’t want to have sex just because it’s nine thirty on a friday night and your parents are out for dinner. I want that look of acceptance from your mother when you say we’ll go out to eat with them and that look of satisfaction from you when you keep your hand on my thigh under the restaurant table all evening. I don’t like sleep. I don’t like laying in bed, just allowing the present to become the past like it meant nothing after it’s happened. I like staying up too late on the good days, and even more on the bad days, thinking that maybe things will get better the longer I’m up - knowing they won’t, but still hoping they might. I like the vulgarity of late nights. Like all the bad decisions come out with the moon, or when the music from the bar across the street gets louder to cover the fact that everybody’s breathing just got a whole lot heavier. I don’t like sleep because I can’t stop thinking that if I didn’t sleep, I could stare at the night sky long enough over time to finally see a star die. People ask me why I look tired all the time. And there’s no way to say that I stayed up all night to count every star to try to sum up even a quarter of a fraction of how I feel for you. So I just say I had nightmares again. And I don’t think I’m entirely wrong. No, I don’t like sleep. I don’t like feeling like I’m missing chunks of my life, like I’m blacking out and not even with a drunk story to tell about it. I don’t like knowing that life fast forwards for me while it’s crawling for you. Because I keep trying to get on my hands and knees to keep up but it doesn’t seem to be working. No, I don’t like sleeping. Not alone, and not here. So maybe not ever.

Entirely Wrong by k.p.k

[rapid-trap-castle]

(via ipoetried)

[hniev]

if it all ends in ashes and broken glass make up some other story of why we burned down and shattered go on, tell all the pretty lies you’ve been keeping at the back of your throat weave them sweater metaphors so they don’t shiver on your tongue so you don’t stutter and grind your teeth so you don’t have to worry about your friends finding out the truth about what you did if it all ends in ashes and broken glass make sure you chew them silently so nobody notices and nobody hears the truth about what you did

mouth full of lies (via peromasakitparin)