Red

Edgy poetry? Hell yeah baby!- (they/them)- aromantic lesbian - non poetry account: @redollskin

[redmantic]

Writing poetry is a connection to the parts of your emotion that no one else can truly understand. It is there for you when there is no one else to listen but the pen and paper at your hands.

[redmantic]

I’m stuck in this perpetual loop;

Always dancing,

Always training until failure,

Always wrecking myself on the shores of a drink.

And yet though I know my reasonings and throughout it all,

I reach out and get my fingers slammed in the door of your home

Always an outside dog -

Never allowed to feast as an equal.

At what point,

At what point man?

At what point will I not be able to take it anymore?

Stray dogs turn up dead

What else?

What else.

[redmantic]

I curl in my late grandfathers throne-chair

As my family spin stories of our ancestors

My sister will leave, soon. Move far away and she says she’ll never return

We’ll sell this house, my parents say. And move out to the undeveloped suburbs

I don’t think my mum wants to let go of here

Here is home

Here is where we grew and here is where our stories are told

Here is the last place I’ll share with my sister

Here is the last place I did share with my brother

And as I unravel across my deceased grandads old chair

I realise I will never be 18 here again

And I might never be 20 in this home

As the walls around me begin to fleet as my time here dwindles

[redmantic]

Find any excuse to empty the cabinets

Bled me dry and fracture my ribs,

starve me feral so I whine for scraps

But before all of this I ate my pick

Maybe I’ll turn my bite

Maybe I’ll fill this empty cold stomach

And maybe I’ll destroy you

I think

As the rations thrown to my feet dwindle

And I am so fucking hungry

And I am and so I seethe

[redmantic]

The longer it drags the more I cough

I stand in the pasture staring at nothing

And there is nothing to look for out here

As there is nothing looking for me

The pigeons are long gone

And I’m angry I didn’t eat them one by one,

Because on the other end they’re crushed by the foot of the bed.

Wasted life with only dried words spat,

At least grass stains are more visible under my nails.

But still I stand

As seagulls call out to one another

Trying to navigate home.

I stare up at holes in the sky

Just thinking.

[redmantic]

I’m looking for signs that don’t exist

In paper trials I follow

Lead in circles - piled up in stacks of old compost

There is nothing to suggest greenery

There is everything to suggest the lights are no longer on

But the occasional smoke signal

Shocks me in place

A sign of life is a sign of something- I hope

I hope in a prayer to nobody

And there is nobody in that dusty cabin

[redmantic]

Blanketed by high tide beneath the stars

Lying in wait for another

So long yet to surface

As sea foam builds and builds and stains our rocky shores

But I’m sure that they’ll come,

As the great Zeus spit our souls in two

As even Aphrodite was once a saintess of war.

Nothing loved left unscathed

As wounds grow deeper,

Harder to recover.

The tarp under starlight feigns safety

And I am swallowed

And ejected as foam too;

As the ones before me were,

And the ones that will follow will be.

[redmantic]

Acknowledged in passing as one views a collective

I don’t want to be another grain of sand in your shoes

And yet the sea retreats back into itself

As crabs burrow beneath the sand,

And I wonder

And I wonder too many nonsensical things

But each time the waves come crashing down

The joy surges through my being

I remember what it’s like on the other side once more

And it tastes beautiful

But it only lasts when there’s nothing else factored in

And the second luna begins to turn away - I loose you too

And maybe all those nonsensical things begin to untangle

There’s always more grains of sand

There’s always more I could have bargained for

I lie, as another storm brews.

[redmantic]

Slender silk twirls high above the clouds

As piercing squeals ring out among shouts and crackling

Reds & yellows paint these streets ablaze

And each child that sinks below deck ran by their fathers work on their way to safety

And each child lost in the maze of inferno

Always circles back to skeletons of home.

Do you think in the hysteria they lay down to sleep next to their mothers?

I want to wake to green meadows too,

And run across unkempt lawns coated in colourful petals

I want to wake up, safe from harm.

[redmantic]

Oh sweet souls of different tales

I love you all dearly

As life brings us together

I hope it carries you over each wall to hard to scale alone

I hope the highest of mountains will be yours

And the deepest of trenches become story’s to learn from

I hope you all live a life where you are happiest

I hope that one day I get to see you all succeed as I know in my heart you will

[redmantic]

To Selene I pray

Night in night out

That so long as I kneel

Another will kneel across, beside

I pray for lighter shoulders

And a chest not heaving for air

I pray and I talk to her

As my oldest ally

As the planets occasionally join in

The nights are hard

But I long for them so

The time I am heard

Is when no one is present

[redmantic]

Pin prickles internally;

Every muscle movement results in loss

I wheeze and tear

Agonising how she sits there vacantly

And wondrous stars light the galaxy

Maybe this subsides, eventually

And god knows that whistling louder

Really does nothing out of normal for me

Even if I bleed tossing and turning in my sleep.

[redmantic]

Staring at rocks in the shallows

Wondering if the light fragmenting off ripples meant anything truly

I thought throwing bottles past waves was selfish

Until I heard the sea shells echoing

On such a level

It cuts deeper than the yellow

But even the slightest of grazes makes me guiltily?

Every crab makes a home

As my loses burry themselves in sand

Why are we all so fundamentally different ?

Why are we all so fundamentally exhausting ?

There’s a steady rhythm closer to low tide

And I retreat back to my caverns

[redmantic]

Laden with rips and tears

As each swipe and light flicker runs me dry

Of reasons too shallow to be pleasant

A swallow sings a tune far off over the horizon

I think it’s calling someone home

And I miss the home long gone in my body

Replaced with dust from songs no longer sang

And acrylic paint peeling from its canvas reminds me of what I could have been

[redmantic]

Sitting on the edge of eternity

Wondering if the nothingness was ever meant to be more

But truely in my heart I always knew that it wasn’t

Only there for all those “what could have beens”

Each flower dies on the cliff

Each broken promise sends cracks up the ledge

I want there to be more

I want an answer for every unknown thing

But all thats responds is silence

Air moves around me like it’s advoiding something

But all I react with are tears spilling down my cheeks

I wish there was more

I wish a hand would reach out from the abyss and take me home

To a place that no longer exists in this lifetime

I wish so much for something so little

[redmantic]

Plucking petals away

To watch them twirl and dance

Landing in drying puddles

Over and over again

I wonder if this is more or less the same

As this torturous ritual of my own

Cradled in palms so gently

That the imprints sting so very much

Left to deal with it alone

As I pick another flower from my garden

Just to do it all over again.

[redmantic]

Amethyst caked in earth

My lord I know you try

But you can’t deny how you’re insides were formed

All pretty and shimmery purples

Shelled in mud and rock

I don’t think you gaze up at the stars

Because all of those reflective beauties

Are at heart the same beat beneath you and I;

The ones that change,

The ones that burn

The ones that hide

All within stone, all waiting to be chiseled

But there might definitely be some quarts in you

Is being marbled so bad?