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 can’t believe the words I say carry any meaning that hits hard enough

When I say my heart and soul

Repeat louder and louder

What do I really have that is mine?

When even I am discarded and disconnected from all of you

Searching in mediums that become old and stale

I sit infront of my messed up canvas and realise it’s a reflection

I see it useless

What else is its creator?

I weave and stitch and even those are unhelpful

‘Maybe it’s a sign to do better’

I say, as I kid myself

I think deep down we all know the answer as to who we are

But still I scream until my voice falters once again

A desperate plea so pathetic not even I can believe it came from my mouth.

[redmantic]

Something is terribly wrong

And my ribs are plastic

My guts liquify and spill through.

I look and run and scream out for any trace of the scattered lives I love

And at every turn

And every tree I stand face to face with

With charred bark that infects my lungs

You are laughing at me in the howling wind

And I scrape my legs on the way down to the forest floor.

[redmantic]

U-shaped valleys formed from glaciers

Frozen souls of all traits trapped in the passage of time.

But does it matter any longer what we are?

When the glacier comes sliding down,

Re-shaping the earth

I think that is enough to prove we were here

Even if it takes centuries for future generations to discover us,

Under the sheets of Gaia

I think that is enough.

[apoemaday]

Bashō in Ireland

by Billy Collins

I am like the Japanese poet who longed to be in Kyoto even though he was already in Kyoto.

I am not exactly like him because I am not Japanese and I have no idea what Kyoto is like.

But once, while walking around the Irish town of Ballyvaughan I caught myself longing to be in Ballyvaughan.

The sensation of being homesick for a place that is not my home while being right in the middle of it

was particularly strong when I passed the hotel bar then the fluorescent depth of a launderette,

also when I stood at the crossroads with the road signs pointing in 3 directions and the enormous buses making the turn.

It might have had something to do with the nearby limestone hills and the rain collecting on my collar,

but then again I have longed to be with a number of people while the two of us were sitting in a room

on an ordinary evening without a limestone hill in sight, thousands of miles from Kyoto

and the simple wonders of Ballyvaughan, which reminds me of another Japanese poet

who wrote how much he enjoyed not being able to see his favorite mountain because of all the fog.

[redmantic]

Hounding the door over and over

Begging and pleading

Sputtering out for a semblance of anything

Long after the last petal has withered

Am I dragging myself out?

Begged and threatened any being to wave the hand to bring the lost ones back home

But nobody ever awnsers

And in distant fields;

May the sun shine warm across your faces

Until we met again

You will be carved in the palm of my hand.

[redmantic]

I roll around surrounded in filth

Filthy cars

Filthy streets

Blood soaked sheets

And it maybe crossed my mind one or twice, maybe I’ll never be able to admit how much it weighed in on me

The supports holding the bunk bed broke

And I was crushed under the weight of myself

As I push the blade of the halved scissors deeper

And I wondered when it got so dull that I had to start striking like a match box

And I wondered when I started staring at it grow with an increased awe

More than anyone had ever looked at anything

And maybe some people don’t make it out

[redmantic]

Paper thin and growing wrong.

Is each step even progress?

How can I judge what side and path this leads if every single hour it’s familiar halls,

But still different.

I make a wrong turn -

And my foot goes through the floor

And I try to run

But in my struggle it tears deeper and swallows me whole

And I’m back to where I started.

[redmantic]

Swaying in a finale stand

Against what?

Alone in a field,

Alone in room

Winds howl, shadows taunt.

Screaming and whining at nothing and nobody

With each tear that runs,

Another piece falls from my mouth in a permanent streak

Streaks and streaks coat my body

Aged and healed and those still raw

And I cry at myself for nothing

And I beg and reason with nobody

Seasoned in the confines of blankets and pillows;

I wonder where I was 3 years ago

I wonder where I was 10 years ago

In the same place?

A same state of existence, sure

What a filthy human experience;

To age, bare battered in swollen cuts and bruises

And die a broken man.

[redmantic]

Across the plains and into the gardens,

I sow my seeds of love at random.

The plain lines get picked one by one by birds looking for something more -

So I scatter my love in hopes that they bloom stronger,

That they bloom with a chance

And in every human and creature I have met

I have found a reason to love.

[redmantic]

Dying light beats its last breath,

Golden rays splattered across depleting cloud cover

Dripping through my window.

—

Each rise and fall

Like chest compressions - a celestial cycle

As my heart beat goes on

I wonder if I am guilty.

—

A Theater is watching this prolonged suicide happen

Are they all guilty?

Standing in place during golden hour,

Marvelling at how beautiful innards are

when it’s not us up strung there

projected in agony.

—

It’s always luckier that it’s not us to deal with the consequences of outcome.

That each of the clouds shed tears in their grief

And we didn’t really know them like that

And so we say nothing to them.

Does that luck make us guilty?

Knowing we don’t weep for another’s loss?

—

Does it make me guilty?

When I witnessed you bathed in golden glow

you were already so long gone

And I saw it in your eyes when you looked at me.

Are you guilty?

For letting me believe in you when you held me close and told me you loved me?

Am I guilty that the rhythm of my heart remembers yours?

—

The cloud cover swallows the last essence of their sun

Drenching the land in cold wet nightfall

The Theater disperses

And I walk home in the rain.

[redmantic]

Parting tides where oceans don’t mix

Snapped in the jaws

Falling beneath the swell

Apart of me knew

That this was never what you wanted

But I still wish

That you never held me a week ago

And promised you’d stay

With the sketches of next time

Now scrapped and dissolved

Deep down under the sea

What a miserable fucking taunt that is.

[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