Blathering on.

[shehidinbooks]

It's not about deserve

I move between cities

Drenched in the grey light of concrete.

It haunts me, the memories

Of the harbour in the twilight,

Evening walks turned midnight rambles

Tucked into winter coats,

The only two people left on earth.

Sharing stories while it poured down

No benches in Bristol.

So we laughed under the arches

Dreaming of productions under streetlights.

I wept for figments, you humoured me.

I trusted you with secrets, you stayed.

You performed your life beautifully.

When you left, I knew it wouldn't last.

As the world awoke

The 9 to 5, the one man production,

The dwindling replies.

The loss of interest,

The rising star, the stagnant artist,

Whose art means nothing at all.

You're in LA or a festival or the fringe

You're everywhere but my life,

I'm a soft toy collecting dust under your bed.

I keep grasping, keep tugging on the thread

That's come loose,

Watching it all unravel.

When death comes, slow and sudden

An awful inevitability I couldn't accept,

Tangled with the messages you left on read.

There's a chasm in my torso

With a river flowing endless

Through the core of me,

All my losses, all my failures,

All the people I couldn't keep.

[shehidinbooks]

Falling

I do realise that life ain't so pretty as poetry,  no fancy phrasing to knock through skulls and create meaning. But hey, I'm a romantic. Heck, I know people don't last that bones wither, the seasons end, the sun sets and it's not about us.  I know books are tombs for the minds of those before and even they eventually crumble, or burn depending who finds them first: time or humanity. Cigarette ash and dead voices, tortured artists sodden in alcohol, it smells just like gasoline.  Here I am still breathing blood pumping, listening to sad music  and discovering meaning.  Sound waves and nineteen year old fancy.  But hey, I'm a romantic.  I fear if I don't believe in my overblown, insignificant life then I too shall crumble or burn, in the face of the world, of humanities overblown, insignificance.  I must clutch the crumbling page and devour ash, rise.  Or I shall surely, without doubt, Fall.

[popunklouis-deactivated20191229]

im white so if anything i post or reblog is stepping out of my place at any point let me know so i can make apologizes and delete it

[phrynw]

#as a non-black poc this applies to me too

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

'While CNN runs footage of Ferguson burning, this is happening on the steps of the US Supreme Court.'- via Dave Weigel

The solidarity here is gorgeous. THIS gives me hope. A must-watch!

[wordsdancemag]

Don’t you dare, for one minute, believe that my kindness makes me anything but insurmountable. I did not unzip my chest to every kind of hurt, and stagger back, wounded and alive, just to hear you call me weak for trying.

Ashe Vernon (aka latenightcornerstore), from her poem, Softness, in Words Dance 16. (via wordsdancemag)

[shehidinbooks]

Met with silence

I'll bleed myself into your cup,  The rich taste of giving too much.  Metallic and strong and heady,  Like mature wine, Except this beverage tastes better when abandoned With rotten barrels and corks that stopper the bad,  Let the pain mellow.  Take a sip of your product,  Undertones of hurt and shallow sobs.  I'll pour you a cup of myself,  I'll hold your fractured bones,  I will not let you down I will not leave you alone.  The art of giving too much.  A tragedy in ink on screen And salt water pillows, A mural of memories that were not, Were not.  Met with silence,  Not of an audience awed Or the brief pause where the fire sits in your throat And you can't swallow the feeling.  No, met with silence. Met with silence,  Because what can you say To dispel the truth?  Of my tragedy spilling from chapped lips,  From sleepless nights.  Met with silence.  How can I blame you?  What can you say to undo a bleeding corpse.

[shehidinbooks]

Broken words and silence

Maybe I do need to cut ties,  Like kite strings Go gentle into the roaring skies  And leave the hands which held me behind.  Slack hands, heavy hands, bruising hands.  Hands I held in my own With tender care and love All that I gave,  Blown away into roaring skies,  Roaring skies,  Calling someone else's name. 

[inclementweatherdelay]

If I could, I would turn girls into dragons. Girls whose skin has been stained by filthy hands, girls who are forced to face those familiar hands day after day, give them armor. Girls who are told that womanhood means duty, who dig and sweat and carry and labor, girls who break their backs on someone else’s burden, give them spiked spines. Girls trapped in cycles: cycles of abuse addiction poverty pain cycles they can’t even name, cycling cycling down the drain and thrown out with the bathwater, give them claws. Girls who chomp down on fear hiding behind their teeth, who swallow it whole because it’s the only nourishment they’ll get, give them razor fangs. Girls who thirst for knowledge in the middle of a drought, girls whose minds are considered as real as their suffering, give them fire to burst from their mouths in place of the words that no one hears. Girls whose bodies are not their own; who are meant for decoration and cannot decorate themselves, who are meant for pleasure and cannot pleasure themselves, who are meant to be examples and cannot exemplify themselves, give them wings to fly far, far away, taste freedom in the sky, and see it for what it should be: a right, not a privilege. Every girl who is considered a possession or a prize or a plaything, who lives confined by people who call condescension “love” and manipulation “compromise” and fear “respect” and silence “consent,” give her eyes that strike terror into the heart of anyone who would call her weak. Gift girls with dragonhood when personhood is a myth.

 Sarah C. (via supreme-shieldmaiden)

[shehidinbooks]

You are my friend. Tell me you are worthless because of beauty one more time.

you want to be fucking beautiful? Tell me a story, talk to me about how you thought clouds were made of marshmallows and dragons ate them for special desserts.  you want to be fucking beautiful? Rip up every word, every line, every memory, that Dares to believe you aren't.  you want to be fucking beautiful? Stop using the word 'fat' to mean anything but beauty, carve it into tree bark paint it with every colour known to earth's eyes curve your body into it's shape.  you want to be fucking beautiful?  Stop believing in anything other than your own body,  your own mind, fuck beauty. You want to be beautiful? Watch the roses bud in spring, bloom in summer,  wash away in rain and frost watch their beauty drop away their scent scatter on strong winds.  You want to be fucking beautiful? 

[shehidinbooks]

3am poetry

Nan died a laugh caught in her throat like a chip of a hard boiled sweet, a sharp thing when she wanted it to be, When she teases you with wit and a wink, or soft, warm when her eyes sparkle chipped sea ice glinting in the sun.  Nan died and I couldn't find the words. The correct number of syllables, sounds, simile, should it rhyme? Nan died. Two words, gone laughter on a breeze  in summer heat and pollen air.  Why can't I find the words? 

[shehidinbooks]

Escapism

Someone write me a story.  Let me believe in dragons for one more night, in breath laced with crimson ribbons, in hoarded treasures of lover's hair. Inspire my heart to leap again. Describe dust motes spiralling in a chasm of moonlight revealing a singular book laid on the creaky floorboards of an attic.  Make me believe in magic. Cut my hair and turn it meteorite, take my hand, promise me tomorrow. Lie, tell me everything, Tell me it will all be fine. Whisper dreams into my pillow So I may sleep On shivering misty clouds. Lead me on a journey, Find my home, Make it, create it. Extract the worry from my mind With a silken caress, Replace it with peace, With books filled with pressed flowers. The sharp colour Of halted life. 

[shehidinbooks]

Crash

I forgot how it felt. Just like that novel which had me sobbing Yesterday for half an hour, Water blurring the words into smudge And a thudding burn in my throat. I forgot how it felt. Just like the summer heat on my skin After the winter ravaged it raw And unused to the soft caress of Sunlight. I forgot how it felt. To have someone smile at you And feel like the world was over, Like I was wrong about everything, Like I never knew how to feel. I am a planet and you are my meteor, You've crashed me open, My atmosphere is hard to breathe My skin is broken deep, I will never forget this scar.

[nerdloveandlolz]

Here are some questions to consider if you call yourself pro-life.

1. Do you support food stamps, welfare, EBT, WIC, and other programs to provide food and shelter to children of the poor?

If you do not, can you not see that it is logically inconsistent to force the poor...

[shehidinbooks]

First impressions

Nobody Wants colour. When you see A new face, The canvas can't be bright Not with lemon Or violet, Can't be dark Not with abyss Or night sky, Can't be anything Like a whirl Of colour. We do not seek art, Only mirrors.

[shehidinbooks]

God

I don't understand belief in unreality.

It is not the matter

that there is no evidence,

not constructed 

by the hands 

of ancient men.

Although,

I find it odd

believers find no qualms

with that fact. 

This is not about truth.

It is the matter

that in the name

of a faceless

unknowable

unfathomable

idea,

Women suffer,

Children suffer,

Sexualities suffer,

People of colour suffer,

The Underprivileged suffer.

It is the matter,

that we look

we hope

we dream

of paradise,

whilst this Hell,

of our own making

sits on the broken shadows

of billions long gone

and grows

ever stronger

ever crimson

ever cruel

and we change

nothing.

[shehidinbooks]

I hope you know That beauty is limited. Your feral nature Could never be Beautiful.

[shehidinbooks]

Some

Sometimes there is no comfort To be found In threadbare blankets And skies dotted with light. Sometimes there is no hope In a lover's smile Or a child's laugh Or my tears at night. Sometimes there is only pain And the dream That the future will change It's flavour. Sometimes there is my mind And my prison And my voice And there is no difference.