SIN IN THE SUBURB

In pursuit of a chimera.

[sininthesuburb]

The Weight of Absence

There is a stillness in me, not soft, but heavy, as if the doors were closed long before I knew how to open them. I reach, but my hands are empty. I am unsure if it is absence I hold or if I am the absence itself.

[sininthesuburb]

The Silence Between

Love feels distant, 

a language I do not speak, a warmth I cannot hold. 

I wonder... 

Am I unlovable, or am I incapable of love? 

Perhaps it's both, 

Or maybe it's neither, and I'm the silence between the two.

[sininthesuburb]

Mother

Sometimes, I’m a stranger in my heritage.

I feel like I originate from a land that is not a mother,

A place where everything trembles,

And no one else feels

The dangerous fault lines

Under the weight of barbarian feet.

_______________________________________________

[tracesofpaint]

Art is the cult of beauty and form. But after the ecstasy and initial admiration, we are told that art is beautiful, certain, but useless.

[sininthesuburb]

Time

Trees have the memory of life in their trunks. Their rings are a testimony of the passing of time But they are struck down as if time had not existed. We prefer to erase fragments of our past.

[artogether]

[shihlun]

Nagisa Oshima

- The Man Who Left His Will on Film

1970

[sininthesuburb]

Crimson

I’m shedding crimson like a cut open wound. 

I’m drained from calling this bleeding 

                                               “poetry.”

[sininthesuburb]

Solitude in a Tree

If only I could enjoy                        true solitude. Not this loneliness                        haunted by ghosts. but the pure one, made from the echoes of trembling of trees.

[lifeinpoetry]

When someone offered to hurt me any way I wanted, I put their hand around my throat. That time, choosing it.

— Traci Brimhall, from “Dear Eros,” Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod

[lifeinpoetry]

I thought I could stop The incessant hum

By moving from city To city,

By starving clean The body.

The miraculous leveling out Of meaning.

Obsessive archiving and collecting As a means to stop the tremulating drone

Of memory, the diamond-white Rush of doom.

— Cynthia Cruz, “Bell in the Water,” Dregs

[sininthesuburb]

Amidst Solitude

A life amidst solitude 

dissolves into sweet loneliness. 

And you carry it around as a stamp of 

                                               alienation. 

In a divine but unusual way, 

it’s the true essence of human nature.

[sininthesuburb]

Blue Skin

I touch the blue skin of the sky

and we bleed into each other

like ink on a rain-soaked sheet

[lifeinpoetry]

to be a girl means 

to dress yourself as a corpse each day   in preparation.

— Quinn Lui, from “emilia, part one,” teething season for new skin

[lifeinpoetry]

Today, religion is a bathroom stall I did not cry in. A mirror I did not break with my barking fists.

Linette Reeman, from “III. The New Jersey Devil Rejects Its Humanity:” The New Jersey Devil Washes the Blood Off (And Other Vignettes)

[sininthesuburb]

Astronaut

I know that I must count on the endless stars, to feel that infinite distances cross me. So, I became an astronaut who caresses the lips of the crystal moon and drinks each comet for inspiration. I undress and live in the labyrinths of the untamed cosmos and build a palace on the nebulae. There I own the constellations and learn to swim among the spiral galaxies.

[sininthesuburb]

The whole universe is our promise land.