Smiff-Spike Danger

they/them, poet

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i am ideologically opposed to the existence of my workplace, Smiff-Spike Danger

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Recent State Of Affairs, Smiff-Spike Danger

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Poem for, Smiff-Spike Danger

[notquiteaghost]

something about learning to speak and then later learning how to speak properly and being worse at speaking for it and the shorthand of poetic cliches and all the things you learn without meaning to and the small scared place a coping mechanism is born in and the year i didn’t have any friends and read so many books for it and there’s no such thing as a sentence never said before just based on sheer numbers and it’s not originality that keeps me up at night it’s clarity it’s intent it’s how i write to get the feelings out and am too well-socialised to do it well and no one ever screams and means it unless they mean it and all babies do is cry until they learn to speak until they learn to stop and i want to talk to myself before that i want to read their poems i want to unlearn language and run down the street making a noise my neighbours will flinch at that instinct to soothe even a stranger’s baby even a stranger’s pain i want it to be heard for miles. something about that.

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Pseudoscience says the brain isn't done until 25, Smiff-Spike Danger

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i tell my sister, Smiff-Spike Danger

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Chain Reaction, Smiff-Spike Danger

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i want to put the childhood down already., Smiff-Spike Danger

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Poem written four days after my grandfather died and one day before I found out, Smiff-Spike Danger

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[ID: three poems

first poem, ‘to everyone who hurt me tried to hurt me wished hurt on me saw my joy and wished it gone’, reads: when holding a loaded gun / do not take aim at anything / you would not want to shoot / you back

second poem, ‘to everyone who believes me lesser sinning corrupted confused broken’, reads: i will not waste my good words / on lost causes / you will butcher anything i give / and offer nothing in return // no poet will get into your paradise / i hope the silence drives you mad

third poem, ‘to everyone who dismissed my gender my queerness my struggling my pain my joy or any part of me at all’, reads: there is a house, not lavish or elaborate or / any bigger than i need, a fireplace and a roaring fire, / large windows sunlight streams through, / piles of books, garden of growing things, / windowsills of growing things, / comfortable chairs, a thick soft rug the shape of the moon, / space for impromptu dancing, full kitchen cupboards, / safest place, warm and comfortable and comforting // i will not tell you where it is

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[poem text: sick of gutting myself / so strangers can divine from my entrails / if i deserve their support, // oh yeah i've been sad too she says, / her mother died she tells me, / i can't say no i mean i'm crazy. / she can sanction me deeper into poverty. / i can't afford a therapist. // i had to hold the blood inside my sister / until the ambulance arrived; / a while ago now. i'm an accumulation. / once a seed from a bath bomb caught in our drain / and sprouted there. / we left trash behind when we moved out and / from the letting agent's emails, it killed his mother. / he won't give us our deposit. // i get caught between rage and apathy, / my life a film i'm not paying attention to / until something explodes. you have to set / two intentional fires before it's pyromania. / i know where everyone ruining me lives. // we had nowhere to plant the tiny sprout. / she says you need a doctor's note to prove it, / i nod and make another promise i can't keep.]

[notquiteaghost]

Pattern recognition is a cognitive process that matches information from a stimulus with information retrieved from memory. The human tendency to see patterns that do not actually exist is called apophenia. In contrast to an epiphany, an apophany does not provide insight into the nature of reality nor its interconnectedness, but is a “process of repetitively and monotonously experiencing abnormal meanings”.

To seriate means to understand that objects can be ordered along a dimension, and to effectively do so, the child needs to be able to answer the question “What comes next?” Seriation skills also help to develop problem-solving skills, which are useful in recognizing and completing patterning tasks.

The physiological changes that occur during the fight or flight response are activated in order to give the body increased strength and speed in anticipation of fighting or running. During the reaction, the intensity of emotion that is brought on by the stimulus will also determine the nature and intensity of the behavioural response.

Animals respond to threats in many complex ways. Rats, for instance, try to escape when threatened but will fight when cornered. Some animals stand perfectly still so that predators will not see them. Many animals freeze or play dead when touched in the hope that the predator will lose interest.

Whereas adaptive coping strategies improve functioning, a maladaptive coping technique (also termed non-coping) will just reduce symptoms while maintaining or strengthening the stressor. Maladaptive techniques interfere with the person’s ability to unlearn, or break apart, the paired association between the situation and the associated symptoms. These are maladaptive strategies as they serve to maintain the disorder.

Pattern recognition is not only crucial to humans, but to other animals as well.

[citation needed] [citation needed] [citation needed] [citation needed] [citation needed]

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[images are three poems. poem 1 text: i want to chase it out the house but it is the house / or it’s seeped into the walls at least / or no it is the house / even gutted it would still remember / even ash and brittle timber / i brought it with me like bed bugs or fleas / or carbon monoxide / i brought it with me because it is me / and i live here and so it’s the house / everywhere i go there i am / water damage and rot

poem 2 text: i want a bathroom with windows / – every room should have windows, i think / when i sit in the bathtub by / the harsh white of the fluorescent bulb / steam trapped, heat trapped / something inside me starts again to wither / the spiders strung above me mostly eat each other / i don’t know who designed my building / but i don’t think they knew anyone would live here / i look at houses we can afford / with all their ailments, small and damp and cold, / the post stamp concrete gardens. the sunlight. / the bars over the ground floor windows. the sunlight.

poem 3 text: same as it ever was / same as it ever was / as in the days that smear together, / life like an old tape decaying / lifelike similar fuzzing fading / keep hitting the buttons it’s the same / on every channel a low ache / too fogged to write or just nothing to say – / thoughts vanishing half forming / everything indistinct same same same / as it ever was / as it ev ever / as it ever was, /end ID]

little 2021 poetry review. mostly this year i wrote about decay and stagnancy

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[ID: digital collage of the same faded receipt, tiled four times. over the receipts is a poem in red lower case, poem text: a teenager is a pile of bad ideas held together / with feelings like flashbangs and i / couldn’t stop writing about teeth, baring my teeth, / sharp and snarling, anger my grindstone / and my blade and of course it couldn’t last. // there’s only so long you can grind something / to a point. burnout, my twitter feed tells me, / is a state of overworking. i don’t have anything / to show for this pile of ash. no amount of rest / can grow back my teeth. there’s rot in my molars. // it hurts just to eat. i lie still anyway, like it’ll help. / i haven’t been to the dentist since i / turned eighteen and it stopped being free. / they won’t take the ash. they won’t take the snarling. // i used to rage so much it ached, / bright enough to see from miles away. i spit out / another molar splinter. inertia, that’s the word. /end ID]

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[poem text: a story is a series of events arranged in an order. / a story has characters, setting, plot. / a story wants you to feel something. / a poem is a story at 3AM, sobbing in the street, / too drunk to stand. a poem is pleading. / a poem is whatever will make you listen. / a poem is a series of images arranged on purpose. / a poem can't spell everything out for you. / a poem can't make that much sense, / not when it's crying this hard. he used / to drag me around, y'know? when he's angry / i flinch. i can't tell this story without / expositioning away his blame. a poem is a prayer. / a poem is a door. a poem is a locked door.]

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[ID: poem displayed as if a collection of screenshots of texts from multiple sources, in varying serif and sans serif fonts. poem text: thinking about posts that collate poem snippets together. collage of other people’s words, divorcing them from their original context, how that’s all any poem is. distilling down a feeling. // here are all the lines about love / that make something catch in my chest. / do they make something catch in yours? / do you know what that something is? // i don’t know what this poet meant but i know what it means to me. // hold it up to the light, see how the colours refract, / where the shadows fall. everything more coherent / than a wordless yell is a translation. // Do you know what I mean? // do you know what I mean? // do you know what i mean?, /end ID]

[notquiteaghost]

the tree that died and rotted away but only its insides so to everyone else it’s still whole and alive. anger like a knife or a house fire you have to get away. lying on the floor while a man strums a guitar and describes driving with a corpse in the trunk. home full of unfinished things. a buzzing growling noise like a car engine or a too old refrigerator or a chainsaw in your bones in your very bones. the therapist asks how do you feel about that and you can’t think of anything to say not one single word. describe forgetting to eat like someone stole it. what’s ‘it’ she asks. once a man climbed in through the kitchen window and rifled through the drawers for the largest knife in case your dog woke up. your dog didn’t wake up and the man left in your mother’s car and drove it into a lampost. it’s like anger if anger was so so tired, you tell her. the space left when anger leaves. the disease that ate all the marrow in your grandmother’s bones until she was shorter than herself. the man strums the guitar and describes how to keep going when you’ve run out of even bad reasons and you do not get up off the floor.