Tell me a tale and beat back the dark

Poetry and other writing blog of @imissthembutitwasntadisaster

[softstonesandhardedges]

If I'm going to be miserable

it might as well be here.

City with her heels buried in the riverbank,

sandstone standing through that rise

and fall and rise again.

"So what if no one visits you?" she asks

me, leaning on the rails. "Don't

you hate those tourists anyway?

And all those up-themselves old buildings.

This is what you need -

the man holding his children in the park,

the subway and its nightly racket,

and the couple kissing late last night

outside the pub

beside your flat."

[leofwines-deactivated20250831]

affirmations: you are not real, you don’t have feelings, you don’t want anything, this will be over soon

[fedoraspooky]

The kickstarter for a documentary about my dad's life and artwork is now live! His name was Kent Melton and he was a sculptor for Disney, Dreamworks, Laika, Hanna-Barbera, and many other studios over the years. It's being put together by a friend of his, Maria, who worked with him at Laika!

[fedoraspooky]

It's coming down to the last day on this soon (36 hours left as of me reblogging this), and it's so close!! Aaaaaa!! *anxious muppet flail*

Completely understandable if you don't have a few bucks to throw at this- 2024 was a rough year and I'm also pretty broke xnx

BUT!! If you can, please consider contributing! And if you can't, sharing is also very helpful! Thank you so much to everyone who's done one or both over this last month!!

[softstonesandhardedges]

You will be away for weeks,

you will come back

and it will hardly matter where you went

those long dry hours you were split apart

when, late at night, you wait for the return

and snap back, gasping to yourself.

For a moment you will remember

everything you have ever forgotten

and the city will still be there for you in the morning.

[softstonesandhardedges]

There's no one on earth it would kill me to lose

but I'd kill your story and shred up the news

and I wouldn't be funny and I wouldn't be cool

cause half of my stories are all about you,

now I met some people that you never knew

but they'll know your name in a minute or two

and when you come home they'll know I told the truth

cause half of my stories are all about you.

[softstonesandhardedges]

You ask me for a poem, I show you

in the parking lot after the show my

colleagues playing football. Ask

again. You haven't seen

the way an acrobat can wheel over pavement

always on the verge of tumbling

as though he didn't care

what he should use his body for

as long as it was used. I did believe,

that second, that they couldn't die, that

falling motorbikes would lose their power,

somehow twist away from tender bone,

that miracles ring out from metal more

than we'll admit. You ask me

for a poem, I tell you wait

until the audience goes home.

[lesbianralzarek]

do you think they know how much they contributed to online literacy? to the spirit of curiousity? to the idea of doing research yourself instead of always having it laid out in front of you?

[onithelovedemon]

[sarahexplosions]

"how can you like this objectively bad thing!" because i have bad taste. move on.

[3cosmicfrogs]

[okthatsgreat]

OMG JUST REMEMBERED I BEAR THE CURSE 😍

[softstonesandhardedges]

last december grip-tight grief-gorged season

white walls rote days lost cause

there but for-

year's breath, fear's death,

sorrow's fallow fields left,

heartache holy then

unhallowed.

[softstonesandhardedges]

Halloween – with ten girls down to six,

Knotted hardwood floors, two cushions,

blue, cross-legged story circle.

Mads across the world calls when

we plan it. Mostly people

like it when you offer

coffee after meeting them

just once.  Hannah only two short

hours gone. Alex still alive.

Text me when you get home safe.

No one hand can ever kill me,

starting now. You won’t find me

head in hands sunk on the curb

beside the Tesco lights, too sad

to cry. I swear it to the girl

still left there. Ever is

a long word. Make it honest.

No one hand can ever kill me.

No one hand can ever kill me.

Starting now.

[softstonesandhardedges]

I am growing up!

I am growing out of running,

I am learning how to stay,

I am going to be difficult

and silly and rambunctious

and the world will tell me

"this is how it kills you," but

that's never been the world now,

has it? just the fear pretending

to be something big but listen I've

been getting bigger I am always

getting bigger.

[softstonesandhardedges]

Odysseus

There was a man a-wandering or so the poet told,

upon the seas of dark regret and islands green and gold

a war behind and war ahead and war among the wind,

to lose a name and memory of wife and weft and kin.

There is a man a-wandering, or so the poet says,

with bowstring on his shoulder and with tales in his head,

his roaming (so the gods declare) will evermore be known,

he heeds them not, but daydreams of his son now fully grown.

There is a man a-wandering, they say he wanders still,

travellers will swear they’ve seen him cresting hollow hills,

but, the poet whispers as soft sleep comes trickled through,

he’ll make it home to rest one day, as will the rest of you.     

[softstonesandhardedges]

So many poems of brothers dying,

I'll not read tonight.

It doesn't change

with time, the way I know them,

they know I can never change so much

as not to know them, all the hours spent

with shouting through closed bedroom doors,

the freezing Scout huts as our mother talked,

the corrugated roof, the smell of damp, the green,

I'll sneak another biscuit, so will you, half-dead

from boredom, still, at least I'm not

alone against the wall. I don't

believe in death for us, a foolish

child's dream but still, I don't. My life

has but two anchors but two anchors

it will keep.

[softstonesandhardedges]

I met me the Reaper once beside a city road,

he asked me “Is it time yet?” I said “I don’t think so,”

still eat and sleep and drink and cry, and cry and cry some more.

He left me then, though how he went I think I’ll never know,

but still I fear one day he’ll come a-calling to my door

and I’ll have spent too many nights alone to tell him no.  

[softstonesandhardedges]

The thing is that she stumbled once and it was I that got back up.  I could have left her there between the rocks, all sprawled out on the sand or heather gorse, wherever every falter happened, left her flattened, bruised, it would have been the easiest to do, I wanted to, and yet I didn’t.  So, I picked her up and carried her alone back to the flat. 

She’s sitting in the window now, her legs pulled up against her chest, her forehead pressed against the glass, she’s staring at the mountain as I try to watch this lecture, takes more space than I have time for, always squeezing round the books and just-cleaned clothes into the sliver of the bed that’s left.  She says “you could forget I ever stumbled, set me back along the pathway, it was easier, you know, before then it was easier for you” I say to her I know, I know, but it was crueller too, and selfish.  I’m not doing this for me.  Or if I were, I’d never change.  At least, I’m doing it in part for me, but mostly it’s about what I can do, how if I build myself into a newer ship (the same old form the different planks, what makes different things the same?) I might just integrate some grace and then of course that’s how you learn to carry every beast you’ve ever fought and how you meet the meek and weak and say “I know the way to care for you if you would ever want me to” and suddenly the bed and boat are big enough as big as they should be. 

(I think I read too many epics in my youth I think I loved to be a knight too much and I’ll scrawl chivalry across my walls even as the kingdoms creak and fall).

I hand her a digestive from the desk.  She grins, “I’m glad you don’t forget.  I didn’t either.  Here’s on hope the next girl picks you up from where you sink.”  Who knows how soon I’ll be the one that’s crouching in the window taking too much room as someone else sits at the desk and fights her way through aging texts I hope she’ll pick me up I think she will.  I’m swapping out my rotten planks for somebody who will.   

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

The Second Half of a Poem Fragment

It is not about the poem

or the prose

It's about me reaching out my hands and saying "please

it's awful, isn't it? I know it's awful,

but you can live through it. My girls did. And so

can you. You can. You must. I beg."

It is about the void, and what we choose to throw

straight in it, hoping on the other side someone

will pick it up and it will help.

That's all it is - a wish to help. A prayer.

Don't let me die before I crack the window open, please

don't let me die before I bring a meal, do the dishes,

give a wallet back to strangers on the street,

however all these things are pressed in prose,

oh let me comfort ere my last defeat.