Sometimes it's cozy

A writing blog, mostly poetry, sometimes other things. Main blog is @asingularcanadian icon by @redsugarheart

[sometimesitscozy]

The power of choice is a curious thing, especially when contrasted with the concept of need. To say that you need something is to say, in some way, that you are burdened with the requisition, maintenence, and proper application of a thing. Maslow tells you that you need and apple and why you need the apple but doesn't tell you how to get it.

On the other hand, to want something is a different matter. Its a nice addition, it's a take it or leave it is the willingness to keep it around, that is to say that it is a choice. Sure there may be some burden in its acquisition or ots maintenence or its application but its something that you decide you is important enough to pursue it.

I want you.

Could I live without you? Certainly! there was a fair period of time before you came into my life that I didn't know enough yet to want you but now that you're here I don't ever want to go back to that. Might there be some burden in the maintenence of what it takes to have you? To nourish your mind, support your dreams and goals? To keep choosing you even when it is difficult or inconvenient? Of course! But even when I take all of it into consideration, it would still be my greatest honor and privilege to choose you, and to keep choosing you for the rest of my life.

[sometimesitscozy]

Tree Rings in Times of Drought

I want the worst of you. With an open countenance you greet us all, not so much chipper but accepting, nonetheless. A forest grown whose coals filter the weight of the world create a distillation wreaking of destruction, intoxicating and smooth.

A promise to bear the words carved into trunks and scriven in old journals faintly resting in the outskirts of your memory and even so, with such tenderness implied it would rival the heart of a baby bird, you still wouldn't show me the casualties of your war.

I do not care in the way a doctor does, all cold detachment and rote professionalism, but in the way your friends who brought you homework when you were sick or your spouse who knows your favorite jam and always has more for when you run out. It is the most thoughtless form of thoughtfulness, a part that may need actual physical excision to remove.

I would hold those jealousies and judgements in a grip so tight that no extant thing could pry them from me. Warheads buried so far underground they are consumed once again by the earth until they are simply past of a process, forgotten and mistaken for the raw minerals form which they came. All serial numbers and homing chips mere dust, strewn amongst the strata. Still you won't commit to disarmament.

I understand why. The thing with scar tissue that people don't typically know is that while, yes, reinjury and healing of a certain spot can cause the issue to grow back thicker and stronger, it is also less flexible, leading to a sort of concrete immobility. With all that said, while your original agility may never be fully returned, I'd be more than honored to play physical therapist.

[sometimesitscozy]

The Radio

You put your headphones on. Those dusty old monsters, wrecked with so much accumulated skin from audiolophiles long gone you'd have no trouble molding them back into a man. The ear covers are falling off and smell disarmingly like a hamster cage. It's become a ritual for you, that quiet bit of revulsion.

You turn the dial to hear the roar as you browse through a million variations on the same theme. A hissing and crackling if which for only a moment would yield to anything or anyone else would make its anger much more tangible. To mentally keep track of how many you've gone through you watch the needle eclipse the frequency lines. The tick marks on the dial mostly just unpainted grooves now dissolved away by generations of human solvent.

You pick up the microphone, it too reeking of its damp accumulations. The rusted teeth of the cover so brittle and inviting, fitting for the message which it carries. The "on air" button still sounds its magnificent claxon clunk when pressed, the mechanical counterpart to a butcher's cleaver coming down to split bone. Reflexively you blow through the small hole on the cover to test and see if its on before giving your address.

You read dutifully down the page, crumpled, torn, stained, rewritten, stapled, taped and rehashed over and over again. The message a simple one, passed down now through 4 generations of survivors, once held in high honor now reduced to a few coals of the once roaring flame. Yes, you two dozen and some now haunt rather than inhabit these halls, sending signals daily hoping for a sign.

You hear something, faint and fast. Some syllables, some sound, some psalm or such. You strain to listen, the rubberized cushions of the headset crumbling as you press them tighter, straining for salvation in that sound. Twice then thrice "survivors of the second calamity, we search for others. If you can hear us send a signal back."

You scramble to my room where I'm organizing the rations we have left. Not enough to make it 2 months if we're lucky, definitely not enough to give us any hope. You grab me by the arm and you pull me to the setup. You take the headphones. Jamming them on my head, you break one of the muffs completely. Breathing heavily, with a smile on your face fit to crack our containment, you tell me to listen. And I hear nothing but the static.

[sometimesitscozy]

Someone has to leave first

Someone has to leave first

That's always the issue isn't it? Doesn't matter if it's a phone call, a lunch date, a talk over a cup of coffee, divorce. or a death. One minute you're having a laugh, sharing a story, breathing the same air, and the next thing you know, you gotta go to work the next day, I gotta go to bed, I'm sorry i have a meeting to go to, my lunchbreak is over. Someone has to leave first.

You can spend your whole life with someone, some 40, 50 odd years, walk the same roads, share meals, beds, trips to the beach, the museum. You fill your house with pictures and promises, your favorite colours and all sorts of kitsch. You can entwine yourself as much as humanly possible, like two pea vines without a pole between ya, but someone has to leave first.

I wrote you poetry, some good some bad, mostly bad if we're being honest. I tried to build us a world where we could live unencumbered by the weight of absence. Where time stood still and we could inhabit forever together. But even as I write these words, I know either you or me will be the last to be mentioned cause someone has to leave first.

[sometimesitscozy]

Thrifting

If I hadn't wasted all my words on people who did not deserve them trying to convince myself of a love that wasn't real I may still have something left to give to you. I have lowered and settled and tapped down and trimmed so much of what I have to offer, to make myself more palatable, that I sometimes wonder whether or not there's anything in me left.

People love a sequel, don'tcha know? A series of characters whose traits they have down, familiar and firm, it doesn't strain them. But to try something new, to let the possibility of disappointment in? Never. The issue then being, of course, if you do not let in anything new then you will also never have the chance to experience the peak of joy. It is, however, with these cold and cowardly masses us few adventurers must mingle.

And so I set about like any person promising to be palatable would, lopping off bits and pieces of me to cram myself into shapes I'd never be able to fit. When we talk about the changes a person goes through when they are loved they're always in the mutual sense. To be loved is to be change but people forget that to love is to also change immensely. To wrap yourself so tightly around something that it leaves a permanent indent, made even deeper when the object your wrap yourself around remains stiff and stalwart.

So its with the bits missing and those odd shapes marked about my skin that I come to you completely ruined. A potential purchase waiting upon the stale smelling shelves of a second-hand store, q collections if sorrows and regrets incarnate. You run your fingers over my form, the chips in my glazing more evident than on first glance, and I helplessly hope. Will you be the one that finally loves me back? Can you love what so many others have refused to? Would you even want to try?

[sometimesitscozy]

I have an idea its an immaculate idea its an idea made from fuckin hopes and dreams and shit that is good and I know exactly the opening line and nothing about the rest, nothing at all, the opening line is so good that anything else I write will look like dog water from a fuckin shit ass creek or sewage in comparison im gonna go eat a hard boiled egg and fume

[sometimesitscozy]

Me, As If

Theres a maw

Whose teeth surround

Me, as if

I was only

To be consumed

Its fangs burn

Dripping poison into

Me, as if

I was only

To be taken

I cannot break

Free to see

Me, as if

I was only

To be alive

It steals the

Brightness away from

Me, as if

I was only

To be broken

Carnival of horrors

Flashing regrets through

Me, as if

I was only

To be failure

People shake my

Cage to liberate

Me, as if

I was only

To be hope

The maw extends

Takes them to

Me, as if

I was only

To be destruction

In response it

Grows to encapsulate

Me, as if

I was only

To be alone

Every day it

Binds itself to

Me, as if

I was only

To be preyed

And it wll

Never leave for

Me, as if

I was only

To be keeper

and I try

To reach for

Me, as if

I was only

To be loved

But it clings

Ever tighter to

Me, as if

I was only

To be

[hooved]

love is real btw and it's out there for you and i am NOT bullshitting you, like speaking from Way too much experience i am Not gonna sugarcoat it and tell you it's easy to find, it's most likely gonna suck and hurt a LOT trying to find it along the way but love that's truly kind and understanding and patient and forgiving to you is REAL and you have to believe in it even with the very last ounce of your being you can muster. and it'll still feel unbelievable sometimes once you finally find it, it'll feel scary sometimes to be truly loved like you've never been loved before because you get used to expecting the worst, but it's real. it's real and i'm begging you to believe in it

[sometimesitscozy]

Untitled as of yet, working title: The failure of language

if we had all the time

from the beginning of it all

to the end of it all

when alpha and omega

finally fuse to throw

the world off its axis

and send us careening

into our timely deserved end,

when the last star has gone out

and all our little meanings

the pathways and poses of our lives

have crumbled under a magnitude

unfathomable to even the gods,

where existence itself

will one day go to die

and nothing and no one

will be left to mourn

or to even know sadness.

I still wouldn't have enough time

to tell you everything

that you deserve to hear.

[sometimesitscozy]

i wanna preface this with two things

1. im not religious, and definitely not Jewish. I did. however, spend 7 years of my life studying Jewish history and culture and one of those classes concerned a lot of Hassidic mysticism so that's where I'm pulling from, forgive me if it offends or misrepresents, that is not my intention

2. im actually workshopping this one and posting it on here is a way to make me committed to working on it more because I can't just leave it the way it is in a place where people can see it so I likely will be following this up with edits to the original

Klippot

my darling,

there is no universal sign i could make for you

what those long cosmos hold

is too far for me to tell

i've never been a believer but

if there were anything to ever convince me

it would be you

when I look at you it becomes evident

a dull light flicks on, barely burning

where in that moment it is a 50/50

as to whether or not it'll survive

it births not 10 not 100 but trillions

the moss in the grout of our apartment?

the shells ground down within it?

the culmination of millions of years

the evolution

leading us farther apart

yet their bodies still serve us

to keep us safe

keep us warm.

the broken zipper on the refugees tent?

the teeth that it skips letting in some nights

colder than others?

the hope it represents

in those blustry nights

where home is still only a memory

but you feel as though

it were waiting for you

on the other side of this nightmare.

a singular, microscopic bacteriophage?

the blind path it navigates instinctively?

limitless in its journey

it doesn't know what drives it

it doesn't even really know itself

and yet with no guidance

and no glory

in solemnity it's set

and all of our fates with it.

All the lights flicker on,

a ripple from your singular drop,

and in that moment

I catch a glimpse

of how it must have been

when his dam broke

and spilled forth

creating a world

almost more luminous

than himself

[sometimesitscozy]

Bearable

we make it bearable

in our own ways

humans looked

into the stars

and divined two things

there must be something

larger than them

and that those stars

connected shapes

the way we lay

in sweet summer grass

as our brains

hardwired for familiarity

pieced together

the gods

in all their splendor

whose favour made it

bearable.

we kept goin

explanations

excuses

it must be raining

because we pleased them

the garden will grow

you'll get better

you are that way

the stars said so

(as if balls of gas

lifetimes away

could tell

more about you

than I could)

we divide

and surmise

only to make it

bearable.

we create communities

hone languages

culture

religion

star cross

crescent moon

all symbols of

strength?

weakness?

no

an attempt

grasping at signs

hope to make it

hearable.

taking it away

creates only fear

splintered factions

burning buildings

a brother

lost at sea

torn by shrapnel

mothers stolen

daughters killed

fathers enslaved

all because

a perceived threat

to what made it

bearable.

your grandma says

listen to your dreams

count the steps

she sings you songs

to ward off illness

and even if

none of it worked

it seemed to make it

bearable.

I hold your hand

in my eyes you see

those very same stars

we laugh about lines

arbitrarily drawn

meaning something?

but ultimately nothing

and for a moment

the world stands still

and makes it all

bearable

[sometimesitscozy]

Inside

maybe its the skin

the flesh and sweat

or maybe its eyes

tracking and tracing

the way you

hover inches away

tracing patterns arcane

bewildered and biting

no, it's your lips

spilling poison into mine

as I writhe, contort

burning into my bones

dissolving under influence

you carry on

and oh, my beloved

the blood

we shan't forget

hot and sticky

as you cut

revealing my truth

my shame 

drawing you closer

my heart beats

frantically, feverishly

as your fingers

brush up against places

sacred and soiled

spaces where no one

not God or man

could see before

but you aren't done

you never are

laying down your tools

you draw into me

landing comfortably

on gleaming ribs

head over my heart

every shriek every sigh

sends you quivering

as you feel my echo

from the inside out

[too-many-blorbos]

Soulmates as a horror concept.

You WILL love this person. It doesn't matter who you loved before; any feelings you had, any promises you made, they will become inconsequential as soon as you lock eyes with the stranger Fate has picked for you.

There's no way to stop it.

There's no way to say "no."

You will meet someone and with a single glance, both of you will become someone new, someone who's now bound to this stranger whether you like it or not, want it or not.

Trapped in a dance together until the day you die.

[cilceon]

My cat with a ball of tinfoil I won’t let him put in his mouth

[sometimesitscozy]

Weddings and Funerals

to accurately describe it

there must be blood

sticky, rotted, and perfuse

not so much dripping

as rain from evestroughs

but in intermittent bursts

through meadows of flesh

as the chain revs

rusted, bent, and rickety

blades ravage at scars

gashes fresh and hot

the timing a study

of entropy's blind edges

from the left clavicle

to 5th costochondral joint

and about 8 centimeters

from side to side

[sometimesitscozy]

The Flop

I am an actor

I don't know my lines

I trip about the stage

fumbling for cues

blocked by blocking

the curtain falls

and I with it

-

I play opposite a star

practiced, perfect

a wonder of improv

wrote the script themself

I can't keep up

though my accolades

my name in lights

might say otherwise

-

It shouldn't be mine

the part is all wrong

I act only tragedies

and their comedies astound

only if for a night

could we light up the stage

it might come together

a show worth remembering

-

there's another, more suited

who's tail burns bright

as if the night sky

was made for her

a grace so effortless

she doesn't even notice

thats she's in the telescope

-

though critics proclaim

we shall have the stage

I can't help but wonder

when they reel to bow

if they are not looking up

at her constellation

painted upon the roof

of our theater

[sometimesitscozy]

Submitted a poetry anthology for publishing to 6 different publishers today!

[sometimesitscozy]

I tend not to write as much in the winter. I write mostly when im really restless with an idea and im just not restless in the winter but something happened a few weeks ago and I've been thinking about it since so here yas go

Tenderness in your voice

the likes of which I've never heard

and never will again

as it wasn't for me to hear

one sentence and a jealousy

poured forth from me

deep enough to drown worlds

least of all my own

as natural as the rising sun

you took her hand, oh so feeble

and lead her to your meadow

returning the kit to the warren

if all the worlds lovers

had ever been so earnest

they would amount to nothing

at you, their inventor

an I, an inventor as well

of futility, however

of pursuit so meaningless

a snail seeing god

my maple house now pine

contained a lonely enormity

its floors now frigid

and I without socks

at that moment I shattered

and even if it were different

if you now said the same to me

there is no solder that could mend me

and though I will try

the gaps in the pieces

seem to push the shards apart

as love is in the way