#button poetry

[litbowl]

From Andrea Gibson's book, You Better Be Lightning. (Button Poetry).

[poemsonmars]

you told me that daisies

are your favorite flower

and i had to fight the urge

to plant a bouquet

of them in my lungs.

i want to cough up

petals and stems

when you smile at me.

i want to be so full of

your favorite things

that i forget how to breathe.

-mars

[littersletters]

i like my body best when i am not worried about how much space it is taking up.

Sabrina Benaim, Depression & Other Magic Tricks

[jankywhale]

I didn’t think I could be happy without you. Who am I to put so much of myself in your hands?

[jdaviswords]

Fuck ICE

Another shot

another downed

not here

but there

this time

a northern midwestern town

DJT

three letters

that spell clown

the head of the snake

laying atop

carefully planted grass

a billionaires ground

crack crack crack

gunfire, the sound

reverberating through Minneapolis

another downed

Different than Kirk

different than Floyd

if you’ve chosen

a side of the aisle

either way

you’re annoyed

and while we battle each other

more ICE is deployed

infiltrating our communities

a bunch of washed up Jocks

with nice new

shiny shiny toys

Hidden behind masks

they march our streets

to protect us from immigrants?

Nah

to carry out the wishes

of the elites

history repeats

more will die

there will never be peace

more disease

more poverty

more greed

It wont be until

we realize

we cannot consume money

that perhaps

we can all drink tea together

with a spoonful of honey

Then maybe we’d admit

that those we defend

sitting in congressional chairs

do not care

about me

about you

as long as they receive

the proper cut

of their stocks they share

Corruption on Wall Street

convoluted insurance companies

401k limits

declining social security

the fall of capitalism

knocking on our door step

sending us normies

into depressive states

confined by the mistakes they make

dictated by the illusion of truth

but we all see it’s fake

kinda like

is this item really a cake?

Let’s take the knife

cut it open

and see what’s inside

oh…

…no way!!

just more pesticides

dipped and rolled

in a vat of formaldehyde

we used to be a proper country

we used to at least try

to hide

the lies

Now

it’s just out in the open

like one of them

flappy inflatable wacky tube guys

outside a business

promoting a sale

of artificial preservatives

that give us cancer 
like food coloring dyes

I beg to question

why

am I alive

in this time

but that’s an answerless question

so I let that subside

My heart goes out

to the six year old

now without a mom

to the minorities

who are consistently

and persistently

demonized and wronged

to all of us

who’ve fallen prey

believing our elected officials

have our best interests

when really they just want us

pitted against us

all along

I wish to snap

my fingers

and all this

would be gone

but I am no genie

so I can only move along

and open this note pad

to say fuck all this

this shit is wrong

RIP Renee Good

a soul too soon gone

Fuck ICE

[poemsforthesehours]

Kevin Kantor. Excerpt of a poem originally published in Please Come Off-Book. (Button Poetry)

[bemysavingrace]

Sometimes, out of nowhere, I remember certain people, certain moments. A tune or a passing details… like a voice, a glance or a fleeting moments…brings me back to a life I once lived. It’s like my mind opens a hidden door, and I’m there again….not just remembering, but feeling it. The same air, the same version of me, the same people.

But now… it’s all layered with a quiet ache I cannot name.

And I let myself dissolve into it, I let myself relive it fully. And there’s a quiet trap in that because it feels beautiful, almost addictive. Yet it fills me with a sudden, wordless grief for the time that was lost, for the people who passed by my life, and for the lives they continued to live beyond me…lives that I’ll never know of.

It’s astonishing to think those moments, those days, are ones I’ve already lived. That some moments are meant to exist just once, in one specific version of us… and then never again.

[bree--ann]

"I think a lot about killing myself, not like a point on a map, but rather, like a glowing exit sign at a show that's never been quite bad enough to make me want to leave."

- Neil Hilborn // The Future