#npm 2015

[wordsovertears]

You (National Poetry Month Day 30)

Here’s the bad news: You do not matter to the world. Every person is the epitome of cosmic insignificance, simply meandering through life on a planet suspended in space. This idea of meaning is nothing but a construct  ingrained in our brains to give an answer to the nagging question: Why? Why anything? Why not suicide? Why stick around?

But here is the good news: You do not matter to the world, but your world matters to you. If life has no meaning, has no purpose then you get to take it for what it is. Life will offer you all it has and there is no predetermined price tag on it all; there is no website deeming it all important; that is within you. Your grades will not keep the world spinning, but if they keep you sane, then fucking work for it. Performing poetry, jazz, tango will not keep us breathing but if it is the one cause for your smile, then fucking do it.

And the best news: The world doesn’t care if you are happy, but it doesn’t mean you won’t be. The world is not out to get you, and while your mind may be halting all happiness, you have been happy before and I am damn well sure you will be happy again.

[wordsovertears]

R.D. (national poetry month day 28)

i think of you and i think hatred and laughter i think of the joking resentment i think about how it must not be joking; something about my existence infuriates you what is it let me fix it please. i don’t want to think of you and think personal massacre because i was starting a war between us and i didn’t even know it. i need to find the remedy to a problem that may or may not even exist.

[wordsovertears]

V.A. (National Poetry Month Day 27)

i used to sit here and pretend that the molecules between us formed a string with cups at each edge, wishing to be whispered into and wishing that they would start to shrink, as the distance began to wither and the cups would be needed no longer as we were finally together. but after three years, the cups and the strings have dissipated into nothingness.

the cups are gone, and i have been writing poems for years about just how happy i am that We were, that We could be, but You and I are more than capable of living alone. i have no more words for you besides the usual: thank you for being one of very few happy memories left in this tiny little brain of mine.

[wordsovertears]

J.M. (National Poetry Month Day 26)

When you take away our mask of personality tests and gay jokes, I know there is still a barrier, like I have a constant ticket to your brain but I have no fucking clue of what your heart is composed.

And I’m not saying I need a guidebook, and i know you don’t think so either, but most days I can’t help but wonder what you are and who you are.

But I know more about intrusiveness than I do about true emotions and I would rather be a problem solver than have an actual heart, but I know you understand. We both live in shells of logic and homes of joking heartlessness, but don’t tell me you don’t sometimes wonder what happens when you tear these shells asunder.

[wordsovertears]

M.H. (National Poetry Month Day 25)

I hope you can feel her tears every time they fall onto her bed sheets, floor, open wounds, I hope you feel her pain, and I hope it haunts you every night. I hope you know that no amount of kindness is possibly a remedy for years of destruction. I hope you know what you did to her, and I hope it fucking sickens you every single day.

[wordsovertears]

M.C. (National Poetry Month

In algebraic topology, two paths are homotopic if we can slide in-between them unrestricted, or slide one into the other, while the end points stay in place.

This is the only way I can even begin to describe our home composed of endless poetry and heart wrenching tales. A group of starry eyed story tellers comes together for just two weeks a year and we slide into one, and your story still feels like my own. I felt our recovery journeys intertwining and I can still feel your past at the very brink of my mind.

You see, I don’t know enough about math to know what happens if an end point disappears. I don’t know what happens if I can’t return next year and if this home is deceased for me. But I swear, even if this path disappears completely, memories of it will eternally refuse to fade.

[wordsovertears]

Tech Crew (National Poetry Month Day 21)

This place is made of endless metaphors: the saws exist to tear apart any slivers of sanity we have left into carefully carved pieces while the air is saturated with sawdust, and the screws and staples and glue exist to piece everything back together if we can muster the energy to do so, but the truth is, most often we don’t.

This place is made of metaphors but it is also made of irony because while it lends us the power of creation, it has full power to destroy us with the burdens of exhaustion, stress, and confusion. We can build a 2 story house but we have no clue how to handle the hours of crying that later ensue.

This place may be made of metaphors but it is so entirely real to us. Nothing about this is theoretical. Set construction saved my life countless times and has threatened to destroy it and it has begun to destroy all of you and I don’t want this journey to begin with my rejuvenation and end with your death. I can’t afford to have this kill you, and you deserve better than this life in a home of endless metaphors.

[wordsovertears]

H.A. (National Poetry Month Day 19)

The look of your face still smells like Floridian mornings in a house as big as the pathetic hope I had that maybe one day this memory of mine would treat me kindly and nostalgia would lose its toxicity.

But you see, I don’t resent you anymore. I don’t resent a second we spent together loving each other and being the best friends we could have ever asked for and I don’t resent the Harry Potter conventions and I don’t resent the tears and I don’t resent  I don’t regret any of that I just hate what you did to me.

I hate who you made me and I know I cant give you all the fucking credit; I let you do this to me but without your lies I may have never had to have these scars on my thighs and without your manipulation maybe I might have learned what it’s like to have real self-appreciation.

Together, we destroyed a girl, but I have news for you: that girl we met pre-annihilation is back. I’m back.