#of ruin

[generouswindow]

Having Already Walked Out on Everyone I Ever Said I Loved

by HERA LINDSAY BIRD

I pause for a moment at your door And consult my fate This life is more stupid than even I could have hoped for Every day a search party gets lost in the snow With no-one to dig them out again I have tried for too long to act in ways that seem reasonable Yet somehow, this makes me double-unreasonable Like flicking someone’s bra-strap at a coroners inquest The official theme of this poem is The official theme of all my poems which is You get in love and then you die O write it in rhinestones on the lid of my coffin Some people are too hard to be lived without

Once upon a time I used to feel like............huh But then I started to feel a little more like..................................uhuh

Once upon a time I used to feel like.................?? But then I started to feel a little more like.................................????????

Having already walked out on everyone I ever said I loved Things do not bode well for you But things do also not bode well for me Every year life gets less and less acceptable And I feel uncertain of how to proceed in an appropriate fashion To anticipate heartache is a grim satisfaction Like tripping down a staircase in a peach negligee Or an ancient forest with a new corsage of flames It pleases me to subject myself to such whimsical hurt feelings But under my main feelings, I have other, worse feelings Like an auxiliary moat in which black swans are circling If I ever die young I’m going to do it in style.....like a Great Gatsby themed suicide attempt!

Having already walked out on everyone I ever said I loved I have so little left to say to you I pause for a moment at your door My eyes pouring out across the darkness

O let us not be little bitches to one another Life is hard enough as it is Life is hard enough and fast enough And there is nothing in this world worth doing But shaking our heads in awe

A new wind shifts the branches A bird flies out of the radio and off into silence

I can hardly believe this I can hardly believe this life Every time I knock you let me in

[zaedrawsdestiny]

My entry in r/Destinythegame’s newest showdown to make an emblem with some accompanying lore. You can read the competition and see the other’s entries here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/6in2ib/destiny_summer_showdown_season_3_challenge_3_your/

I wanted to base my entry on the Ruin Wings and how ornate they are compared to the destruction they cause. The artwork itself is inspired by cave paintings and old stories passed down through generations. Overall it was fun to work on. I only hope I have time to work on more of them before the competition closes!

Base by u/NFSgaming on Reddit. In the showdown link above is a download file for it if you are interested!

[generouswindow]

what i learned in the fire

by Safia Elhillo

my body is a pill, small, and love is the wrong man’s tongue to tell me so my body dissolves my body finds men who are water and calls them home

my body is everything that happened to me love is a thing my body borrows to forget love is a pill my body is water. my body is a tongue and love dissolves love calls the wrong men home love makes my body a stain and goes looking for water on the wrong man’s tongue

love is a house, my body is a bath drawn in floodwater my body trickles in through the floorboards love is the carpet that i’ve ruined love is an alternative to water, love is just something to do until the wars start my body is a border drawn up by some man long ago love is everything that happened in between love is the floorboards my body is decoration love ruined all the carpets my body is the carpet my body is the stain love makes it all dissolve love is an alternative to home love is floodwater

my body burned to the ground my body called the wrong man home love started the fire my body is everything that happened after

the wrong man is an alternative to love the wrong man is a map home is where he puts the lines my body is a border drawn by accident by the wrong man’s tongue love makes scars on my body and calls them borders the wrong man mistakes my body for a body of water love let the wrong man decide what my body mistakes for home love started the fire

my body is a house on fire my body drew a bath in floodwater the wrong man is floodwater love and the wrong man are an alternative to hating my body my body is a body of water, poured over everything that happened to me my body makes every scar an island the wrong man makes my body small, a pill love makes the water and my body dissolves

[generouswindow]

At the Museum

by AGHA SHAHID ALI

But in 2500 B.C. Harappa, who cast in bronze a servant girl? No one keeps records of soldiers and slaves. The sculptor knew this, polishing the ache Off her fingers stiff from washing the walls and scrubbing the floors, from stirring the meat and the crushed asafoetida in the bitter gourd. But I’m grateful she smiled at the sculptor, as she smiles at me in bronze, a child who had to play woman to her lord when the warm June rains came to Harappa.

[generouswindow]

There Are Birds Here

by JAMAAL MAY

    For Detroit

There are birds here, so many birds here is what I was trying to say when they said those birds were metaphors for what is trapped between buildings and buildings. No. The birds are here to root around for bread the girl’s hands tear and toss like confetti. No, I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton, I said confetti, and no not the confetti a tank can make of a building. I mean the confetti a boy can’t stop smiling about and no his smile isn’t much like a skeleton at all. And no his neighborhood is not like a war zone. I am trying to say his neighborhood is as tattered and feathered as anything else, as shadow pierced by sun and light parted by shadow-dance as anything else, but they won’t stop saying how lovely the ruins, how ruined the lovely children must be in that birdless city.

[generouswindow]

Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying

by NOOR HINDI

Colonizers write about flowers. I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks seconds before becoming daisies. I want to be like those poets who care about the moon. Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons. It’s so beautiful, the moon. They’re so beautiful, the flowers. I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad. He watches Al Jazeera all day. I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan. I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies. Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound. When I die, I promise to haunt you forever. One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.

[generouswindow]

Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Inpatient)

by KAVEH AKBAR

. . . I am less horrible than I could be I’ve never set a house on fire never thrown a firstborn off a bridge still my whole life I answered every cry for help with a poue with a turning away I’ve given this coldness many names thinking if it had a name it would have a solution thinking if I called a wolf a wolf I might dull its fangs I carried the coldness like a diamond for years holding it close near as blood until one day I woke and it was fully inside me both of us ruined and unrecognizable two coins on a train track the train crushed into one