#viperslang

[ojo-rojo]

"You asked why I write. I said, to touch what couldn't be spoken".

Scherezade Siobhan, in her book: "Father, husband".

Interview | Scherezade Siobhan - “No human relationship is 100 per cent a safe space”

The practising psychologist’s latest book, That Beautiful Elsewhere, is a moving collection of essays on challenges to mental health

[cruxymox]

[infinitesplinters]

Doctor

Had to force myself to get up again to write this. Funny how the little things derail a moment, a day. I saw a new doctor today and while it was unpleasant to re-visit the majority of events in my life since 18 or so, I’d say it was productive. We/he seemed to drill down on this underlying suicidality/PTSD/joylessness that permeates my existence and operates under this death/pleasure drive function. While I am skeptical of psychometrics, I did appreciate his use of scales to gauge at least a marginally data driven idea of symptomatology. His mainline treatment, to start, is also non-medicinal (DBT) even though we’ll be tweaking medicine slightly. I’ve done some DBT before (mostly group classes in treatment), and the prospect of more extensive work is daunting and exhausting, but his initial hypothesis/plan is completely inline with my own assessments in recent months. DBT is (I believe) the frontline non-medicinal treatment for resistant conditions, especially self-harm / suicidality / borderline pd. While I never considered myself to have such conditions, my actions in recent years metaphorically, if not literally, mirror them. There seems like to be some relevant Jungian / Fruedian psychodynamic interpretation: some death drive funneled through pleasure where pleasure is sometimes pain. Like excessive exercise. Like obsession with body shape. Like an obsessive need for control or “things to be just so”. Inflexibility. Which is strange, that I’ve used exercise and yoga in particular to become more inflexible in my thinking: that only through great pain and restraint and control can I become more perfect/lovable/acceptable. I took a yoga class today at the gym I just signed up for. It is strange to go back to a practice you took for granted, and was so very helpful, but then possibly used eventually for bad purposes (as everything seems to be, for me). The Americanization of yoga is interesting... competitive asanas. I don’t know. I got caught up in that, which shapes I could make, who was “better” than me. Ridiculous. But that’s my mind making into capital/object every action, every routine, every individual instead of creating experience and enjoying that experience for what it is. One part of my mind is fully late capitalism, masculine heteronormative (maybe?), white chalk that judges and hates. And then another part of me, the repressed feminine aspect (perhaps), watches and sighs and dies a thousand deaths. The observer in me is fully identified with this hypermasculine, anger driven ethos. Or at least, most times. The other part of me is resigned to endless suffering. The artist, the fool. No agency. The question is how to merge the two in a healthy, nondestructive way. DBT could help with that, I suppose. Scheherazade - how does one write a letter? is that a thing people do still? Thanks for reading.

[mooneyedandglowing]

Gaslighting: Red Flags

By Scherezade Siobhan In recent times, we have all observed widespread and complicit attempts at gaslighting women in public and personal spheres. Whether it is questioning the veracity of assault …

A wonderful article by the ever-amazing Scherezade Siobhan: @viperslang. 

[infinitesplinters]

viperslang replied to your post: dude. we should be best friends. dude, let’s make it happen. sunday spiritual poetry express.

[poetrex]

Wanting to give back to the TWC, I have made a point of buying books by writers whose work has inspired and influenced my own recent poetry, in anticipation of publishing and selling my work in the near future.

I may review these individually later on, but here’s a quick shout-out to...

Trista Mateer  (tristamateer.tumblr.com)

      Honeybee

      The Dogs I Have Kissed

      Small Ghost

Meggie Royer  (writingsforwinter.tumblr.com)

      Survival Songs

      missed connection

      Potions for Witches the Boys Couldn’t Burn

      The No You Never Listened To

      Healing Old Wounds With New Stitches

Scherezade Siobhan  (viperslang.tumblr.com)

      Bone Tongue

      Father, Husband

Feel free to recommend further additions to this list! I will be adding more as I buy them, discretionary income permitting. Now go BUY ALL THE POETRY!

[viperslang]

My whole being is a dark chant which will carry you

Forugh Farrokhzad , Another Birth

[beaboutitpress]

stolen shadows

Someone will find something real to to cry into. Someone is traveling through a world of legs, arms, lips, wrists, ankles, navels, nipples,bellies. All of which do not belong to you. You are just a disembodied voice. You are the weight of a feather caught in the butterfly effect. Each return fades farther and farther. You are as terrified as a small jasmine bush naked under lightning. Someone is drunk on the mirage of rain. Your heart is comatose, your brain  wants to be an acrobat. It dreams to seek that intimate speed at which things either shatter or soar. Someone isn’t here to share  the silence. You sat in the guava orchard, your hands pungent with powdered pepper. You looked at the  leaves, their jagged arteries thinned by the weather, a serotinal tapestry turning to decay – to stay close to that in which you were once rooted but now have let go of, kills you very slowly.

- Scherezade siobhan is an Indo-rroma Jungian scarab moonlighting as a clinical psychologist. Her work has been translated globally, has been nominated for awards and has appeared in print and digital spaces including poetry magazines, anthologies, art galleries, rehab centers and the bios of okcupid users. She wrote Bone Tongue (Thought Catalog Books) and Father, Husband (Salopress). She is the creator and curator-in-chief for #themiraproject - a cross cultural conversation about gendered violence and neurodivergence. She can be found squeeing about militant bunnies at @zaharaesque or www.viperslang.tumblr.com