What I Mean To Say

[nathanielorion]

You don’t get to die and be reborn the same. You come back,  but you come back wrong. This is the price you pay for resurrection.

Nathaniel Orion G. K.  (via nastyorchid)

[bandsandteatbh-deactivated20130]

Promise me this: when you finally leave me, you’ll get creative. Tell me I was more disappointing than your childhood. Send me your bloody ear with a letter saying “I’ve got to Gogh. You’re making me crazy.” I am hard to love but know this much: you are the only thing I like doing more than writing poems.

Clementine von Radics (via collidewithyoursky)

[brennatwohy]

Swallowtail, by Brenna Twohy

[unspokengraveyard]

I created a Twitter poetry account and I wanna tell you it’s gonna be quality short-form poetry but it’s really just gonna be mostly shit posts lmao but you can follow if you want to

[unspokengraveyard]

i submitted some of my poetry to a contest to get published... wish me luck!

[unspokengraveyard]

In the dark I remember I'm better without you But each day brings more memories never made together The violence of our humor, back and forth That always left me feeling guilty And I hate that I yearn for the darkest parts of me Like the itch to take candy from the shelf And walk away Even when you have money in your pocket Just because it makes you feel dirty Just to see if you can get away with it I listen to our favorite band And I still enjoy it, even if it makes me think of you The raw truth peels away my skin Starting from the dry ash on my elbows I never loved you I just loved the dark way you made me feel The curl of wretchedness in me The quick sinking of meanness in my smile Most days I'm afraid You will come crawling back Lotus flower between your teeth And I will stroke the thorns And welcome you home

[unspokengraveyard]

In rivulets, I hear the music Flowing downstream and I think My body is not a river But maybe every time she says my name It softens the curves on the stone in my chest Like currents on a river rock I spend infinities ignoring my own griefs, Pulling them out of my pockets and letting them fall to The floor, hoping someone will Come along and pick them up like lucky pennies If they happen to be heads-up I try to keep my head up Before I fall asleep I imagine all the conversations I might have with my parents if I could get Through them without crying But as soon as I open my mouth My voice slips through my eyelids And I bite my power down again Gagging on the burn in my throat that comes From caging something that wants to be free Last night I dreamt my mother was weeping in a field I tried to reach her but I never could They say all young women become their mothers I want to tell them maybe I already have I have no estimation of how many times she has cried In my lifetime When I was a small child I tried to tell my friends what was happening to me At home, and the wetness in my throat cut two eye-holes In a white sheet and dressed up as a joke Every day was Halloween when you went knocking door-to-door, Asking your friends to play, trick-or-treating for laughter, Hoping they would drop another hour away from home In your bag of goodies Most nights I live in a memory of when Her fingers ghosted along the lines of My palm in the darkness She sings to me in the car and the words smooth The rock in my chest During the day she picks up a heads-up penny from the sidewalk With a smile and For once I imagine it might possibly Be mine

on days i can’t speak, i cry // a.d.c.

[unspokengraveyard]

if you’re looking for a good poet to make you feel something this thursday, please check out olivia gatwood... her stuff is on youtube and she has a book you can get online

[unspokengraveyard]

i think about getting published sometimes too but i post all of my poetry on tumblr and im not sure they will publish it if i've posted it on the internet. do you know?

I have to say I’m not sure. maybe post some stuff you like on the internet? because it’s good to gain a small following or people who are into your stuff minorly at least if you’d like to publish some day. i post only some of my stuff. if i think it’s okay or i think it’s very tumblr specific, i’ll post it, but if i realllllly love it and think it’s good or more ~~~~academic~~~~ i usually don’t post it. i’m not sure about your question though, you might want to contact a publisher by email and see if they can offer insight!! :) sorry i wasn’t more help!

[bostonpoetryslam]

With time, the stray lines I wrote began to collect like raindrops forming small bodies of water. Soon they became poems. Sad, rough little poems written in the voices of lonely, mythic people. I was drawn to myth, I think, because it seemed so distant from the reality of my life and anxieties. No scrawled poems about the boys I dreamed of kissing and holding. Rather than writing in my own voice, I mostly chose to write poems in the voices of characters. As Medusa, I wrote about refusing to look at myself in the mirror, lest my self-portrait become a suicide in stone. As Penelope, I wrote about dreaming of my husband’s body, years crashing between us like waves. I didn’t have to be afraid of my yearning on the page because I could tell myself, the poem wasn’t really about me. Any voice but my own; any place but here.

Saeed Jones, “A Poet’s Boyhood at the Burning Crossroads,” published in the New York Times (via bostonpoetryslam)

[emilyjunk]

Sometimes I don’t think my poetry is good but then I see some stuff that gets published and popular and I’m like ??? Maybe I should try…

[unspokengraveyard]

"I know that to hold your favorite flower in your hands is to kill it" I followed you because of this line holy fuck

thank you, that’s really sweet! :)

[unspokengraveyard]

I let her read my poetry and she frowns: “Why are your poems so sad?” “Not all of them,” I say. “Not the ones about you.” She hums, food for thought on the tongue, like the sour candy she loves so much “Write another poem for me” I don’t know if this poem is for her But it’s about things that I love One of which is her So maybe it is Today I love olives, A love she doesn’t understand And I love naps, A love she does I love napping with her, The way I almost always wake up holding her hand, How I roll over and she blinks at me, Blind without her glasses, And I wonder if her world is blurry at the edges, The way she makes mine when she hovers over me And I hold my breath so long I get dizzy These things are so easy to love Oh, and cheesecake God I love cheesecake Some days love comes quick, Like turning on the faucet and filling a glass with water I don’t think about it I just drink and drink and drink But some days, it’s slower I guess that rain doesn’t think before it falls But I imagine an immense pressure building in the air, Swirling in the clouds Until the water has nowhere to go And then it just pours The way my friend pours vodka in his martinis When he’s upset, Because the pressure in his chest has nowhere to go So he just pours And I wait for the lightning to strike With my hands held toward the clouds And still I love how it looks against the sky There’s a strength in loving someone who broke your heart But I never felt strong any time I was younger and my dad and I would bare our teeth at each other Pulling our lips back, like a grimace could pass for a smile, Feeling a certain kind of hatred beat against our ribcages And still, we love, like the child who touches his finger to the hot pan Again and again And thinks maybe this next time, It won’t burn him I used to think all love should be easy But sometimes it’s not I know that to hold your favorite flower in your hands Is to kill it And that sometimes wanting something isn’t loving it And loving something isn’t always wanting it But when she told me to write a poem for her I knew that sometimes it’s both That when she smiles at something that isn’t me The flowers I killed from wanting too much Plant seeds in my chest And when I look at her, I feel them bloom in place of my heart Until they grow bigger and brighter than any from the ground And this is what it is to love and to want To wake up with her hand in mine, To roll over and see her smile, To pass the rose in the garden And love it deeply, But not cut it from the stem

i used to think all love should be easy but sometimes it’s not // a.d.c. // 4.16.17

[unspokengraveyard]

that. that last poem was fucking beautiful.

thank you!! that means a lot <3 thanks for reading and coming to tell me your thoughts :)

[unspokengraveyard]

It’s been four months since I’ve pressed my body into your comfort, But it’s not the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other Sometimes I can’t imagine that we used to Run around each other almost every day, When our knees were perpetually scraped and we were still Growing out of our shoes And into our bodies, our personalities Most days I think mine is half you And vice versa Whenever I laugh hard enough to feel the crunch of my abs Clapping in amusement I think of all the times I’ve peed myself giggling with you, So hard you wouldn’t know I was laughing Because I’ve suffocated myself into silence with The hugeness of it all, And I was never embarrassed I think that’s what I love most about you: I’m never embarrassed You are the first girl that caused me to break my own heart, When I did something to hurt you And had to come face to face with the dark part of me That has the ability to hurt a person But not just any person, You – my best friend, I felt terror in every joint of my small body Until my mom drove me to your house at thirteen years old With ice cream and a movie So that I could offer up forgiveness and hope you’d eat it out of a spoon, I somehow don’t think we’ve fought since then, Over a decade ago And I think it’s because that day taught me how to admit when I’m wrong I think the blessing of meeting my best friend at ten years old Is that so much of you is woven into every stitch of me That I often forget moments of my childhood that don’t have you Stamped across the memories Or maybe those ones just shine the brightest, Except I’m remembering us at fourteen, Your hands shaking as you tell me you missed your period I hadn’t even gotten mine for the first time yet And I’m thinking we’re both too young for this But still, I’m agreeing I’ll be the godmother, And sometimes I still think I am, Even if your mom drove you right to the clinic And you spent the next few weeks crying in both sadness and relief And I never knew what to say When I think of that time I still don’t know what to say But whenever someone holds my hand a certain way I’m struck by those weeks, us camped out in your bed and watching Bad reality TV to escape our own, Our fingers trembling in the stark chill of your room The way mine didn’t when I told you I like girls The way you like boys Because you were the first person I wasn’t afraid to tell Sometimes when we go weeks without talking I sift through these moments that built me And remember all the times you grabbed me by My heartstrings and pulled me through My murky teen years From twelve to eighteen when it felt like I’d never stop living in the gray consequences of my father’s hurt And my own self-doubt Here’s to those days, but here’s to the better ones And the moments I feel you tugging the strings from miles away Like the stars swimming in the silvery blue light of the Milky Way My blood to yours, my tears to yours We’ve seen enough of each to know that our DNA is Laced with all the stardust we gave to each other when we needed it most It’s been four months since I’ve seen you but As I’ve been writing this you’ve sent me a silly message Like you knew I was thinking about you And when I respond with something weird I can almost feel your laugh in my heartbeat And I know we’re still speaking the same language we Created at ten years old When we’d share a look across a room And without a word know exactly What the other person was trying to say And I hope that you know with this poem what I am trying to say I am trying to say thank you For your love

to my best friend, with love // a.d.c. // 4.14.17

[unspokengraveyard]

Sometimes I wonder if there will ever come a time When certain people don’t leave a bitter taste in my mouth, Like the aftertaste of onions on my tongue, Stale and lingering Some days I think about the people Whose mouths I live in, Sitting on a molar like a cavity, Bothersome and stinging right after they taste Something sweet I hate to get caught staring at the people closest to me, Hoping the future doesn’t bring anything sour, Doesn’t leave the top of my mouth raw and aching, The way it gets when I eat too much candy and Remember that the heat from a good campfire will Disappear quicker if you don’t tend to the flames When she kisses me, I think of the nectarines I’ve loved since childhood, The taste so sweet it decides to stick around for hours, Maybe falling asleep on the couch to the sound of Leaves in the summer breeze While the rest of the world seems to pause for Fear of it waking and remembering it has plans somewhere else When I taste her on my tongue I keep hoping that this sweetness won’t turn sour, That I’ve learned to tend to the flames, That she doesn’t suddenly wake and remember she has plans Somewhere else

Bittersweet // a.d.c. // 4.12.2017

[unspokengraveyard]

This is a thank you to my father’s cooking, To my taste buds, those spoiled brats Birthed on my tongue the first time I tried his chicken tarragon, Raised to know the difference between tenderloin and strip blindfolded, Thank you to pasta fagioli, To beer cheese, to homemade chicken noodle, Italian Wedding and clam chowder, Any of which will work on days I need comfort food (Every day) And thank you to old fashioned tomato, which will do In a pinch Amen to lasagna, Rigatoni in meatsauce Made from scratch, Fettucine alfredo, Linguine with clam sauce, God bless the savory beef stew that would Have your stomach bursting before you could walk through The front door after school and ask what’s for dinner, Praise be! to Christmas cookies, Lined with pounds of homemade powdered sugar frosting, Cannolis and pizzelles and Caramel covered apples dressed to the nines In chocolate chips, I hope I look half as sweet on my wedding day, But only if my father bakes the cake, And sculpts the fondant, Towers of swirled sugar, Floured and flowered On layers of chocolate heaven, Raspberry sauce drizzled on top in rivulets of temptation, Thank you to baby back ribs To my ribs To my abs, non-existent Thanks to my father’s cooking, Thank you to butter, For making a home in my butt, To “butter face” To “she’s hot … but her face” jokes never Being directed at me because those are saved for the skinny girls Which I am not, Thanks to my father’s genes Oh, and his cooking, And to the pizza dough he’d let us knead Though we didn’t need it Thanks to his homemade potato salad For my inevitable arrival at parties with food in my arms And still thanks to potato salad For my constant need to cover my arms Even in the summer Because of stretch marks and flab Jiggly as the cherry limeade Jello My father makes on Independence Day, Thanks to my father’s cooking For the stares The jeans ripped in the thighs, For Victoria’s Secret shame, For the dressing room tears, For having the consistency in my life Of high-end cheesy, garlic mashed potatoes Alluring, but immediately regrettable And thanks to my father’s cooking, For embodying what a home should be For showing me how to make a home in my body, For reminding me that good meals can take time, Food for thought, Favorite meals don’t come from a recipe, too standard to impress, But take a personal flair to make them all their own, Thank you to my father’s cooking For teaching me that loving myself is a dish best served Hot

Ode to My Father’s Cooking // a.d.c. // 4.6.17