not yours, never was

jodie / 19 / a witch probably / main @saintetoiles

[vanillacokedays]

stillness.

the sunlight piercing your eyes as you crack them open and it burns and burns so much the eyes water as if to weep as if preparing for some tragedy that has not happened yet a tragedy that tears you apart again like your body which was ripped open a body that stained the sheets bright red and violent and living like the boy lying next to you all white skin and black hair with some sort of tenderness tenderness like scar tissue tenderness like the inside of your wrist or untouched part of your thigh and you are lying in this burning sunlight and staring staring at this creature and feeling ripped open and not knowing who you are and not knowing where you are and wondering if this is it and if this is all it will ever be and outside the birds scream I mean they scream the earth back awake and you can see the world ending just behind your eyelids and the birds orchestrate the whole thing as the world burns below them and maybe it is just all in your head or maybe maybe your eyes are burning because the world is burning just outside outside that very window outside this warm white bed and maybe you’re the bird or the fire or the spectator or the creature next to you or maybe you’re just what rips open and stains the sheets.

[art--woonz]

Incredible installation artwork by Ron Mueck

çim çit Instagram: @artwoonz

[usjgdtxyrzydztzyryzteyrz]

alien observations

if i think of starting this poem by talking about humans in love, i sound terrible. outliered. inhuman. but then—that’s what everyone would have me think.

humans in love are themselves terrible. or at least, that’s what i’ve observed.

everything i ever thought to be love has been terrible, burning, and all sharp edges. when i call it terrible, what i mean is that i was treated

quite terribly, although it’s worth noting that i was terrible myself at times. every time anyone i (thought i) loved touched me, i feel or felt my skin burning. it wasn’t bad, necessarily, but it may have been more

fear than love. told my therapist about the burning and she said she wasn’t sure if that was more an aftereffect of feeling loved, or fearful, or some new emotion unknown to humankind.

and the sharp edges are a metaphor for me alone, naturally. but also the dynamics. banter that went too far. i didn’t mean to say that you were fat! i didn’t mean to—but of course he meant it no matter how far from himself he was then. i take no prisoners, but i hold a great deal of grudges.

[diioonysus]

greek mythology magazine covers | enlarge to read

[vanillacokedays]

movement.

did you feel it? a colossal shift in the universe. in a split second;

one million planets die & reproduce. a window shatters and repairs, over & over & over.

time has unraveled itself & tangles & gets stuck in your fingers.

& the milk curdles. a child screams. blood stains white sheets.

& yet, the fruit is still cut. blood flows. the ornate bowl cracks.

& i am still myself.

[vanillacokedays]

king lear act 3 scene 1

[stannisbaratheon]

Inferno, Dante Alighieri

[yvesolade]

DECEMBER

and anyway, I never cried. the whole time, not once. God moulded some people out of clay, but I was chiselled out of stone &   stones don’t bleed & they damn well don’t cry and neither do boys & somehow I was both I mean, rock & more rock.   and I’m saying all this to the carnations by the window & she she gives me that look. The one where she’s clearly thinking   about my capital-T Trauma & says, so? so you never cried and, so what did you do?                            & God, I say, I don’t know. I say, I wrote about grief I say, I wrote out grief I wrote: grief, grief, grief, grief, grief   and didn’t stop until I couldn’t feel it anymore.   the whole damn year was violence and anger and grief. I think December had moved into my body.

[rsiken-deactivated20200124]

what were your favourite quotes/those with the most impact that you read this year?

 i’m expanding this to talk about poems and collections too because i am That Guy. 

POETRY COLLECTIONS and CHAPBOOKS

NIGHT SKY WITH EXIT WOUNDS by OCEAN VUONG

[INSERT] BOY by DANEZ SMITH

BRIGHT DEAD THINGS BY ADA LIMÓN

UNSKITTISH by DALTON DAY

POEMS 

“wandering around an albuquerque airport terminal” by naomi shihab nye (not everything is lost.)

“good bones” by maggie smith (this place could be beautiful, / right? you could make this place beautiful)

“tim riggins speaks of waterfalls” by nico alvarado (i want to walk into the heart of you / and never walk back out)

“untitled” by daedalians (my brain is moonless)

“when you tell me i’m beautiful i sometimes believe it by tangledghosts aka the light of my life (i say, “these are all the ugly parts that i am trying to hide.” you say, “show me your ugliness and i will show you your beauty.” we are both showing the same card)

“it’s not what it looks like” by exit152 (god or no god? / rhetorical question. / i’ve met the boundary. / i feel something holy in every trick of light)

twenty dollars & the moon by mason shreve (sometimes we float when we try to walk & sometimes, i swear, my hands are made of canyons)

QUOTES

“i myself have lots of repressed skies / but i do not kill stars” || kiki dimoula, “explosive finding”

“like any / unloved thing, i don’t know if i’m real / when i’m not being touched” || natalie wee, “loneliness” 

“i thought / i would be someone else / by now. the rain starts flinging itself / against the pavement. my face / is a lost glove, missing / for days. my face / is on vacation, call back / another time.” || marty mcconnell, “still life with tattoo gun and umbrella”

“god is the night / i must not creep into” || cynthia cruz, “joe the lion ii” 

“how lonely to be something that nothing wants to kill” || jeremy radin, “so i locked myself inside of a star for 20 years”

“you cut up a thing that’s alive and beautiful to find out how it’s alive and why it’s beautiful, and before you know it, it’s neither of those things, and you’re standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.” || clive barker, the damnation game 

“i am sick of haunting myself / from within / like an old house” || erica jong, “bitter herb”

“how strange we are. how different we are from how we think we are. we fall out of love only to fall in love with a duplicate of what we’ve left, never understanding that we love what we love and that it doesn’t change.” || sara majka; saint andrews hotel

“i sit up in the dark drenched in longing. / i am carrying over a thousand names for blue that I didn’t have at dusk.” || joy harjo, “the first day without a mother” 

“the sycamore of loneliness they call it / daydreams while the ax is still afraid / of being alone” || frank stanford, “nobody is going to touch me” 

“you think i can’t tame that? i always come home. always. / ravenous. loaded. you know better than anybody: / i’m bigger than god.” || jeanann verlee, “the mania speaks” 

“i will not / let this river break me just so god / can have something to heal.” || allie long, “self-injury”

“a small catalogue of things i’ve lost: my heart down a sink drain. my voice in the dungeon of language. my body to the great gripping fists of men.” || alicia catt, “when i put bluebeard’s keys in my pocket they stain my dress & i hope you don’t notice 

“nothing knows the sound of abandonment like a highway does, not even God.” || hanif abdurraqib, “when we were 13, jeff’s father left the needle down on a journey record before leaving the house one morning and never coming back 

“the sounds in the air / agreeing not to be birds.“ || alexis almeida, “elegy (figure in light)

"i have wanted / many unfair things. / what is most unfair/ is that the earth is still okay / with me being here / i think, and even / encourages it.” || melissa broder, “satisfy the desolate” 

“you don’t want to hear the story / of my life, and anyway / i don’t want to tell it, i want to listen / to the enormous waterfalls of the sun. / and anyway it’s the same old story— / a few people just trying, / one way or another, / to survive. / mostly, i want to be kind.” || mary oliver, “dogfish”

[thewinedarksea]

@modernmythsnet | event five | neon | moral  ↳ the olympians

the olympians are the major deities of the greek pantheon, commonly considered to be zeus, hera, poseidon, demeter, athena, apollo, artemis, ares, aphrodite, hephaestus, hermes, and either hestia or dionysus. hades and persephone were occasionally included as part of the twelve olympians.

(part i)  

[catfromjapan]

[sonnywortzik]

“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief” - taken from Anne Carson’s “Tragedy: A Curious Art Form”

[vanillacokedays]

[vanillacokedays]

je suis aux anges, je pourrais mourir it’s too cold to talk  and you grip my hand like a lifeline,  an open vein, the last thread of a rope 

and i hold your heart like it’ll bring liberation,  like it’s salvation, like it’s penance

i think you might be my penance

your heart was ripped out,  and put in a honey jar and placed  on my doorstep with a note

“this is how you are forgiven” 

[lifeinpoetry]

My therapist says something In my core is dark and the surface of my planet too

She says Many creative people & I can’t see a beautiful day if I tried

She says peace is something people tell themselves

— Morgan Parker, from “The Book of Revelation,” There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce

[sunrisesongs]

Amrita Chakraborty, excerpts from my upcoming chapbook “And What of My Rage, Rama”

[crimescened]

[lifeinpoetry]

the addictions / that were killing me fastest were the ones I loved best

Kaveh Akbar, from “Unburnable the Cold is Flooding Our Lives,” Portrait of the Alcoholic (via mythaelogy)