I love it here.
the view reminds me of life.
The sky the way it paints over our hands and onto our skin,
The way the color doesn’t mix together as much as an artist would like it to.
The lead in our paints is heavier than we were ever capable of lifting, but it’s all we had.
It’s all we are fed.
We closed our coffins with the nails we’re chewing on in hopes that
You need to be undead in order to make a move-
But I don’t want to kiss death anymore
He leaves my body to rot
My teeth hurt from grinding against him
He has violated
All of us.
We are all iron cast replicas forged in the fires of our own hell.
We paint our bodies with colors of the sky and call it identity.
Nobody likes the night
Everyone is afraid of the dark
Why am I afraid of the dark but find so much comfort in the makeup of hell?
We call ourselves artists,
There is no artist.
There is only nature and our mimicry,
We feed on the idea of existing originality.
Why don’t we open our coffins?
Let’s swallow our nails and puncture our throats
To allow the nervous words to spew into one another.
Till death do us part-
He’s not getting between us.
We are survivors in a world imprisoned by
The impressionable weight of shackles
And strength to carry them.
We are convicts in that we are happy together
So that cannot be.
But in this moment.
I love it here.
The view reminds me of you.
The way the sky paints itself and the willingness to relinquish power.
The way I don’t want it to be easy to touch you
The way no one can touch you.
Painting doesn’t make me an artist
But it makes you a masterpiece.
I can lift you over my head
And in this moment.
Life is worth living.
Tag Archives: amwriting
Capgras Delusions and You (The Body) – Matt Grydzuk
Degauss the stars like cathode ray tubes using only your hands
The body first thinks explicitly in omens, or foretelling the end of things
Sleep less than intended; corporeality was tailor-made for you.
The body is just a suggestion, though, like the outline of existing
Akin to the stars lacking crystal clear imagery yet making shapes
Yet causing images in the night
And I sat and watched them unfold, shaking mildly, how beautiful.
How beautiful, the suggestion of form;
The existence of existence
Like wisps of stardust off the tips of your fingers and the rest of your outline
You are a degaussed constellation.
How beautiful the burning sensation; the smell
How beautiful destroying the innards
Like dying stars or a comet moving faster and then it’s gone
Creating outlines creating memories making
Sentences with your movements but no words.
How beautiful linguistics; complete sentences with two independent clauses
Intertwined to make the sun rise.
Watch it leave you like blood from the mouth, like stardust from the nose and eyes.
All other things beautiful like the suggestion of an outline; like actually falling asleep.
Meta-cognition explained in Lithuanian (The Head) – Matt Grydzuk
The head
Chiefly, where pre-calculus goes to die.
And truthfully I don’t know much else about it, but I do know,
Or remember, that my mother told me always to be grateful
For what you have.
And I can’t say I was
Because so many self-inflicted head traumas starts to pile up when nothing
You do is perfect and you have to blame SOMEONE and
Knowledge of chlorophyll is always dying and you’ve never had a green thumb
Next thing I know my head is a graveyard and sometimes I kick over eternal lights to watch
The information flowing out like candle wax like
This is grey matter flowing through eye sockets like this
Is the way they wanted you to be when they called you stupid
Like you can live up to one thing if you just try hard enough
And when it hardens; becomes crystalline
If you hurled it at a man how far would he go
I still haven’t forgotten Newton’s second law or anything about Schroedinger
But what does that even matter
The Head
Chiefly, a device to move the body.
To tell it what to do.
But for every move this way and that there’s an eyelid twitch or a muscle spasm
Bartering, the product of battery indentured to the head my body is never my own but
I wouldn’t know
I’m sorry.
Maple Key – Harika Kottakota
My magnum opus was a maple key,
Imprinted pond ripples in amber
A hundred journals worth of sins
Rimmed it with azure
My maple key rode majestically
Upon the southern breeze
Tornado in the Church bell and
Flames around the riverbend
Devout insomniac, I stalked
My maple key barefoot into
Jasper mornings–too ethereal,
too intricate for untrained eyes
I watched its azure streak lotus
By lotus, but never land
Without a star’s conception
In sync, that’s right–never in jest
I Reside Explicitly on Jackson Square – Matt Grydzuk
In the seventh grade I didn’t know I could like boys yet.
So when everyone else started dating
I spent my time idly liking this girl.
I asked her to dance once.
She was much taller than me and this altercation
dangled the notion of beauty overhead in every way like shitty dime store streamers scotch taped around the sistine chapel.
I stared into her eyes as the night fell apart and I was petrified to marble
Because there was pity in their dark recesses and in contrast
I was like
A monumental statue
Designed to fill
the negative space
in the worst possible way.
For the first time I felt ugly.
You never get called fat to your face anymore
it’s just particles of pollution
like acid rain eroding a statue.
So I am less afraid of being fat and more paranoid
because you cannot dodge glances and you cannot dodge concrete floors and statues don’t float
Thus I am not afraid of swimming, but I am afraid of the social implications of swimming pools.
What happened
To the era where “skinny” and “beautiful” were not synonyms
Where people like me were dashing and handsome and
Were depicted as
Grand marble statues that
reached up toward the sky in an air of grandeur
People have always implied
That I should take up less space but there is nothing authentic about me that
is not large and loud and in your face.
My body is no temple
It is a cathedral
Much too large for its initial purpose but it occupies the space it is given and it
extends infinitely toward the sky and
when people gaze upon it they are in awe of its beauty within and without
it occupies
the space
it
is
given.
I am constructed from stained glass and concrete and the bottoms of empty cartons of ice cream.
I don’t know what it’s like to not be fat.
But I do know what it’s like to be beautiful.
The Shadows We Run From – Brooke Safferman
You are the Splenda in my cup of tea
A little something sweet, even if you aren’t the real deal
One little sip is all I need to keep the nightmares away
When my hand is in yours, invincible becomes more than just a word.
You told me my yellow sundress embodies the springtime itself,
My peppermint lip balm, the dead of winter
With you, I become one of the cherry blossoms blooming on the tree next door
The only thing you made me lose is loss, itself.
And the windowpanes would speak if they could,
Whisper their memories about who and what happened in this house before we did
The floorboards creak with stories, and hopes, and dreams
Fulfilled and latched on to,
We will write a story of our own:
The closing line, the acknowledgments, but most importantly, the epilogue
The shadows we run from are merely ourselves.
the adventure I wish I could have – Elena Barrera-Waters
spring break, I’m flooded with everyone’s pictures.
all of their shots of the waves at the beach,
or of the castles or the food of the new country they’re visiting,
or the ski lifts above those gorgeous green pines.
it’s a little bit hard,
to be able to submit my own to this
grand collection of memories when I know that you
won’t get yours.
it’s not my fault, i know that.
but more than anything, I wish you were here.
I wish you were my adventure,
or at least a part of it.
One On My Mind – Brooke Safferman
Dancing into the twilight,
Stars ablaze, much like your wide-open heart
Twirling into oblivion, you are the only
One on my mind
Gold and red and silver and bronze
Fistfuls of thick hair that I’m always so honored to
Touch
In the morning light, By the fireside, with the hot chocolate and the blueberry pancakes
We’re all slightly overcooked but without a flaw, all the same, you are the only
One on my mind
Curled up in Paradise on a couch,
books are the only sand and sun we need
we pay no matter to the clocks on the wall
the only ticking is the sound of our heart beating
one heart, we are two of the same and you are the only
One on my mind
And the bliss is never-ending.
You respect me on the days when I don’t even want to look at myself, and
You know about things I never would have dreamed of:
Palindromes and the perfect angel food cake; crossword puzzles and blanket forts
But even with all of this newfound knowledge, well, you are the only
One on my mind.
on space junk and stars – Ivy Junpier Manchester
“If the universe was more celestial than theory and technicality,
you would be the Sun,
and I?
the moon,
mere space rubble,
waiting to be illuminated by your presence.
A collection of asteroids clash,
Showering meteorites,
And even Halley’s heart melts.
You make Earth, Pluto,
Billions of people
deprived of you,
Stuck in winter,
missing what they never knew,
forever craving the idea of you.
you swear
on Jupiter or whatever god you believe in,
I’m different,
but I’m no one,
another fan, 93 million miles away,
still imagining our fates intertwined,
like every constellation,
spelling out your name.
And there goes the story
of nobody’s star.
the back of a book I will never write – Karlee Sanders
you know that feeling when you step outside for the first time on a snowy morning? that awe-striking moment when you can’t breathe because of the intensely fresh air flooding into your lungs? well, that’s what he was to me. he was my breath of fresh air. he was my new start. and honestly, nothing else mattered
Inkling 