Tag Archives: poets

Poetry

Search for Equilibrium – Haley Ingram

Keep calm.

Remain vigilant.
The throbbing in your lungs means nothing
To the gasping breath
Of your heart.
Each cracked burn on your
undead fingertips
Kiss the surface of heated glass
Inflaming your throat
Neck bent at exactly 45 degrees
You cringe and smile.
Your teeth eroded from the love I thought you carried in every undefined
Empty space in your body.
The acid creeping up the outside of your veins.
Vexation and tribulation scratching, crying, screaming, kicking.
Providing you with enough fluidity to drown,
But they are just holding hands.
Just as we used to when we were content with confinement.
When we were young. Foolish. We grew like the grass we whispered our dreams into and the dandelions I caressed against my cheeks to show you how gentle life can be.
And the kisses we’d exchanged like a currency of requited endearment meant nothing by the time I was meant to be maintained while you,
You just never grew.
You haven’t grown anything since the day I gave you the seed
I planted it in your heart,
See, its just for you please let my
Blooms nip at the disease you clog
Their stems with.
You hopeless tyrant.
You water them with the distaste of alcohol.
Keep calm.
Remain vigilant.
Our hands may have branched off
But my lungs never stopped beating for you
And every exhale my heart takes
Prepares me for an inhale of you captivation.
Petals may shatter like the shards of glass
You insist on gardening with
But you’ve never had the greenest thumbs
In fact you’re irately purple
Go outside
Take a moment
Breathe.
Lift your hands to the clouds reach for the time escaping us at every given second-
I can’t comprehend never being there on time
To hold you.
Pill popping may be just as sweet as the innocence you once had or the sanity I protected but that was stolen from us
And you’ve never felt more violated
From me grabbing your hips,
Or Tasting your body.
Because I don’t even have a tongue to say the words I’ve never thought.
Mouth sewn shut
Remain vexed
Calm keepings
You molested my smile and gave it a new name
You called it beauty.
You dismantled the arbitrary seclusion
Of my sanity
Your cold lifeless hands
Choking me
Oxygen is a privilege
To my skin
And you try to hold my hand
But I just can’t give this trepidation
A fair shot.
I kiss my own hands better than anyone
Who has ever held them
I’m rotting at your touch
The abyss of your fingerprints
You burn my flesh
You stunt my growth
I drown in ignorance
So blissful
I tend to my flowers with broken glass
Cut the stems
Force the alcohol into their system
The bitter taste on my lips are not the words I’ve never said
Rather than the words I regret to have ever spoken
Pills sprout a new flower they help me
I am slitting my airways and drowning my veins.
Keep calm.
Remain vigilant.
Standard
Poetry

Heart is Divided – Ugonma Ubani-Ebere

My heart is divided
No longer can I hide it,
My love is a puzzle piece, and I can’t find peace.
Too scared to let my love lines decease.
So I equally give my time
Getting drunk off my quality wine.
Each one holds a special part
If one goes I will break apart.
What is a person to do
When more than one holds the glue
I could tell you that I have not the slightest clue.
The caress of one
The other is fun
Another is aggressive
And another feels as if they’ve already won
I cry at night from my confusion
A heart wrenching, sordid, ploy of revolutions
As I laugh through my delusions
And I come to the conclusion.
That in spite of my affliction
All of them are a depiction
Of something my heart transpires
Something my soul desires
But I know the consequences are dire
Because you always get burned when you play with fire
But like a moth to a flame.
I am entranced all the same.
A wild heart that can never be tamed.
A free soul that refuses to be chained.
I know I will never win in this game.
When you play with matters of the heart
Wounds will be inflicted
Hurt feelings will not be restricted
Words full of bitterness and malice will not be constricted.
My heart is divided,
Only one can make me and it whole
Only one can win me over and mend my beautifully, dark, twisted, and delicious soul.
My heart is divided,
Someone stop me, and pull on my brakes
Because my heart is divided
Only one can win
The other hearts must break.

Standard
Poetry, Prosetry

dynamics – Karlee Sanders

a fortissimo recollection of memories floods my mind with thoughts

I remember your forte screams that directed everything I did

your mezzo forte demands at home for me to grab you a beer or to come to bed
my mezzo piano answers that you’d never hear because you were too busy thinking about the next move you’d make on me to make your wish my command
my piano voice under my breath uttering my hate for you
your pianissimo voice now over the phone from your jail cell
begging me for forgiveness and bail money
only to get a dial tone in return
k.s. 3:15 pm 12/7/14
Standard
Poetry, Prose, Prosetry

Ending – Haley Ingram

December 23 1888:

Vincent Van Gogh takes a sharp edge against his head Successfully cutting off his ear.

On May 8 1889,

He admits himself into the Saint Paul de Mausole lunatic asylum.

It is here,

In the catacombs of his wax coated, pressed-to-package heart

Where his blood streams the will of his hand creating his most famous, and beautiful masterpieces.

My darling, you are not the dried up paint

Cracked off to flake into the air

Particle by particle

Being inhaled by those unworthy of your scent.

Don’t you ever feel like the symptoms of death-

The left over, missed nibbles of creation.

He ate yellow Paint

We eat yellow Paint

You are my yellow Paint.

The only reason my body has not fallen victim to toxins in my bloodstream

As he did

Is because

You have a direct biological correlation to my happiness

The fumes of paint mix and dance with the fumes of my despair

Organs made canvas

Premature shapes

Colors splattered

Product is you.

You don’t just coat my stomach with prosthetic beauty

You are the irises

You are MY irises

My darling,

I can see the starry view from my asylum window.

I am having my first out of body experience

That will not scar me physically as I shove my hand through the window

Just to try and touch the fire of night.

I look so,

Desperate.

Gasping for a single breath hoping I finally reach the passion

Every time I try to paint starry night it comes out as your face.

I carved it into my skin

Melted my flesh and bone

Molding myself into what beauty could be

But I am a 2D appreciating enthusiast.

I notice the fluorescent lights

pulsating

I think of your eyes and the way they retract and grow as you go from crying to

Discussing the way the flowers in your brain

Tickle the inside of your ears.

May whoever try to rip them from the pores of your skin

Rot in Hell.

Even I in all my idiocy know how

It feels to get lost in the

Tranquil trance of fragrance.

To be completely fine with disarray.

My darling,

You are my music.

I’m chugging gallons of paint closing my ears shut.

Whatever Van Gogh tried to silence

Will not infest my brain

Not while you remain a pesticide.

Not while you’re here.

Whispering. Humming. Kissing.

Breathing

The oxygen from your own plants

Giving me CPR

trying to clean out my lungs hoping my ears pop

But my hands stop you.

You’d make it too easy.

I want to make sure every word that falls into the cavern of my aching body

Leaves a seed that can only be watered by the paint that I feed on.

Insanity for a being.

Insanity for being.

I’ll admit myself.

The view is so nice here.

The view is so pretty here.

Self designed, molded by Pygmalion.

The view is so beautiful here.

July 29, 1890:

Van Gogh dies from two gunshot wounds to the chest from 2 days earlier.

The package, has been opened.

Standard
Poetry

Never Be Completed – Brooke Safferman

Somewhere between

The spaces of my fingers

And the regions of my heart that

You and I like to pretend do not exist

Are filled up by the emotions that

I never knew a person could possibly

Feel.

 

Give me a smile,

A nod of approval,

And I will give you

Anything you want.

 

A touch, a glance, a sign of encouragement

You are the unattainable dieting goal;

So insatiable, yet I know I must cut back.

 

Back away,

Somewhere off into the distant land of

Pretend

We used to know the things about each other

That most people would deny but

Let’s be honest – cutting the crap was always your style.

 

Without you,

I am a piece to a puzzle that will

Never be completed.

And without you,

I am always left

wanting more.

Standard
Poetry, Prosetry

Heavy Breathing – Iman Messado

My siblings and I have the habit of breathing heavily.

We inhale the dirt, the foliage, the pebbles in the moor with a single exhale,

(never mind the pesky case of asthma that we all seem to share)

and exhale the North wind, the starry night and the cloudless summer sky.

Our lungs must take up at least 83% of our bodies,

stratocumulus clouds and bunches of hydrangeas were pressed up against

our tracheas and primary bronchi.

When my sister speaks,

it’s with rays of sunshine peeking between her teeth.

She tends to talk rather loudly,

but I attribute that to her trying to be heard over the chirping of North African black birds.

Her knees are as knobby as a giraffe’s and her eyes are as clear as a doe’s.

However, she walks with the gait of a lioness,

and would rather inhale your fear then exhale defeat.

I have two brothers,

both are thin and gangly with limbs like birch wood branches or

a new born gazelle with awkward limbs and an ambition that could rival

that of a bird learning to master the air underneath its wings.

The older one breathes slowly and deeply.

He would inhale a scarab beetle as carefully as he would a baleen whale.

His exhales would spread across West African deserts and European tundras,

kissing nightingales and billy goats to sleep.

He doesn’t know of frantic cries nor hyperventilating,

his lungs are made of the same stuff as the mountains in South America.

The younger one is reminiscent of a rabbit,

young and small and rapid.

He breathes in lilypads and peonies and sparks of ember.

He breathes in harried words and furrowed brows and nervous feet.

He breathes in flicking tails and hurricanes and lightning bolts.

He exhales the rushing waves of the Pacific ocean.

My lungs are weak and I can only breathe in as much as I can imagine.

Sometimes, my mind is too large for my lungs.

I’ve got daisies and marshes and valleys and wombats and thunderstorms in mind.

I’m ready to exhale Atlantis, Paradise lost and the Second Coming.

Let me a breathe a little heavier.

Standard
Poetry

Our Own Fairy Tale – Brooke Safferman

snowflakes

or something like

i

c

i

c

l

e

s

Drip down my arms, clinging to my veins,

Like it’s only a matter of time before they melt away.

In a place where time doesn’t exist,

In a world where reality doesn’t conform,

We can be whomever we want.

Once upon a time,

I was the ice queen, but you were the fire-breathing dragon

Frozen walls melted, its blocks floating into

happy little puddles of Sunlight

before my very eyes.

You can be the Unicorn; I’ll be the Fairy.

Let the Wicked Witch say what She wants,

But we will always write

Our own fairy tale.

Standard
Essay

So You Think You’re a “Meninist” – Alex Esterline

Before you read this article, if you have a problem with feminism (equality of the sexes), then you should probably just leave.

If you keep up with the feminist movement on any forms of social media, you’ve probably heard of the men who denounce the activism in the community by redirecting the issue on the challenges men face in society. Now, I’d like to make clear that their issues do exist. As a feminist, I clearly don’t hate men- as I identify as one- and I benefit from feminism as well. (All genders do). However, anti-feminist movements usually spend so much more time telling us why feminism is the root of all evil than they do helping the men that are discriminated against in society.

The movement I’m referring to is, of course, “Meninism”.

Meninism started as a patriarchal joke on twitter that was backed by a few problematic white boys. They eventually started growing a fanbase and shortly afterwards and turned into a serious movement.

When looking into the foreign world of meninism, it seems their main goal is to completely disregard the patriarchy while perpetuating inequality of the sexes. They also like to complain about issues that may or may not effect them- without actually doing anything about it. Meninists have attempted to re-invent the wheel as they ignore the positive effects feminism has on all genders. This metaphorical wheel, of course, is extremely bumpy.

Meninism’s main issues seem to be body-positivity in men and the unjust expectations of “masculinity”. Both of which are extremely valid points. However, meninism segregates those who could be fighting patriarchal notions (those of which are the source of sexism) alongside each other. Feminism aims to promote equality of the sexes, which is why it benefits other genders as well as women- the oppressed gender.

When meninists come along and turn the issue on themselves (which they will inevitably do), they are removing the focus from the issues that matter increasingly to oppressed women. Meninism would be a wonderful movement if they actually worked towards equality for all genders- the main point they attempt to make, since they immediately equate feminism with misandry.

Meninism as a movement should be rejected on its face because of its misogynistic roots and innate dismissal of structural violence towards women. Remember that feminism is a movement for equality, and distracting from that hurts yourself and others. Misandristic feminism is not feminism, and

Standard
Prose

Thoughts from The Grand Canyon – Reilly Wieland

The Grand Canyon seems to become more and more transcendentally ‘grand’, and the word appears to be more and more precise. This road trip seems to have become fantastical, like everything we have seen thus far cannot be explained in words. I am waiting for the greenscreen to fall and the stage producer is about to pop up and cut the scene.

In my life personally, I’ve tried to focus on “pleasure”. That word has a singularly sexual meaning but that’s not it. This trip has seemed to show me a lot of extraordinary things and people (or at least different sides of family) that I had not seen before that remind me that every moment of my peculiar and transient life is something so spectacular and meant to be celebrated.

I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things and I know it’s cheesy, but something about standing in front of the kind of place that makes me wonder how I have the audacity to feel anything but hopeful when a place like this is here is really amazing.

On that, I saw my first real dome sky, the kind that writers can pen novels about and you see as desktop backgrounds. The Earth was so flat that I could see the exact horizon arise and the sky rise like a bird’s nest, encasing me in. Skies like that will give you a strangely acute sense of reference in what the world can be. It seemed like the smog parted and everything came to me, like the little puzzle that I couldn’t find the last piece to anytime before.

This cross country adventure has seemed to teach me relevance, or at least made me comprehend the importance of giving my attention to the things that truly matter. In preparation for this trip, I focused too intently on outcomes: upcoming injuries, gas station food, sleepless nights.

The things that I thought would be big events at the beginning of the trip are, in fact, non-events of everyday life, all which I am not in control of. These non-events have made up this trip and my life. The irrelevancy of these miniscule annoyances seems to be overwhelming as I think about it.

What is relevant are the things that have come along with the injuries, the seemingly already perfectly preserved memories of the trip: the exact feeling you get staring at Zion, or at the Grand Canyon, or a dome sunset.

But in that, it seems short sighted to mark these non-events as unimportant. The non-events are also the events that act as catalysts for me to see the major happenings around me.
And those happenings in these moments are my life, and I want to take pleasure in them all.

Standard
Poetry

there is nothing quite like the sound of I love you – Brooke Safferman

 

There is nothing quite like the sound of “I love you”;

So much promise in three little words

Yet not once did you even endeavor to prove them.

They are placeholders, conversation-starters ways to pass the awkward silences.

 

Words like band-aids, like a cherry lollipop after getting a shot;

The sound of your sweet little vows, lies or otherwise,

Somehow undo the damage that has already been done.

 

So I take your hand and I smile

Because there is so much security

In never having to believe a thing.

 

With you, I am safe in my euphoric world of denial

And with you, I have found my home in never having to expect sincerity.

There is nothing quite like the sound of “I love you”.

 

Standard