diaries-of-phrog

[diaries-of-phrog]

you caught me as you fell into the river & i saw you. soft and damp w/ hair down your back. not yet free, but for once you looked near human. i could finally hold you or maybe i was just held. either way, you folded into the current. it was not yet spring and maybe it will never be. you know, spring snowmelt makes the river rage. let me know when you're ready to swim it.

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #hello hi im back on my bullshit #heres a poem

[diaries-of-phrog]

it's always too early or just too late this night is almost perfect it sits heavy below my stomach aching with longing or dread and you sit so close to my soul like a cold sore on my paper thin heart your warmth is a phantom a false memory because everything comes back in the end and you know it you don't know how this idea of you sank over my psyche the way the fog sinks over a city on fire just for us to call the burning beauty

#diaries-of-phrog #poetry #original poetry #poets on tumblr #i wrote this just before the solstice #the dark really gets me #but the clouds have been cool so i guess thats good

[diaries-of-phrog]

sometimes, growing apart from a childhood friend is sad and lonely and sometimes its like. i think you're a terrible person. i know exactly why you act like that. i miss you. i feel like you died. i wish i never had to see you again. maybe it would have been better if one of us had just died. you are the reason i'm still alive. i'll never forget the way your house smells. i'll never forgive your parents. they used to be my second family. i think i'm the only one who calls you by your nickname. i cringe every time i say it. it feels weird to call you anything else. it tears open something in me that never quite healed. and yet. if you called i would always pick up. do you know how many times i've had to remind myself that you are not my responsibility? we used to tell people we were sisters. you taught me how to lie and now you can't seem to stop. i watch you be consumed and i wonder if you ever even see me anymore. do you miss me the way i miss you? is your loneliness as twisted as mine? when you're alone at night am i a memory you reach for? or do you only remember the time i made you cry at the top of the playground. maybe i only hated you because despite it all, i could never really hide from you. maybe i only hated how quickly you moved on.

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #growing up #childhood friends #i might come back and edit this later #but i had to get it out #man elementary schoolers have some of the most toxic and also some of the most pure relationships ever

[diaries-of-phrog]

in my dream i went on a carnival ride in my dream you came and apologized and it felt so good i don't know how i ever thought it was real i swear i felt your lips on my shoulder i felt your words in my ear the way they've only ever felt for the few hours you let me spend in your arms i dreamt you were soft again and i woke up to feel you not even there

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #this might be too specific #it is about a dream i had #which made me wake up feeling weird and sad #yk when the person you never really dated breaks up with you #that also makes you feel weird and sad #not that that happened to me or anything

[diaries-of-phrog]

& then comes the rain

they call our family sonless & maybe it's true but i've always liked the dark the truth and the telling i twist my hair, & i don't have to be anyone he can touch anymore they call in the weak middle-of-the-day sun, & suddenly i am sick, maybe only because i was never here he tells me what is good, & he bends to my fragile eyes too wrong for the sadness to be perfect anymore

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #honestly i don't really know what this is about #i think it might be about the weather #i just got really intense on the metaphors #enjoy

[diaries-of-phrog]

life's like a river and a river's like a river a lot

two little streams met in a dark wood... but that was long ago and now, they face the sea. deeper entwined they smell salt and nearly can't breathe at the sight of it all, wide open and waiting for someone to let go. she sobs breaking open, and the salt pouring out of her she has become the sea. she's breaking can't you see breaking waves and just like that, breaking down in my lap a stream of consciousness poured into my own joining with the tears, becoming the ocean that will tear her from me and return her all at once. she tells me it will be okay and she does't know that she doesn't know anything so she tells me a story. two little streams met in a dark wood...

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #nature poetry #thoughts #trees #i been sad #some people that have been very influential in my life are moving away #and i will be dramatic abt it #thank you very much

[diaries-of-phrog]

stirring late-light sunset campsmoke wavering in the brown and the yellow suburban nostalgia childhood gone bitter in the back of anyone's mind clean sheets and the breeze thick with skin to be shed because everyone knows letting go only in the in-between hours when they think no one can see how much rawer their joy than anything else

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #growing up #guess who spent time in nature again? #it is me #i did #i decided that fall is actually really beautiful #if you can get over the unbearable ache of the constant change

[diaries-of-phrog]

read your books read your poetry all you want & think of her just know the joy you scrounged for isn't worth her pain remember the tunnel you dug with gilded shovels & daydreams washed out in tears remember the things you killed to get here know that its not easy work drowning the dead & still living

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #was reading ocean vuong again #i wish people would just say what they want #why do we have to be so complicated??

[diaries-of-phrog]

i wasn't supposed to write about roses or blood or silver, about hearts or wings or galaxies; my teacher used to press her hands, firmly, to the top of our poetry stacks and beg us - love different. she was bored of it. i'd go home and write something with each of her off-limits words, emboldened by spite.

for a stint of time, i was a reader for a poetry magazine, shifting through thousands of submitted writings, each hopefully printed onto my tiny laptop screen for next-submission-viewing. one editor had a pile where we would put all the poems with parsnips or cauliflower, one pile for long-thin emergency rants that devolved into a blank scream, one pile for mentions of belladonna and chartreuse - for a whole year, i'd go to bed hearing chartreuse and silver and cities playing in my head in calligraphy. every three months, the beautiful public eye would become just-fascinated by pretty things. unusual, beautiful monstrosities. one winter, all about daises. the next, a fascination with posies. i watched the world spin from catching love in language to the same five phrases - help, it's ending, i'm alone, help, it's dark here, come home, help -

later, as an english teacher, i saw patterns. every semester, one million essays about four specific things. it wasn't pretty enough to be a teachable moment: the content they wanted to discuss was all extremely violent; a broken anthem of climate change and constantly being videoed is destroying us. i would wake up shaking, worried their visions were prophetic, soon-to-be-true. selfish, i couldn't handle the constant semester-to-semester panic they scribbled into six paragraphs, MLA-formatted text. read the world is ending fifty times every month; sob to your therapist i'm not doing enough, tell your students: please, no more violence, i don't have the right stomach.

each one seemed the same poem: we're dying, and nobody is coming to save us.

there are very few celebration poems these days. i want to rest my hand on a stack of poems about love in big red wings. love in a jacket, standing under an open galaxy. love written on the bicep, in an anatomically correct heart, with an arrow shot through the center so you can see the pink viscera of surviving a wound - so you know that even permanent tattoos are permeable. blood on the snout of a newborn lamb. silver rings around the pink scales of a pigeon's leg, and love with her hand around the ribs of a bird. i want to read boring essays about lunch. about which video games run the best graphics. about carnivals. about love in big cliche terms: standing in a garden of parsnips, clutching daises to her chest, eating raw meat over the body of a rich man.

i want to open the poetry magazine and have pages of sonnets about bluebells. about survival. about a mundane, beautiful spring. about sitting with your dog on a front porch, writing without spite, happily toying with the idea of ice cream.

my student sends me an email. i know you said to write about what brings you joy. but nothing really makes me happy these days. i don't know what i'm doing.

#kinda long but incredibly powerful #would recommend reading ops tags also

[diaries-of-phrog]

i was fifteen once and then fifteen forever my lifeline coiled inside me and then caught the moment the gunshot went off unstuck the bullet and stick it to the kids that's how it goes out here but at least i don't have to walk back to that or any other godawful place at least you'll drive you'll drive me right into it right up to the door the door and the lock down the street and into the next fifteen years, and you're scared i've lost or forgotten the times hardened onto this mask of a teenage face

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #thoughts #diaries-of-phrog #we're trying out a new format here #bc tumblr post editor is stupid #i wrote this in an airport at sunset after reading ocean vuong #in case anyone was curious

[diaries-of-phrog]

let me tell you about my church

yes, there was, like a priest, an old white man in charge and yes, he did decide we were too much for him. yes, he now preaches to an empty building. that story is old. the building, older. the building, peeling and full of artifacts. child-made homages to our spiritual experiences, our gods, the trees, the tides, and the river. the building, now stolen, the artifacts stolen back. the priest didn't care. you know how they can be. a true spiritualist until you tell them your god is forgiving.

no one would call that place a church

it was a warehouse. the warehouse. it looked like a place you would be held for ransom. it had been a year since i walked in, scared, and it looked like home. a place where you packed and unpacked, yelled until it was quiet enough you felt like confessing your soul. we did dishes with strangers often enough that no one was a stranger. we learned a lot about community, in that kitchen. and in the end.

it was the end, and i had realized why we called it church

in the end, we learned that the priest could take away our church but never our gods. in the absence of his preaching, we had learned that they would always be there. the trees, the tides, and the river. and us. one thing about teenagers is that they are always willing to believe they are infinite. it makes us stupid. it makes us strong. in all that time we spent off the grid, in the heart of it, washing dishes with strangers, we became so connected we didn't need our church. we didn't need any mediator. the institution came crumbling and still we stayed. we had found a real home in each other, and our religion of trees. we found that, much like hearts, trees are kinda everywhere around here, if you're looking.

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #nature poetry #religion #heres one really close to my heart #about a group that changed my life and then almost fell apart #because of this one awful man #i was having a lot of thoughts about connection and community #which somehow lent itself to a church metaphor #fyi i am not religious at all #and now i have this very inkskinned style poem/post that i love

[diaries-of-phrog]

in summery

june:

windows down, music up midnight driving kinda nights

underage drinking until the chaos goes sour

finals? i'm passing anyway, what's the use

i'm failing anyway, what's the use

pink haze- i'll let you guess which kind

whirlwind slingshot lets go out bitches

july:

trees, lakes, more trees

rivers, mountains, anywhere you're safer

do you know them?

no, i'd trust them with my life

yet none of it feels quite real

no one would ever talk to me that softly

and i can hear them asking for me back

where i came from

august:

too soon, too soon

sticky warm, and it smells like nostalgia

yeah, yeah, more of the same but-

what if it wasn't

what if the syrupy sun didn't taste like eight years ago

what if we were something new

something so whole we've broken away

i'd say it hurts, but i know better

#poetry #poets on tumblr #diaries-of-phrog #original poetry #thoughts #summer #heres one i resurrected from drafts #i'm not fully satisfied with it but thats ok #and yes i did make a pun with the title i couldn't help myself

[diaries-of-phrog]

tough luck

don’t talk to me about sacrifice do you know how many times i’ve killed me  to get here do you know how bad that hurts how every possibility still lives in my body as a corpse, stuck bloodred with thorns  still hanging on to whatever scraps of humanity i could afford, to make me whole you’re the smallest ‘bigger man’ i’ve ever known and you think i owe you a soul?

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #tw death #poems #heres an old one i found #and decided to finish

[diaries-of-phrog]

let your vines overgrow this house

like my fingers through your silky, wood-grain hair

let them weave through our home to cradle us

leaves, braids, breaking softer than skin-on-skin

you call it destruction, i call it

dissolve and rebuild

after all, these floorboards were once alive

and you're the safest place i've ever been

so why can't we sleep a little longer

#poetry #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #nature poetry #love poetry #guys idrk whats going on here #but i had a gay time in a hammock in the woods #and now im writing again

[diaries-of-phrog]

i’m in love with a dead woman’s poetry and my only crime is the crime of greed a constant that only feels worse under the umbrella of death the only crime in that is the crime of no more the only crime is that my martyr is underground (like, underground, underground)

or perhaps our only crime (the poet and i) is how we will meet i am not talking about god or religion or for us, lack thereof i am talking about a beach where the sand sinks beneath your feet so you linger, just a little longer i am talking about poetry, or for us, souls i am talking about the crime, for me, of being and for her, the crime of being dead

#poetry #poems #poets on tumblr #original poetry #diaries-of-phrog #heres one i wrote on a recent trip #the poet in reference is lara kaapuni #if anyone is curious #you can find her work on her memorial page if you google her name #great poetry

[diaries-of-phrog]

#theres a lot of things that seem cool #for example where i live you can become a tree #medical research or organ donation also seems great #id love to help people #but tbh ive always wanted to be cremated and then my ashes sent to space #idk because like the 'were all made of stardust thing' #and i like the idea of my remains exploring the whole universe yk #its very impractical but the poet in me loves the idea of like parts of me burning up in a star #or ending up on like mars idk

[diaries-of-phrog]

prayer

please gods let me feel nothing but alive let me be ever acutely aware that the world expands out from my chest if i let it please gods remind me that happiness is always somewhere let me watch that vast blue sky and understand why its rumored you live up there, watching over us please gods remind me that you’re watching over us let me for once be so small in your arms let my body expand infinitely into your body into space into conscience please let me always be able to find home

#poetry #poets on tumblr #diaries-of-phrog #trees #im not really religious #but something abt hiking in the foggy old-growth forests today was such a spiritual experience #'tis outside season where i am and i will be insufferable abt it