inkytealeaves

[inkytealeaves]

Keith S. Wilson’s poem “Heliocentric” is ostensibly a love letter from an astronaut to someone back on Earth. But along the way, you realize it’s really more of a love letter to space itself—to the whole universe. I promise I still dream / of coming back to you, he says. But the moons over Jupiter. But / asteroids like gods. If someone sent me this letter from space, I’d be pissed. As a reader—especially now, stuck in quarantine and feeling dreamy—I’m enchanted. [x]

#reblog #poetry

[inkytealeaves]

20/04/20 • title is the subject line of an email about middle egyptian classes. italics are ‘quotes from my middle egyptian prof that i happened to write down’ 

#reblog #poetry

[inkytealeaves]

distance

we have been six feet apart for so many weeks i have forgotten your face. the sound of your laugh. the sight of your smile. forgotten, too, myself, the physical existence i need not mind when the only witness is the hallway mirror. i have forgotten that the six feet between us is only air, not earth and soil and grief; my breath is heavy with the choke of decay.

i haunt the space between sunsets, untethered, wandering the hollows of a house hungry as i am for touch. we rot together, twist our forms together irrevocably, until we neither begin nor end. alone, i watch the bathroom wall crumble underneath my fingers, digging desperately for the warmth of a heart or hand to hold in mine, and feel my insides crumble, cold, in kind. a structure in active collapse, falling apart brick   by brick, must be avoided, looped in yellow tape and left to its demise; only what we leave behind will be a masterpiece to admire.

we will decay until all that remains is a monument of before. the support wall in the kitchen, still strong, will be a marvel of construction. the ribcage sprouting flowers from the ruins of a bedframe will be a beautiful burial. our names and stories will be replaced by something exciting for the history books, and though disease will be our death certificate, we will know it was the distance that made us fall.

#own poetry #poetry #writing #own writing #poets on tumblr #writers on tumblr #coronavirus #social distancing #distance poem #morgans poetry

[inkytealeaves]

Unspoken

@peaches-andprose // Ashley L.

#reblog

[inkytealeaves]

You can’t get over someone, but you can take a shower and then you can get dressed and then you can do your laundry and then you can find your keys and then you can go grocery shopping and then it’s ten years later and they are still dead

and you are happy.

— Jared Singer, from “Hardest Thing,” Forgive Yourself These Tiny Acts of Self-Destruction

#reblog #poetry

[inkytealeaves]

At the End of the World

At the end of the world we raise our cups. We sit around the bonfire, watching embers and lives ablaze. Someone throws their drink onto the fire, and the sparks in his eyes dance higher. Someone raises a toast to the stars, to the nebulous black above, a ceiling to keep us in, a distant watcher of our tragedy, an endless potential of sky we were never allowed to reach.

The stars continue to burn. The sea on the beach continues to roll and churn and break. The crab stealing our sandwiches as we drink our thoughts into the sand will find another distracted company.

Only the trees will notice our passing, as they thrive and breathe for the first time in centuries, and strive for that sky we fell short of. They will thank us for our passing, though they will never know how to tell their gratitude except to keep us breathing through their branches, as our bodies become their roots. Maybe one day, another life will find our skeletons, tangled among flowers, and wonder what those creatures used to be. What we did to deserve the privilege of being, eternal, the beating heart of our planet. Maybe our voices will carry on the wind, finally at one with the sky, and answer:

“It is the least we can do.”

#poetry #poets on tumblr #writing #writers on tumblr #own poetry #own writing #at the end of the world poem #morgans poetry

[inkytealeaves]

margaret atwood// jandy nelson// richard siken// jane austen// franz kafka

#reblog

[inkytealeaves]

for anonymous who asked for "Could you write a poem on how we often think things to be better than they are because of nostalgia or like, how certain experiences we view through rose coloured glasses because they happened such a long time ago?"

-by me

#reblog

[inkytealeaves]

plastic

i am seven when the boy next door tells me he loves me. our parents coo the mating call of birds, imagining us grown and flying the nest together. we are married in the backyard, sipping lemonade from plastic glasses, exchanging gummy rings and butterfly kisses. we play at raising our family of porcelain and plastic, and i tell myself i am happy. i am thirteen, still holding hands with my best friend as we cross the street, though we are “too old for such things”. the boy next door stares, whispers, glares, and she shrinks away, rips my heart away with her hand. i am fifteen, and rumours fly, a flock of diving, scathing vultures, desperate for the pieces of my heart. the boy next door paints barbs on my locker that he overheard from his parents, that he does not understand, that he would never say to my face. i discover the taste of my best friend’s lipgloss under the cover of darkness, hold its knowledge close to my heart like a promise. i am seventeen when i am told that i will burn in hell. my best friend’s fingers already burn against my skin, but i think i will need that hellfire when i am cast out onto the street, a half-charged phone, a coffee cup, a well-worn paperback my only companions. the boy next door watches me from his window. my best friend shuts the door in my face. i am nineteen when i discover what love is supposed to feel like. not hidden in my best friend’s closet when her parents are not home, not under the cover of darkness, nor gawked at by the boy next door. we are on the university lawn. we are surrounded by an explosion of flags and colours, of laughter, and when she kisses me it feels like flying. i am twenty-three. i have walked a thousand miles to arrive home, a place i have never visited before. i do not recognise this place, nor does it recognise me: it never did. my hair is short, my heart is whole. my partner’s kiss on my cheek is a warm summer breeze. the boy next door can be found behind the bars of a white picket fence, but i do not go looking for him. we turn and walk away, fingers entwined, and i know i am happy.

#poetry #own poetry #queer poetry #writing #writeblr #own writing #plastic poem #morgans poetry #2020

[inkytealeaves]

marching song, revised

You say “I have the right to speech”, Well, I have the right to live. And with all that I have done for you, I have no more fucks to give.   I screamed too long at empty page, Fists bloody on the wall: If you refuse to heed my writing, I refuse to stand and fall. I’ll seek the stars within her eyes and hold her close at night. But I have known too many deaths to keep the will to fight.   For since thirteen I’ve marched to war with hellfire at my feet. We raised our rainbow flags as shields to gunfire in the streets.   My hands are soaked in sticky blood from patching friends with holes; I wonder how you think your bullets will be what saves our souls.   But if I must walk down to hell for whose hand I choose to hold, at least I’ll have good company, Among the beautiful, brave, and bold.

#queer poetry #poetry #own poetry #writing #writeblr #own writing #morgans poetry #marching song revised poem #2020

[inkytealeaves]

the water drop’s lament

Long before the circus first played I danced the dizzying dives of the trapeze artist. Before the first miss of the knife-thrower I slashed at stone-clad mirrors which dared to show my face, at green upturned palms, grit-roads skin. I slipped between the ancestors of future desolations; haired, helpless. Since, I have kissed the lips of kings and commoners, nettle and rose. I have flocked the throat of a drowning man, toppled banks, choked houses, brought cities to their knees. Once I danced with the particles of suns, and at the zenith of my journey, I can almost brush the fingers of those lost stars. Perhaps one day, when they fall from their inky towers, and I have no body to return to, they will reach back to me, and I may be made of starlight once more.

#poetry #own poetry #writing #own writing #writeblr #morgans poetry #the water drops lament poem #2020

[inkytealeaves]

the fireman

How can one dare to dream of taming fire? Of silencing that siren song, hidden in the spit of smoke and dust, hidden between the wingbeats of a dragon? Through my wildfire years, through gasfires, bonfires soaked in whiskey on liminal summer nights, and finally, caught in my hands underneath a silver spoon, I have always chased the dragon. Now, licking tongues through the eyes of a two-bedroom apartment, he waits for me, his song the same: all that remains will be dust, again. I leave the safety of the driver’s seat of that fortified, scarlet engine. The ladder shakes in my hands, as if knowing the kernmantle, wrapped over my shoulder, is meant for a noose. Like smoke through my fingers, the dragon slips away, to dance eternal, jewelled against the horizon, whilst I, ephemeral, am left ablaze. The ladder burns away beneath my feet, and though the flames sing in my veins, my wings are limp and feeble things to follow. My only exit is a heaven of smoke, so I reach higher.

#poetry #own poetry #writing #own writing #writeblr #morgans poetry #the fireman poem #2020

[inkytealeaves]

atlas

Have you ever seen someone and thought with the desperation of a breaking heart that you came into their life too late? You have never been on time; you miss everything from trains to deadlines, offers at the store and coupon expiry dates; this time your lateness is unforgivable. You look at this fractured, stitched figure, a beautiful tragedy in the making, and think. I wish I had met you earlier, and- I wish you had trusted me sooner. I wish I had been there to hold you in my arms as you cried. I wish I could wrap you in titanium and diamond, and shield you from everything that makes you ache; because no person that young should look so broken. No person that young should have eyes so old. No person should be able to curl up and cry, shaking shoulders silent in a corner of the dark, and look like they have replaced Atlas holding up the sky.

   - let me be your atlas, my love

#poetry #own poetry #writing #own writing #writeblr #morgans poetry #atlas poem #2016

[inkytealeaves]

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