katsylver

[katsylver]

whoever came up with strapping a dagger to your upper thigh knew exactly what they were doing. they weren’t thinking about self defence.

[katsylver]

I think I must have loved you

in a different time

Some other life, some other world

Where I have always loved you

I must have spent countless years

Kissing your lips

And murmuring eternal devotion

in thousands of quiet moments

I must have lived a hundred lifetimes

loving you so completely

that no matter what new life I begin

I seek you out

On purpose or quite by accident

So that I can love you again

I will traipse through every timeline

Wander through every universe

So that I can find you

And love you

Just one more time

//"just one more time" by Kat Arnold 2021

#katsylver #original poem #poetry #lgbtq poem #lgbtq poetry #queer poet #love poem #kat arnold

[katsylver]

hope is a foreign concept

it implies a belief in the future

that i've never put much stock in

i find myself trying to remember

how to hope like flexing a muscle

that has long atrophied

but i smile at sunrises now

i chase sunsets and throw my head back

to laugh at the sky and drink the wind

i see a future spread before me

so clearly i can almost taste it

a future full of hope

hope is what i feel whenever i see you

and i look forward to the day

when i can come home to you

//"hope" by Kat Arnold 2021

#katsylver #original poem #poetry #lgbtq poem #lgbtq poetry #queer poet #love poem #kat arnold

[katsylver]

me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU

[katsylver]

I am undone

At your touch

Only panting breath

And eager hips

My ribs are a cage

My breath - birds

Yearning for freedom

Behind wordless lips

I crave your taste

On my tongue

Brought by

These dripping fingertips

Your body

Along mine

Thighs wrapped

Hands entwined

Pulses matched

Apex aligned

An eclipse

Behind my eyes

You steal

My very heart

From within

My chest

But it's yours

From the start

It's yours

//by Kat Arnold 2021

#katsylver #original poem #lgbtq poem #lgbtq poetry #love poem #queer poet #kat arnold

[katsylver]

I am a dichotomy.

I am a juxtaposition.

I am simultaneous

And opposing.

I am a torrential storm

And a gentle breeze.

I am the chivalrous knight

And the raging dragon.

I am the pious saint

And the blissful sin.

I am the hero

And the villain.

I'm too much

And never enough.

I'm everything

And nothing at all.

// "I am" by Kat Arnold 2021

#katsylver #original poem #poetry #queer poet #kat arnold

[katsylver]

Recently musing on the idea that

Everyone you ever know leaves an indelible impression

Like seeing a friend in

How you take your coffee

And seeing a teacher in

Your favorite book series

Or seeing a lover in

The stroke of your paintbrush

We carry them with us

All these lives that touched our own

We weave them into the fabric of ourselves

- Sewn into the pattern of our souls

//"the weft of a life" by Kat Arnold 2021

#katsylver #original poem #poetry #kat arnold

[katsylver]

[katsylver]

My experience of friendship is one of devotion

I love my friends with the same fierceness with which I love my child

I love my friends with the same passion with which I love my partner

I love my friends better & more thoroughly than I love myself

When I say 'I love you'

I give you those words like the gift of my heart

I mean for you to keep them

safe and whole

Because when I call you my friend,

I'm calling you 'kindred spirit'

I'm calling you 'my beloved'

I'm calling you 'soulmate'

- "I'm in Love with All of My Friends" by Kat Arnold 2020

#katsylver #original poem #poetry #love poem #kat arnold

[katsylver]

I sat up when I heard raindrops

out of my open window

My core suddenly twisted

And I thought,

"Right on time."

As the rain fell

So too did my blood

A monthly physical process

I have no choice in.

A monthly price to pay

For inhabiting a body called, "female."

A monthly reminder

Of all the ways I am not "woman."

And every month I move further

Away from any comfort I ever found

And closer to an understanding

Of how to exist in a body

I find so loathsome.

//"loathsome" by ka 2020

#katsylver #original poem #poetry #lgbtq poetry #body dysphoria #trans poetry #kat arnold

[katsylver]

pink in the night

[katsylver]

I feel them

Pressed against my back

Whispering in my ear

All of the things

I cannot say to myself

Their breath is a hoarfrost

Steeling my spine

A shiver in their hearts

They stand with me

On these endless battlefields

Hand wrapped around mine

Our fingers entwined

Keeping the blades ready

We'll plunge forward

Together, as one

Their strength is mine

And we will fight

And hope

And love

They & I

// by kat arnold 2020

#katsylver #poem #original poem #caw squad #pagan poetry #poetry #kat arnold

[katsylver]

My Facebook post to weed out the last of the Trump supporters who may still be on my friends list.

Two have already blocked me. And after all this election bullshit, I want the rest to do the same.

Here is what I wrote…

____________________________

Gotta say I’m a little upset that my dad’s life may depend on enough people deciding this country’s well being is more important than “owning the Libs.”

While there are way too many “true believers” who were lost causes from the beginning… there are also plenty of conservatives out there that know *exactly* how bad Trump is. Some pretend he’s great while being secretly embarrassed. Some make excuses. Some invent justifications. Some lie to themselves to the point where they almost believe it. Some give in to delusion to avoid the guilt. Some argue he is the “lesser of two evils’’ when they know he is the morer of all evils. Some… don’t care.

But they all *know*.

If they had Trump as their boss at a real estate firm, they’d constantly talk shit behind his back and quit as soon as it was feasible. They’d see him ripping off contractors and laborers, not paying them after the job is complete, getting sued *3500* times, and realize he is no friend of the “working man.” They’d see him run business after business into the ground (including a damned casino) and realize he is not a savvy mogul—but a corrupt grifter burning through his $400 million inheritance and then symmetrically racking up that much in debt after it ran out.

They know he isn’t actually playing four-dimensional quantum chess, thinking 12 moves ahead, and enacting some grand scheme to “Make America Great Again.” They know he is making this up as he goes. They know he is a Dunning/Kruger monstrosity who is probably 60 IQ points away from anything resembling a stable genius. They heard him say the noise from windmills causes cancer and internally winced knowing they might have to come up with an explanation for how that isn’t the stupidest thing a human has ever uttered.

“Can we say he was kidding?” “No, we said that the last 8 times.” “What about ‘he was taken out of context’ and then we change the subject to Hillary’s emails?” “Brilliant! No one ever calls out whataboutism as a weak debate fallacy!”

They especially know that he is endlessly corrupt and hedonistically immoral. They know a person that has cheated on all 3 wives, paid off porn stars, and bragged about sexual assault is probably not super tight with Jesus. They know he didn’t change his ways and mature from a pervy 60-year-old to a non-pervy 70-year-old. Ya know, the period in life when people are most likely to transition from their “locker room mentality” and turn to religious salvation by never going to church.

I mean, I could be wrong. He did say the Bible is his *favorite* book and that he couldn’t disclose his favorite passages because it is just… TOO. DARN. PERSONAL. And his favorite testament? BOTH, of course. 

Yes, Trump likes the “Newold Testament.” It’s a hybrid Bible that alternates the pages of the testaments one after the other. He likes to skip from stoning gay people straight to healing lepers. A little fire and brimstone followed by a soothing tale of a fish buffet with unlimited breadsticks. Going back and forth really helps even out the tone of the Good Book. Like God said, “Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.”

But I don’t know if his love of biblical literature makes up for the 20,000+ *lies* he has told since becoming president, the *coveting* of Obama’s legacy, the *stealing* from charity, the *dishonoring* of a Gold Star *father and mother*, the *adulteries*, the using of God and religion in *vein* to pander and grow his power and wealth, the obsession with *golden idols*, the needless *killing* of people by ignoring a virus… and every other commandment he has most certainly broken multiple times. 

They know he is not godly in any way. They know he sees *himself* in the role of God.

They know he did everything on this list and did not care who it hurt as long as it served his own self-interest.

[LEST WE FORGET THE HORRORS: A CATALOG OF TRUMP’S WORST CRUELTIES, COLLUSIONS, CORRUPTIONS, AND CRIMES]

They. Know.

And they know that his incompetence and temperament will continue to hurt the marginalized.

I have seen Olympic level mental gymnastics from intelligent Republicans trying to justify supporting Trump. It must tax their imaginations to the limit when endlessly concocting such ridiculous defenses of the indefensible. But they know because they aren’t in those marginalized groups they have a much better shot at not having any tangible consequences from another Trump term. And they support it all because he might bulldoze through bits of their conservative agenda. They believe the ends will justify the means.

240,000 dead is a small price to pay for a bunch of judges, tax cuts for the wealthy, and draconian immigration policies. Oh and the normalization of racism must be the icing on the cake.

“Just rewind the country to the 1950s, hit the pause button, and you can play president all you want, Mr. Trump.”

Voting for Trump is CRUEL.

It is cruel to Black folks seeking safety and justice and accountability. It is cruel to the impoverished seeking food and shelter. It is cruel to the elderly who are at risk from a deadly virus. It is cruel to disabled people who he mocks openly. It is cruel to LGBTQ+ folks whose discrimination he legalized. It is cruel to Dreamers who wish to stay in the only country they’ve ever known. It is cruel to people with a uterus who will be denied reproductive healthcare. It is cruel to kids in cages who may never see their parents again. It is cruel to all of the people I couldn’t add to this list because it would go on for pages.

And it is cruel to this planet we all share.

4 more years of Trump may cause damage to our environment that we cannot recover from.

Which means it is cruel to all of the generations yet to come.

But as they say… the cruelty is the point.

This cruelty is our punishment for asking for more than the status quo. For endangering their power structure and systemic privilege. For not waiting long enough for the trickle-down economics to actually trickle down. For wishing to lead dignified lives without constant struggle and financial anxiety. For asking to get urgent healthcare without risk of bankruptcy. To get education without a lifetime of debt. To get jobs that pay the rent. To get respect even if we don’t fit into binary boxes of gender or sexuality. To get justice when authorities abuse their power. To save our precious ecosystems. To get a non-bloated military that keeps the peace and protects all innocent humans around the world instead of protecting oil, drone-striking civilians, and giving our veterans PTSD and mysterious illnesses because they had to sleep next to burning pits of waste.

These wishes are not radical. They are not unreasonable. They are not impossible to achieve—as other countries have done so with fewer resources.

And if you present these ideas to the populace individually on their own merits without invoking the “socialism” boogeyman—the majority of people support them. Just like they support and enjoy the benefits of other large social programs every day. They support roads and power lines and fire departments and libraries and mail delivery and unemployment and parks and food inspection and medical research and playgrounds and broadcast frequencies and bridges and sewage systems… but healthcare is one program too many? Who decided we had to stop at sewage?

You never hear Hannity yelling “THEY SOCIALISM’D OUR POOP!”

The 1% are just hoping not enough people realize they make too much profit from healthcare to treat it like our poop. Look up Wendell Potter. He was an insurance executive who created all of your favorite talking points about how awful Canadian healthcare is. He finally admitted he was lying his ass off to please the shareholders. Don’t worry, he’s really really sorry for screwing all of us. Though I’m not entirely sure why we bought his bullshit instead of just asking some Canadians.

But, unfortunately, we did buy his bullshit and now we have to deprogram millions of people out of thinking Canadians wait 3 years to get a heart transplant and that their only choice of doctor is between a quack or an actual moose.  And we should probably let people know that impoverished Americans often have longer wait times than any other wealthy nation. Especially if they have no insurance whatsoever. Then it’s like… infinity wait times.

All of my ideals are rooted in empathy and compassion. I did not come to this lightly. This is not some selfish desire for “free stuff.” I found examples of these ideas being successful in other places. I read about how much they helped their society as a whole. These places have higher standards of living and are rated some of the “happiest” countries in the world. They are not all wearing burlap sacks while waiting in line for bread. Oh, and they still have rich people! Just not “my yacht has a swimming pool cuz that outside water is gross and probably has sharks” rich.

I was not indoctrinated. I was not duped. I was “radicalized” by life-changing chronic illness and immediate poverty. I got sick and found you can’t actually live off of disability, even after going through the grueling months-long process to qualify in the first place. To make it work you have to sell all your assets, live rent-free with your parents, buy only bulk frozen food, and beg friends and family for money when an unexpected expense pops up. My yearly income takes Jeff Bezos 3 seconds to earn and his company paid no tax two years in a row. And every location that Amazon sets up, they are given billions in tax benefits and subsidies as a bribe (socialism?) all so people can roam endless warehouses and pee in bottles to stay on schedule.

The only person living a dignified life in all of that is the one making $3000 per second. I saved up for a year so I could have a nice TV and he is spending $40 million on a large clock that keeps perfect time for 10,000 years. I know life isn’t always fair. But those are some pretty tipped scales. How do I pull myself up by the bootstraps if I can’t even leave my bed?

I want *everyone* to have a dignified existence. I want everyone to be safe and healthy and educated. And if they get sick or old, I want them to *maintain* that dignity.

How did that come to be viewed so negatively?

It sucks seeing everything I believe get twisted into propaganda saying I want to ruin this country and take away everyone’s freedom and… something about Venezuela? For some reason? 

I love freedom. Freedom is great! But while freedom for the individual is easy, freedom within a collective is much more complicated. What if your freedom supersedes mine? You are free to not wear a mask, but are you free to infect me with a virus that may kill me?

I cannot be free if I die from not having healthcare.  I cannot be free if I can’t afford to buy food.  I cannot be free if I don’t have the education to understand what it truly means to be free.

The first three unalienable rights listed in our country’s founding document are “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Life is the first on the list for a reason.

If you don’t have life… you can’t have those other things

[katsylver]

You know what? I’m not a simple person with simple tastes. I’m exceedingly complicated and my tastes are extremely convoluted.

[katsylver]

My experience of friendship is one of devotion

I love my friends with the same fierceness with which I love my child

I love my friends with the same passion with which I love my partner

I love my friends better & more thoroughly than I love myself

When I say 'I love you'

I give you those words like the gift of my heart

I mean for you to keep them

safe and whole

Because when I call you my friend,

I'm calling you 'kindred spirit'

I'm calling you 'my beloved'

I'm calling you 'soulmate'

//"I'm in Love with All of My Friends" by Kat Arnold, 2020

#poetry #original poem #original poems #love poem #poem #i love my friends #frienship #katsylver #kat arnold

[katsylver]

Back when teen angst had a body count,

ours predated Myspace.

We took Polaroids in abandoned buildings

instead of posting to Instagram.

We traded mixtapes

instead of Spotify codes.

We kissed strangers in cars

and jumped fences to drink Mickey's

while watching the sunset on our wasted youth.

We spent ourselves on bare mattresses with men

who couldn't love us without leaving bruises.

Being safe meant clinging to each other

like driftwood in an ocean too wide.

We lacked the language to speak our truths

and wrapped our young throats in ribbon

to keep from screaming.

But now that our screams have died unsounded

and our voices are lost to time

I feel nothing but the lateness

of the hours that march past

Bringing me further from who I was

but no closer to who I am.

// "Youth" by Kat Arnold, 2020

[katsylver]

We spend so much of our lives

Thinking in binaries

Pairs and patterns

Mates and matches

Opposites attracting

What they're missing in themselves

But life is not ones and zeros

And we are whole

And not lacking

Spectrums of everything

Make us unique

A blend of vibrancy

A fusion of every imaginable variable

So when I examine each piece

When I pluck at the threads

I've always tried to ignore

When I find those threads shifting something

I ask myself if my discomfort is mine

Or does it belong to someone else

The question is answered

By the question itself

// "The Question" by KA 2020

#poetry #poem #original poem #lgbtq poem #lgbtq poetry #gender exploration #gender stuff #gender identity #genderqueer #genderfluid #nonbinary #gender is a spectrum