badbpdpoetry

[badbpdpoetry]

CATS

i miss when i only had to talk when i wanted to

when people let me play silently with dolls 

and read in closets with flashlights 

when affection was reserved for hugs on holidays 

and not departing coworkers 

i miss being a “late bloomer” 

and not closed off //

i used to talk about cats

i loved cats

it was so easy to talk to people when a cat was there to pet

i would look at the cat

and tell another person petting the cat facts about cats

it was all laid out

you’re petting a cat

you’re both looking at the cat

talk about cats //

now i have created a spirit to possess me 

when it’s time to riff off a conversation

i don’t look at people’s faces

or i look at a blank spot

a point that doesn’t change

a nose or forehead

when i try to read expressions

everybody looks confused

maybe i’m just confused

and i’m projecting a mirror 

#bad poetry #artists on tumblr #late diagnosed autistic #mentalheathawareness #cats

[badbpdpoetry]

and one day i will realize

i’ve begun to mull over the antecedants to destructive spirals—i apathetically drive back down the narrow pathways of my brain. they were paved by dozens of singular traumatic events. all roads lead to rumination. what holds me back and what propels me forward? it’s all PTSD, i think. 

and one day i will realize my trauma means nothing. 

i cope with the help of my unconscious belief that i am in posession of some great wisdom

that i’ve gleaned insight into the darkness of humanity and i know what is wrong with our families, our communities, our cities, our nations, our world.

i have sat in circles with people like me

i’ve coughed up smoke with them and condemned our species in cynical chants

i’ve regretted the comments the next day

and i’ve sat in different circles with similar smoke nodding to familiar hymns 

about how we’ve been corrupted

some original sin of a human design ruined mankind 

i’ve held onto the idea that i can be a part of change

because i’m the result of generations who wouldn’t change

but when i finally stop coughing and listen

when i’m alone hours later at a bus stop

i will think

“what have i been given?”

i will realize it’s a cruel self-righteousness

it’s repeated whispers to myself of “they will never understand”

i think i am better because i have seen worse

and one day i will realize that i have been denied joy for nothing

i ruminate for nothing

and one day i will realize that to believe that those traumatized have unique inbuilt fortitude is to believe that traumatized people are exigencies to functioning society. we would need them to remember the darkness. we would need them contain the darkness. we would need them to comfort those experiencing the darkness. 

but i have nothing

i have a bitter empathy

i realize others’ pain and i hate that i realize it

i walk in others’ shoes because no one has dared to try on mine

and one day i will realize that the meaning of my trauma is what i gave it:

a desire to help 

but resentment

because i want to have never understood 

#bad poetry #artists on tumblr

[badbpdpoetry]

i thought my dad was going to die this week and all i could think was “you promised me the closest imitation to god’s perfect unconditional love and then you took it away because what? because i like girls? and i know you would say you still love me unconditionally but love isn’t a one sided feeling in your heart. it requires work.”

love without action is dead.

#bad poetry #religious trauma #daddy issues #drunkposting #prose poem

[badbpdpoetry]

at the bus stop

as i am reaching a new level of sobriety at the bus stop, i listen to a music genre none of my current friends listen to. that part of me still belongs to a friend i no longer know. most of me is a compilation of interests and phrases and political opinions that were never mine to begin with. i wonder why people laughed at my jokes. i think i made a fool of myself but i truly hope i was a pretty fool. i’ll text a friend i don’t trust a neat summary tomorrow morning and i’ll wonder where my loyalties really lie. i’d like to think my past will not follow me but i think my past lives withinside me. it is not a shadow chasing me but a piece of my soul i want to cut out. i wish i could drink without thinking about my dad and i wish i could cry without feeling like my mom. i miss people who made me feel safe.

[badbpdpoetry]

poetic essays

i want to start writing essays//

instead of poems//

but writing essays means proposing solutions//

instead of wading into suffering//

imagine if karl marx had written a haiku about the factories//

soot in the babes’ lungs

oversees goods’ creation

capitalist pain

where would we be?//

art can only take the world so far//

but in spurted poems//

i can wallow in the act of healing//

nobody can question my pain//

until i tell them to do something about it//

then i am graded//

my sources analyzed//

my suffering quantified//

but i have never thrived off pity//

then perhaps i am not afraid of solutions//

but conclusions//

to say//

“i know what caused this”//

to say//

“it can end”//

to say//

“i understand its meaninglessness”//

and//

“i want to move on.”//

“i want the world to move on.”

#anti art #artists on tumblr #bad poetry #moving on

[badbpdpoetry]

people watching

when i was a child i sat in the front pews at church

because my mother said “why would we distance ourselves from God?”

sitting in the front meant being first in line for the Body of Christ

and first to kneel after

and i could watch the other worshippers

i’d look so that i could see them sip the Blood of Christ

i’d watch the children younger than me hold a father’s hand

and the old catholic women hunched in an eternal bow to God from a life of humble service

i would observe the other girls’ dresses

and the boys’ suits

i’d envy girls with curly hair

and boys with sisters

i’d “people watch”

my eyes open wide at the beauty of us all

and long to know every family’s story

because no one knew mine

i remember my mother one day saying we should have our heads down

eyes closed

praying

thinking of the souls higher than those sinners’ in church

i remember those minutes at the end of each sunday mass after that

staring into the blackness of my own eyelids and wondering if i couldn’t know another person, how could i know God?

i was friends with saints and angels of my own imagination

but they weren’t friends with me

and now?

i sit on a metrobus and i don’t look up at the faces of the men and women

i watch their shoes

i think back to the universes of heaven, hell, and purgatory

they’re slowing fading from my shut eyes

because i am so so far from God

but no closer to another person

#artists on tumblr #religious trauma #bad poetry #lonely poetry

[badbpdpoetry]

2101

i was very little when i realized what an opportune point in history i’d been born in: October 1998.

i remember around 7 or 8 years old, i resolved to live until 2101. i wanted to experience 3 centuries. i figured they would interview me on the local nightly news & i’d say the keys to a long life are jesus, a yearly “star wars” marathon, & a glass of wine a night (regular wine consumption always seemed to be a common refrain from the elderly of 2006). that kind of desire feels almost outlandishly foreign to me now. but i very much mean the almost.

in the last 6 years, i have attempted suicide 10 times. at times it feels like i’m living on more than just borrowed time but stolen. my future feels like a VHS i borrowed from a Blockbuster and i kept rewinding it and rewatching it and renewing it over and over and over again. and then that Blockbuster closed. so now i have a stolen VHS i guess. except the VHS is the rest of my life and the almost outlandishly foreign desire to live a long life is starting to resettle in my soul.

maybe in 2101, i will explain that strikingly dated Blockbuster metaphor to a beautiful young reporter. she will ask “and what’s a Blockbuster?” and i will have lived in 3 centuries.

#artists on tumblr #ramblings #very short stories #bad poetry

[badbpdpoetry]

forget?

i remember my childhood much more clearly & vividly than most people with such profound emotional wounds. looking back, i can easily attribute this to my unwavering commitment to “remember what it’s like to be a kid” but upon further reflection, at what point—anywhere in my hauntingly unforgettable past—did i ever fit into any definition of “a kid”?

#artists on tumblr #short poem #childhood trauma #memories #self indulgent #bad poetry

[badbpdpoetry]

memory

i remember i wanted a birthday party when i turned 10 years old. i wanted it to be perfect and i wanted friends over. it was a kind of silly request looking back because i didn’t have friends; i knew other children—which i thought counted—but i certainly didn’t have friends. i told my mother, “i just want to have happy childhood memories when i’m grown up.” i don’t really remember that party. i remember my mom made a biblical themed scavenger hunt and i remember my outfit or maybe that outfit i’m thinking of was for my 11th birthday. i don’t know. the next year was a rerun.

i wanted a happy childhood even as a kid. i felt an anxious strain that i was wasting my youth by not compiling anecdotes of childish whimsy. retrospectively, i strain to remember a single story from my childhood that doesn’t open me up to a different, more harrowing memory of trauma. it’s hyperlinked in my mind like a wikipedia link. & the link is a bloody purple.

in high school, i gave up trying to happy. i sacrificed and i studied and i promised myself vague future honors (“i’ll be hot in college” was often repeated). i relinquished control in hopes of future freedom.

in college, i searched for experience again. i thought happiness would present itself to me the moment i left my home. instead, the repressed pain pounced. i’ve lost so much that there’s nothing i can imagine losing that would begrieve me for more than a day.

i couldn’t shake the feeling that i was wasting my youth and now, i agonize that i might just waste my whole life. i short-circuited my brain to expect quick releases but i sit in the corner & i ask “when will i have a birthday party with friends?”

#artists on tumblr #ponderings #musings #bad writing

[badbpdpoetry]

do you think opulent feudal nobles in their loveless arranged marriages looked down at their starving peasants fornicating and coveted the serfs’ desperate love?

#bad poetry #one sentence poem #history #artists on tumblr

[badbpdpoetry]

i want to be revolting and loved

i want to be revolting and loved

i want to be held during a panic attack

and comforted when i scream at doctors

i want you to understand my trauma as though it happened to you

and courageously face the flashbacks while i cower

i want you to call me an uber when i get lost in public transit

i want to drink til i blackout and know you will lay me in fresh sheets

i want you to meet me at 17 and laugh at my awkward junior angst

i want you to watch bootleg musicals on dailymotion that mean nothing to you but everything to me

i want you to read my poems and cry

i want you to punch my dad

and curse out my mom

i want you to burn down every school i’ve ever attended,

tear up at the flames

and gather the ashes of my history

i want you to be overwhelmed by animalistic sexual desire for my body

but gaze deeply into my soul

i want you to laugh at my every joke

but recognize my sincerity

i want you to attend catholic mass with me

and stand when i stand

and sit when i sit

and kneel when i kneel

and at the end

i want you to shout at christ hanging on the cross

that i am yours

and my sins are yours to die for, not his.

i want all this because i am selfish

but i would carry off whatever ugliness means the same for you, my love

if only you would let me try.

#bad poetry #artists on tumblr #love poem #religious trauma #trauma poetry #drunkposting

[badbpdpoetry]

drunk new year’s poetry

6 minutes into the new year

and i want to abstain

i made a resolution to quit cigarettes

perhaps at a fundamental level

i am a quitter

because all things end

like my perseverance

and i am surrounded by people

i know nobody’s name

and if i could ask a name i would

but i won’t

because i’ve given up trying to know others

i guess that’s also quitting

i’m surrounded by smoke

and i have vodka in my blood

but no liquid courage

i wish i could love the way jesus loved

what an impossible standard to reach

on the line for the gender neutral bathroom

and i’m drunk

i wish to dance at a gay bar & feel i belong

but i don’t because i was spared of original sin at baptism

but i guess jesus missed a spot on my soul

and now i’m a sinner

asking to bum a fag that i said i’d quit

happy new year 2024

#bad poetry #artists on tumblr #happy new year #religious trauma #gay poem #2024

[badbpdpoetry]

social media

i saw you liked another set of her selfies on twitter. last time we hung out you said you don’t like tweets anymore; you just scroll. i guess she’s an exception.

ugh.

it shouldn’t hurt. this shouldn’t hurt. why does this hurt? i have a million other things to be hurt about. i have pain after trauma after suffering after catastrophe. and i’m hurt because you have feelings for a girl on twitter and not me? i feel pathetic for checking and i feel pathetic for caring and i feel pathetic because i should cry about my mother or my mental illnesses or my uncle or my suicide attempts or my best friend leaving. it is pathetic. i waste years of my life pining for you on your twitter while waiting for your text back. my daydreams become distant nightmares every time you mention a hypothetical future with someone else.

when i see you i want to touch you. i want to lean on your shoulder and close my eyes. i want to hold your hand. but you will lean away with wide eyes and you will let go.

i hate having these feelings.

#bad poetry #artists on tumblr #mentalheathawareness #bpd #pathetic

[badbpdpoetry]

to love as a patriarchal woman//i know.

i know how to love as a patriarchal woman//

it is to grow up under her father’s watchful eye, hoping to be disappointed in a way different from her mother//

& to craft her face to fit the era//

to make a girl sculpted by a sculptor//

written by a writer//

painted by a painter//

& directed by the man//

to sit and to wait to be his muse//

to long to launch a thousand ships//

and never once to travel outside his home//

and it is to feel the purest emotion//

love without any expectation of response//

she kisses a man at the altar for the first time as his bride//

& has her soul tied to his in heaven//

as pronounced “man and wife”//

by a priest with vested powers that her body could never brandish//

for she could never marry//

only be married//

and it is to feel the purest emotion//

love without any expectation of respect//

to offer herself as a basin//

to hold but never cling to//

to carry but never take from//

to bring forth but never lead//

and it is to feel the purest emotion//

love without any expectation of release//

to lay with him without being satisfied//

& to lie without satisfaction//

to pray for a son//

but hope for a daughter//

she holds her mother’s hand while her husband expects stronger from afar//

& she gifts him his legacy//

she abandons her father’s name//

& she’ll be forgotten by her great grandchildren//

and it is to feel the purest emotion//

love without any expectation of remembrance//

she’ll do the same as her mother before and her daughter after//

“nothing spectacular”//

and i know how to be loved as a patriarchal man//

it is to never acknowledge tragedy//

and it is to feel the most adulterated emotion//

love without any execution of retaliation//

he’ll do the same as his father before and his son after//

nothing.

#bad poetry #artists on tumblr #feminist poem #mothers #sad poem

[badbpdpoetry]

eldest daughter

the eldest daughter can mercilessly try to be her father’s son. she can mock her mother in vein attempts to disinherit her mother’s traits which her father hates. yet even if she eschews her mother’s every feminine flaw, she cannot avoid becoming what her father despises most: his own arrogance reflected in a woman.

#eldest daughter #bad poetry #feminism #transgender #artists on tumblr

[badbpdpoetry]

Catholic Dialectics (a notes app poem)

they say jesus was truly god and truly man

did jesus ever feel alone with his creations

among the friends he made as a man

among the friends he made as a god

among the souls he crafted in the bodies he shaped

did he ever yearn for the touch of a woman who descended from the rib of a man he broke

did he ever cry out to a mother who would disappoint with indifference

how could he when he forged a sinless woman with a lobotomized soul to carry him

how could he feel the powerlessness of humanity

when he knows every person’s most lost inner thoughts and every child’s last breathing action

god knows no betrayal, only consequence

for to be man is to realize one will never be god

#artists on tumblr #bad poetry #catholic #religious trauma

[badbpdpoetry]

wrote this in a sudden fit after waking up at 2am

#notes app #bad poetry