erinlbowe

[erinlbowe]

With nothing to prove and all to gain, you can go through life like a hurricane.

#prose #journal #i've recently undergone a spiritual resurgence #everything feels brand new now #a clarity and calm that I've been needing for years #feeling perhaps the most powerful I've ever felt in my life #like nothing's in my way #poetry #journaling #confessional poetry #prose poetry #original prose #spilled ink #poets and writers #prose poem #also rereading mrs dalloway for the 4th time

[erinlbowe]

Please play this when I am lowered into the earth thank you

#father john misty #buddy's rendezvous #lana del rey #I am listening to this on full repeat #and forcing everyone within a ten mile radius to listen #the lyrics #the orchestra #the story #the song has a deceptive simplicity #chef's fucking kiss #Spotify

[erinlbowe]

Heat Wave Over Boston

The heat is life-changing. Glaring red streaks of lightning that crack into your skull and shake down your bones to that sizzling concrete. In your scorched state there is a clarity, an empty epiphany that fills your mind with that white heat.

And you think of poets gone mad.

We took our trip to Boston, to study the art of Chinatown bakeries. With a grin, he called it corporate espionage. I called it a suicide mission, imagining the city haze baking us with the throng of bodies. But I enjoyed the strangers in the subway, the old dark houses of the Back Bay.

In Chinatown we wandered up the stairs of an abandoned-looking storefront and found ourselves in a colorful theater room with grand murals and tables upon tables, as if for an army. And there we let dim sum revive us from the miles walked in that sun.

#journal #journaling #boston #chinatown #back bay #boston back bay #boston writers #sylvia plath #anne sexton #robert lowell #confessional poetry #my poor pale flesh is melting off my body wtf #i'm suing the sun #i'm loving the writing inspiration but for what #i'm feeling like an extra crispy piece of bacon

[erinlbowe]

It’s just when you need your strength – mental, physical – that you sometimes feel the worst comedown. That’s burnout. That’s when you throw your hands up and retreat. To your shelter. Take a walk immersed in music or the sounds of birds. Sit with Virginia Woolf and Malbec. Lose the world in your comfort sitcom. Write on those Great Questions that are burning in your mind at night. Break from what is draining you. It will be there when you’re ready to pick it up again.

And you will come back to it refreshed and with enthusiasm. You only get that when you catch it early. When you hit the wall and decide to not climb over it – even if you want to. Especially if you want to. Because sometimes you want to work yourself into the ground. Do you seek some sick award? Maybe you revel in the feeling of exhaustion – maybe it makes you feel important.

No, no, stop at the wall and rest. It is not good to find it a Wednesday in the early afternoon and think ‘my God, I am drained because I worked all weekend.’

It’s constantly playing this game with yourself. Will you let yourself rest? Will you decide you deserve it? But really – what could you possibly have done to not deserve it?

#journal #journaling #I never did subscribe to grind culture #but when you are self-employed it's all too easy to work yourself to death #so ask yourself: would you let an employee of yourrs never take a break? #of course not duh so why would you do that to yourself #i think i am being too extra in the tags my b #self employed #grind culture #workaholic #take a break #be kind to yourself #virginia woolf

[erinlbowe]

4th of July, 2022

Bitter is the woman, who is told she is free, for freedom has lost its meaning in this country.

Free is a word without loyalty, without feeling – it comes out halting on the tongue and falls in a dark, disappearing smokescreen to the ground. It will mean something else tomorrow. And again it will mean the opposite the next day. On and on we are crushed with the trampling shouts of a country that opens our mouths and shoves down our throats a pill coated with that bitter lie: you are free. Thank God you live in such a country as this that you are free. Thank us that you are free. Worship us that you are free.

And so many celebrate. So many cheer. When they know, they know that not all are free.

Not all are free.

Children light the sparklers in the yard to commemorate our country won with grit and blood and death.

With the light of freedom gone out once more, we shall call on them – on all – to rekindle the savagery that once overthrew tyranny and shed blood in the name of liberty.

#roe v wade overturned #roe versus wade #roe v wade #roe vs wade #womens rights #fourth of july #4th of july #independence day #freedom #tyranny #the united states is a fucking joke of a country and it has been for years #go fuck yourself amercia #supreme court #journal #people with no brain cells do not interact #aint nobody got time for yalls bufoonery #sic semper tyrannis #death to tyrants

[erinlbowe]

Plum Island

The gulls dip low across the sand, Pass the dunes, and head Into a vacant shopping lot. The tourists have grown wary Of their sneaky little games.

So now they peck At stale fries on painted lines And wait until the tide is low and high.

Until they choose to circle back To terrorize afresh The new beach-comers And the ones too spent To give a damn If a bird should take their lunch.

#poetry #original poetry #journal #plum island #newburyport #july 2022 #boston poets club #is it great no #is it something yes #overcoming perfectionism is my key to writing more often #not obsessing over whether its good or whether i can spend the next 3 hrs making it perfect #i still have a lot of work to do on this point #for now i am just happy to write and happy to be bold enough to share #writers block

[erinlbowe]

June 29th, 2022 Wednesday 7:26 pm

The sticky, sweet drumming of air on these summer mornings make me feel like I’ve walked out of the north and into a Florida fever dream. I still wear black jeans – with a tank top of course.

I like the days and nights when I’m not anxious – worried about this or that deal, will my clients be happy, when’s that damned appraisal coming in? I worked too late yesterday, and the thoughts followed me to bed and pounded against my heart.

In the others, I am riding on the top of a wave, living something like a New England dream. A quiet Kentucky girl never imagined this future. But here we are: straddling the lines of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, hustling to sell houses, a hint of red lipstick, Hall and Oates, amaretto sours (stronger by the glass).

And the next morning its back to building business and dreaming of moving out west of Nashua. The rest of the world has not discovered Temple yet, but it is full of forests and dirt roads and the wisest of old New England money.  To build a fortress all our own, away from the crumbling of our culture…… the idea seems almost too idyllic to exist. But a vision of paradise can never leave your mind for long.

#journaling #journal #confessional #new england #new england writers #confessional writing #far caspian #a dream of you #Spotify #dream pop

[erinlbowe]

I came onto tumblr to journal, wrote one "political" thing, and got bombarded by men who thought I would actually give weight to their opinion on what women should do with their own bodies.

So let me just say

I do not give any weight to your opinion

I have a limited number of breaths in this life, and I will not waste any of them replying to you

If I met you in real life, I'm sure you would be just as creepy and arrogant as you come across online. For that reason, I would avoid you like the plague. The online equivalent of that is blocking.

#and that's that on that

[erinlbowe]

Bork??????? Weaponized the supreme court? This has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

2. "we didn't have the mass school shooting issue until you gun controllers decided to fix things" --- this is just historically incorrect

3. Your third point lacks sentence structure, a point, and logical reasoning

It is clear that you are probably in middle or high school and are reguritating a nonsensical collection of nonfactual phrases.

Your words are non sequiturs. Drivel.

The fact that you would even try to start an argument when you can't even write a sentence is mind-boggling to me.

Quit wasting my time and get off my blog.

June 27, 2022 6:46 pm Monday

What year is it? They took away our voices and took away our strentgth, our progress, our colors. They shoved us back into the cell of the past. Anger is not enough of a word to describe the stabbing grief of such a dehumanizing act of these false black robes. A collection of undiscernible cells carries more value here than you, woman. When the child we forced you to birth is mowed down five years later in his math class – we will roll on the ground screaming about our rights. They do matter more than yours of course. Our right to control the life and death of a human is okay. We may protect out body and our future. But you may not.

We control you, woman. We hate you, woman. Take up your hanger and walk.

#roe v wade #roe vs wade #roe v wade overturned

[erinlbowe]

Your response lacks coherence.

Please tell me

How "my conditons" are "acceptable."

How I or women created a "crisis"

Where the goddamn fuck I asked for a man's opinion on women's rights

June 27, 2022 6:46 pm Monday

What year is it? They took away our voices and took away our strentgth, our progress, our colors. They shoved us back into the cell of the past. Anger is not enough of a word to describe the stabbing grief of such a dehumanizing act of these false black robes. A collection of undiscernible cells carries more value here than you, woman. When the child we forced you to birth is mowed down five years later in his math class – we will roll on the ground screaming about our rights. They do matter more than yours of course. Our right to control the life and death of a human is okay. We may protect out body and our future. But you may not.

We control you, woman. We hate you, woman. Take up your hanger and walk.

#roe versus wade #roe v wade #roe v wade overturned

[erinlbowe]

June 27, 2022 6:46 pm Monday

What year is it? They took away our voices and took away our strentgth, our progress, our colors. They shoved us back into the cell of the past. Anger is not enough of a word to describe the stabbing grief of such a dehumanizing act of these false black robes. A collection of undiscernible cells carries more value here than you, woman. When the child we forced you to birth is mowed down five years later in his math class – we will roll on the ground screaming about our rights. They do matter more than yours of course. Our right to control the life and death of a human is okay. We may protect out body and our future. But you may not.

We control you, woman. We hate you, woman. Take up your hanger and walk.

#roe versus wade #roe v wade #reproductive rights #pro chocie #womens rights #this means war #roe vs wade #roe v wade overturned #i've had burritos more supreme than this court #this is war #gun control #supreme court #supreme court can eat shit

[erinlbowe]

June 17, 2022

Sonorous. Summer. It’s the season where all my old lives come back to me. Who I was. Who I am. Who I am becoming.

Pulsing New England heat and my endless indulgent playlists. I imagine that the sweat pouring off of me is only fear.

As I’m clearing out a house to sell, the old man at the transfer station tells me of a long-dead Realtor that used to play helpless when she stopped to dump her trash. Cackling in sun, my too-big sunglasses slide down my nose.

But then I’m gone and waiting for the light to fade though it’s late, late, late. I go to sleep early so I don’t have to face the night.

It’s Saturday tomorrow, but a working day for me. I wish I could tell these new buyers – probably as young as me – that we will all be alright, but each revolution of our sun makes me swallow the words deeper and deeper. We’re all sweating together, but I find myself shivering at the same time.

#journaling #i hate the heat but it forces me to write #can i commit lol lets see #not me getting on tumblr after 4 years just to keep myself accountable #i am too old for this shit #confessional poetry #confessional