sagecircles

[sagecircles]

lunar

moon-faced, starry-eyed, crescent-lipped

dusky beauty caged in a prison of mortal flesh

so much more than a human “pretty”—splashes of

watercolor, painting twilight with her

nebula freckles, sketching the raceways of

asteroids as her cheekbones

drawn to her as waves chase a distant moon

drawn to me as blackholes ensnare their next victims

[sagecircles]

saccharine

Coarse lips of summer, wafting tangerine

Easy half-smiles and laughs so saccharine

You’re sunlit, gold; my fingers tangled in your hair

Strumming at the locks, our melodies on guitar strings

#poem #poetry #Love Poetry #poets corner #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #prose #music #guitar #summer #inkstay

[sagecircles]

andromeda

The stars know about you.

---

They hear your name when I tip my head

To the expanses of the sky,

Whispering your name

Like a prayer.

---

They see themselves in your twilight eyes,

See their siblings glittering in

The dark of your 

Mosaic irises.

----

They feel the pads of your fingertips when

Your hands go grasping, tickling

The underbelly of dusk as you

Reach for them.

---

And one day, when you’re long gone

Your body a scattering of stardust on 

Parched winds, the stars will remember you,

Painted in a constellation.

#poem #poetry #love poetry #wlw #astronomy #constellation #astrology #stars #zodic signs #prose #inkstay #spilled ink

[sagecircles]

“santa muerte:”

Like a lark, she sang for him. Soared and spun into crimson currents doomed to spill out into sewers and moss-kissed wells. She listened. Obeyed. Held his hand through waves of night. Scoured ruins and remnants of scattered, sunken gold,

all to be told that the light casting fractals upon the mouths of tunnels was little more than a mirage;

little more than a cheap whistle for a songbird whose wings were obediently clipped, whose eyes and mouth and hands were tied to bows of ships, like a prized beast seized from the belly of the sea;

wet scales gleaming under afternoon light, eyes sensuous and hooded to mask the sting of her plight, lips red as rouge and inviting as sin, parting to taste the salt in the air, leaving records of his audaciousness streaking over his skin.

- Bri Stokes, 2021

[sagecircles]

Wanderlust,

Free me from my captivity

Take me to faraway, forgotten lands

So I may watch the sun rise and set with a new set of inner eyes

To see constellations more clearly, to lie on alien grass

A psychological refugee seeking an asylum of sanctity

[sagecircles]

lunar

moon-faced, starry-eyed, crescent-lipped

dusky beauty caged in a prison of mortal flesh

so much more than a human “pretty”—splashes of

watercolor, painting twilight with her

nebula freckles, sketching the raceways of

asteroids as her cheekbones

drawn to her as waves chase a distant moon

drawn to me as blackholes ensnare their next victims

#writeblr #poem #poetry #love poetry #prose #pride #astronomy #moon #spilled ink #inkstay #wlw

[sagecircles]

appendage

Ghost fingers dancing along collarbones

Waltzing, hinting, inches from the line

Between caressing and choking

--

The memory of you, a pretty little phantom 

An imaginary friend, or perhaps a

Curse, tied to me like my shadow.

--

Like wet footprints printing my path 

After a rainy day, you follow

The border between haunting and a guided blessing

Blurs until you are just another rainy shadow,

Until I question whether or not I wish to escape you.

--

I question whether or not I can.

#prose #poetry #poets of tumblr #spilled ink #inkstay #spilled thoughts #dark academia #rain #love poetry #lonely #ghost #memories #sad #poem #creative writing #writeblr #writingthestorm #storm

[sagecircles]

Bury me in the graveyard of your memories, let me wander with the phantoms of all the others you've left haunted.

sagecircles (2021)

#heart been broke so many times #quote #love quote #poem #love poetry #poetry #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #dark academia #writeblr #inkstay #heartbreak #prose #writingthestorm

[sagecircles]

To truly live is to paint our memories in the colors of our dreams.

sagecircles (2021)

#prose #quote #dreams #poem #poetry #writeblr #writing #life quotes #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #inkstay

[sagecircles]

Here I am too small to be significant, but am content nonetheless: for here I am just another work of art on display.

sagecircles (2021, excerpt from “louvre”)

#see the double meaning on content ahaha #prose #writing #writeblr #creative writing #art #louvre #museumlover #gallery #dark academia

[sagecircles]

human

wear a mask as you wish, shield your smiles from the surface, 

hide rosy cheeks and glossy eyes and 

every frustration

every grin

reduced to your little side-smirks

nothing but a quirking of your lip, a wrinkle of your cheek

flare your nostrils to stop heat rising 

up your neck

tense your fingers to hold back laughs

impassive, stoic, expressionless beyond furrowed brows

and stern stares: statue of a face

you are losing

the beauty of being human

by covering your vulnerability with emotionless clay

becoming a sculpture

your heart

loses pitter-patter

of when they look at you for 

a moment too long

your lungs

loses quick gasps of air

of when laughter overtakes control, when 

wheezing is endless

your stomach

loses fluttering butterflies

of when hands brush a moment and skin alights

with storybook sparks

your soul

you try to protect 

with your sculptor’s face and emotional armor

encircling a tender girl

your life

is slipping between your fingers

when you try to erase what makes you human.

#prose #writeblr #creative writing #writing #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #mask #poem #poets of tumblr #poetry

[sagecircles]

vessel

Starry little souls locked in cages of flesh and bone, forever cursed to the restraints of a mortal form. Golden heartstrings puppeteer corpses—so many feelings, so few expressions. Dreams float through minds of stardust and moonlight, but few of our thoughts ever make it past the walls of our earthling body.

#prose #creative writing #writeblr #writing #poets of tumblr #dreams #bipoc authors #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[sagecircles]

distance

Movies in my mind—you are the star,

Hollywood’s greatest, you infiltrate

Every scene of my day,

Dominate my silver screen.

----

Ballads burned through my brain,

An epic of you, your most

Mundane nonetheless lyricized,

Top every chart of my thoughts.

---

Photographs, ornately framed,

You’re the main attraction of my gallery, 

How the audience of my thoughts crowd before your likeness,

Key exhibit in my museum.

---

My eyes can always find you, glowing with

Lunar ichor and the laugh of a thousand suns,

A wildflower in a field of weeds,

Petals against drying grass blades.

---

Wishing for a cameo in your trailer,

Yearning for a verse in your song,

Longing to be a painted smudge in your background,

When will I be a sprout in your meadow?

#poem #poetry #prose #writeblr #spilled ink #love #pining #lonely #writing #poets of tumblr

[sagecircles]

bruise

sleeping angels weep, 

tossing, turning, restless sleep

halos of bruises purple under eyes

strands of time rushing by, no time for counting sheep

youth wasted, withered, wrinkled away

slaving, starving, sleepless: finals are in May

the surface is slipping through fingers, 

we drown beneath the waves of expectations’ bay

bodies break: knees crackle and feet swell

brains break: begging for break, begging for each period’s bells

an endless cycle; reincarnated without life, but with tests in hand

hearts break: how to care for yourself, when you feel so unwell?

halos of bruises purple under eyes

grains of sleep stolen as we try to pry

our lives from the jaws of schoolyard seasons

my time is theirs, my future isn’t even mine.

#poem #spilled ink #school #finals #finals season #poetry #writeblr #creative writing #writing #sleep

[sagecircles]

writer’s lens

A peculiar thing, the writer’s lens, the oculus through which an author sees the world. An invisible pair of tortoise-shell glasses perched on the bridge of their nose, building and correcting and enhancing with each piece of prose. Every flick of ballpoint pen, scratch of pencil, click-clack of keyboard brings a new clarity to the writer’s viewpoint; they morph pebbles to mountains, drainage to rivers, dusty floors to starry night skies bursting with promise. A telescope to create small things into big ideas, a portal of the mundane to dreamlands, every writer has their own tortoise-shell glasses: it’s a different way we see the world.

#prose #writing #writeblr #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[sagecircles]

pride

to carry myself with the pride of

Leo moons and ascendants

to be stubborn and stoic as

Capricorn suns

and to still shield an underbelly of a child’s sensitivity,

is a paradox of soulless masks or maskless souls or masks and souls or neither

to carry yourself with temper and cold

fire and ice converged

to be passive and cruel as

a million shards of glass

is a recipe for broken hearts and screams and cries

and children hiding under blankets

thousands of tiny cuts: too small to complain,

but after the first hundred, the wound is bleeding

and tears are falling, salt stinging flesh.

the cumulative wound undermined 

by your sharp words: you twist the knife

“why are you crying about something so little?”

excitement drips from teenage smiles

i have done this and this and this 

burning scorches teenage cheeks

as you say that and that and that 

can’t there be “I’m proud of you” without “but?”

all for you, all for your pride

all for “but she can too,” all for “have you heard about what he’s done?”

all to be second-best, least favorite, hardest-working, least rewarded

all to have taken the lesser of your genes, of your interest

today i ran to you, cheering

i had won

today i ran from you, sniffling

you reminded me i had lost

today i hide from you, crying

i write this thinking i am not enough

#poem #poetry #poetwhispers #spilled ink #prose #creative writing #writeblr #poets of tumblr #pride #tears

[sagecircles]

gold and silver

I should choose the golden boy,

Beloved by all, enemy to none,

Seducing his peers with honeyed words,

Slow, rich, and sweet on the baritone voice 

Of trumpets and symphony.

Eyes flit across cheekbones of chiseled sculpture,

Linger over brassy hair and sunkissed skin and 

Ogle at smiles brighter than dawn.

Modern Adonis, high school Achilles, a god amongst a Californian public school.

Every greeting drips with ichor, every goodbye promises a new sunrise.

Brilliant is he, the type of presence that leaves you aching

For more, begging to further bask in dandelion rays, praying

That he stays until your skin hisses

And your nose dots with freckles and your face 

Goes scarlet, from blushing or sunburn, whichever comes first.

Instead, I can’t look away from the silver girl,

Enemies aplenty, how they shy

From the quick lashes of a sharp tongue.

A roaring tempest trapped within a mortal’s body: 

Waves crashing, stretching, longing to grasp the moon.

Bruised under eyes like an eclipse, eyes stormy and winged 

With the paint of a cloudy night sky.

Skin white as bone, hair pale and glimmering as stars,

Anger bright as nebulas, face gaunt as the jagged facets of the tiered

Crystal she loops around her neck,

A constant reminder that she is perfectly imperfectly human.

Words drift from her mouth in hurried eddies and tides and rushes and streams,

So much to say, so little mortal time to say it, 

And how her smirks and side-eyes twinkle on a face of lunar indifference.

The silver girl makes you stay with her humanity,

With quick quips that pitter-patter your heart and bring your pulse

Racing through eardrums and blood roars when she scoffs,

She reminds you that you, too, are human.

#prose #poem #poetry #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #ink #literature #writing #creative writing #writeblr #poets of tumblr