spinmebreathless

[spinmebreathless]

show, don't tell:

anticipation - bouncing legs - darting eyes - breathing deeply - useless / mindless tasks - eyes on the clock - checking and re-checking

frustration - grumbling - heavy footsteps - hot flush - narrowed eyes - pointing fingers - pacing / stomping

sadness - eyes filling up with tears - blinking quickly - hiccuped breaths - face turned away - red / burning cheeks - short sentences with gulps

happiness - smiling / cheeks hurting - animated - chest hurts from laughing - rapid movements - eye contact - quick speaking

boredom - complaining - sighing - grumbling - pacing - leg bouncing - picking at nails

fear - quick heartbeat - shaking / clammy hands - pinching self - tuck away - closing eyes - clenched hands

disappointment - no eye contact - hard swallow - clenched hands - tears, occasionally - mhm-hmm

tiredness - spacing out - eyes closing - nodding head absently - long sighs - no eye contact - grim smile

confidence - prolonged eye contact - appreciates instead of apologizing - active listening - shoulders back - micro reactions

#useful for acting too #ref

[spinmebreathless]

Paris, Paris

I can't seem to escape my own poetry.

I walk outside on a spring day and my brain delivers:

grey cobblestones lick grey air

That's not exactly it because it's been so long

but maybe it's time I rewrite my own poetry.

maybe that's the only way to move past these words that cling to me

like grey stones to grey air

like lavender skies above lines of beige

like flowers in a garden I've never walked through

maybe there's more to discover, 10 years later

I know, I know, I knew

but last time I was here, I was a poet and a writer.

maybe I must rewrite this whole city

to love it like it's mine again.

#Paris #writer problems #poetry

[spinmebreathless]

This is very good and accurate

i have spent a few days listening to the music you like. you have a tattoo of the band's logo on your ribs. you got it when you were still kind of a kid. my first tattoo was a bird instead. i did the math - we got our first tattoos in the same calendar year. isn't that kind of cool.

my mom loves hallmark movies, so i grew up thinking love would look like a firework. it feels like one, after all. it's just that my house wasn't safe. i thought love was a weapon, could be pointed at your eyes. could lose a finger to it, or teeth. my father used to say passion is everything. i thought that meant constant fighting was a good thing. i thought that meant love looked like a week of bickering, because it was worth the the weekend's boombox apology. i thought quiet love was boring. i thought love had to blot out everything, compel the body and the mind like puppetry. i thought love looks like ruining your own dinner table - but at least you set a feast.

but love looks like a scarf. your hands smoothing it down my chest, being sure each of the edges are tucked in, worried about my asthma attacks being cold-activated. i race you while i'm wearing heels, you hold my hand to guide me downhill while walking my dog. we dance in my living room to waltz of the flowers, i show you how to hold your arms in proper ballet port de bras. you write a song about looking out of my window while the snow falls. i ask you to text my friends back while i'm driving. you play dj in the front seat. somewhere on route 93, we start murmuring about secret things.

oh. there is a difference between peace and dispassion. it was never that i feared quiet, it's that i didn't know what safe felt like. i liked the chaos because it was familiar, not because it was kind. i think i used to fear the word wife. i didn't like the idea of long, lonely days and being yelled at for small things. i didn't like the idea of sacrificing my one beautiful life.

you meet my friends and make a point to learn things about them. we both get excited about the other person's passions. you read my book for hours, squinting at the small words. i try to understand basic guitar information. we talk for four hours on the phone while i string together a garland. we talk for six hours while you write a poem. i save a pintrest tip for the summer about making paper kites. i plan us a week-long trip to maine, map out my favorite places for an eventual hike. you fall asleep on the ride home, and i turn down the radio so it won't wake you up. your quiet hands fold over mine.

when i look up, the stars are brighter. how carefully you've woven gold into the corners of my life. when i move, i feel some part of my soul reflected back onto you.

oh, love is not a net. it's a blanket.

#romance #love

[spinmebreathless]

pt ii -

I am a reptile dreaming of vivider skin

now what?

this is a good prompt for later lol come back and edit this when you feel like it

an update:

in theatre school,

I have spent two years

learning to breathe with my whole body

instead of stopping up my breath at the solar plexus

that tender membrane between the heart and the gut

I have spent two years

learning to say my own name

instead of repeating the echo of someone else's naming

I am preparing

to unpeel myself like a reptile dreaming of vivider skin

I think maybe all I have to do

is breathe out the soles of my feet

and notice

I have always only ever been

a creature of the dirt

mouth open to the sky

[spinmebreathless]

an update:

in theatre school,

I have spent two years

learning to breathe with my whole body

instead of stopping up my breath at the solar plexus

that tender membrane between the heart and the gut

I have spent two years

learning to say my own name

instead of repeating the echo of someone else's naming

I am preparing

to unpeel myself like a reptile dreaming of vivider skin

I think maybe all I have to do

is breathe out the soles of my feet

and notice

I have always only ever been

a creature of the dirt

mouth open to the sky

#on the spot #writing #spilled ink #acting #theatre school #poem

[spinmebreathless]

3:48pm PST, in a WeWork bathroom stall

Do you ever feel like ripping the skin from your body? Unpeeling yourself like a blood orange So you can finally just bleed on the countertop Stain everybody's clothes Get them to walk away swearing Running for their Tide sticks

Give me my bones Meat still on Soul still writhing inside. I don't want to die sanitized I don't want to live like a polyurethane kitchen I want to explode like a fuckin smoothie in a blender with the top unsealed

I'm tired, tired of writing emails to say the same thing over and over again. I don't care, so I should just stop trying to do a better job than yesterday's me and today's everybody else. But what would I be then? Instead of a whirling dervish, spinning into a higher plane and going nowhere. I'd be a polyurethane kitchen. And that's worse. Isn't it?

I'm wasting energy and also fucks.

#hi it's been forever #this is my life now #just this over and over and over #poetry #ish #writing #words #i don't remember what the tags i used to use are anymore

[spinmebreathless]

I want to be more than what I am. I will be more than what I can be. I am whispering into willows and finding a future in content marketing, computational linguistics, anything legit enough that you need to Google it. If a child understands your job then are you really an adult? At my core I want to be a creator, but I don't create. And it's so easy to And it's so hard to Believe that it's okay to make stupid, shitty things That not everything has to be meaningful That meaningless things can still be valuable That things can have no value but still be worthwhile That things can have no worth but still be meaningful

I want to be a creator But I'm afraid to create It's hard Or maybe it's too easy And it seems like it should be hard It should be impossible To create anything good enough to be worth its own existence But a lot of people have decided human babies are worthwhile just by virtue of existing Of having been created, something from nothing Of their potential to mean more than what they are to another being To be a butterfly in a sandstorm Just keeping a few grains aloft on its wings As it slowly dies And the sandstorm rages on, Just a few grains off-kilter.

That Matters

#poetry #creating #wrote this in december but it feels like the best way of summarizing the way i've felt and haven't stopped feeling since then #art #how do i life

[spinmebreathless]

i looked in your collarbones

for my potential

but found your bruises sweeter

#poetry #poems #spilled ink #lol as if i'm still trying to have a presence as a writer on tumblr lololol #on a dead tag #wow should write a poem about that #and then tag it #goddamn

[spinmebreathless]

Message to my former self

Good morning, love.

Here is what I used to be:   -an orange cloud   -purple rain -the blade of an x-acto knife -afraid and confident -blueandviolet -red ink leaking from a pen between the folds of a fine white cashmere scarf -a cold-air balloon -an entire earth -a girl staring into the ocean and drowning in the fact that the water extended beyond her sightlines. -a small, ridiculous, singing fool -a pink cloud -a baby blue cloud -a purple magnet -a notepad with every white space filled in with words, signifying nothing -too many too many words

Here is what I am now:  

-an empty telegraph -a figure standing 3 feet from the edge of a cliff -a brain in a vat -an octopus scouring the ocean floor -a lost water bottle -a polka-dotted beach ball -one tendril from a weeping willow -an empty, stamped, unaddressed envelope -a restless napkin floating above a city -a floodlight on a white wall -a small black peppercorn of fear that I keep frosting over with white buttercream and multicolored sprinkles I don't even like -everything sweet still tastes a tiny bit of pepper. -an orange cloud waiting for rain

Written 10.14.2016

#poetry #writing #poems #i guess #spilled ink #do people even still use that tag?

[spinmebreathless]

leftover love

I think I haven’t been writing poetry because talking to you feels like poetry. Like something warm spilling directly from my heart into yours. Even when the words are too hot. Maybe they scald you. Maybe you’ll never recover from the burns. Maybe you wear those scars, where the flesh has smoothed and knotted over like curdled cream, like a keepsake. Like your grandmother’s shawl, losing its colors in your closet but once in a while on an evening when you’re feeling lonely, you’ll wrap the memory around you like it’s still alive. To see if this love still fits. To see if we still fit in all the nooks and crannies of each other’s hearts.

I lose my metaphors in writing and I lose my wits in you.

#chronicles of a lover #poetry #rambles #spilled ink

[spinmebreathless]

I want to be edgy as fuck but I’m not.

I want to walk to the end of the earth and keep walking like nobody’s business  Like Wile E Coyote still thinks he has somewhere to go.

I want to stand on the edge of the grand canyon, having ripped through all the ropes and scream the name of a stranger i will never meet.

I want the water from a river to leave its bed and curl around my legs like an Indian cobra entranced by my guile and my grand, silent magnetism.

I want to walk full-footed along the edge of the world Soles too worn for coals, soul too chilled to freeze I befriend only the midnight air.

Ephemerally infinite,   I am indestructible and never quite anywhere Loving ghostlike humans in their dreams.

#poetry #poems

[spinmebreathless]

Revoco

NaPoWriMo Day 1 (yeah 3 days late)

write anything that doesn’t start

“I have been”

all my words are stale

but trees whip my windows

leave their leaves

on my photos of mountains

art circumscribes me

still. my blood

beats red inside me

#napowrimo #finally- here i go #poetry #glopowrimo

[spinmebreathless]

oh

I’ve been trying to find a poem that will explain to me how the lines of your face sweep into monuments that seem to spell  something greater than home But your face before me haunts me I could not net and capture with words infinite implicit poetry in the outlines of your eyes, the brown that bleeds into your lips, the way you look up at me as your heavy head rests in my lap while I smooth my thumb over the rise of your cheekbones.

You are not the lover I ever imagined and I am all the more thankful to be in love with a human and not a dream.

#poetry #poems #spilled ink #love #rejectscorner #chronicles of a lover

[spinmebreathless]

in retrospect

the other reason I needed that final kiss from you was that

that is the only Ariadne's string I know.  If I can tie my red lips to your brown cheek that one last time I might be able to remember all this mythology

without it you dissolve like a tablet of Pepto-Bismal dusty,    white,    making the water seem for a moment to scintillate good to solve a few hollow stomach aches and then what?

I can forget.  Remember that. I, of all people Have learned to forget.

#terrible truths #poetry #poems #chronicles of a lover #spilled ink

[spinmebreathless]

I am not sure

where I am holding myself

twiddling my thumbs half-hoping

to brush against the strings that will pull out my emptinesses,

lure me back into existence on a better plane.

I don't think I need reality with a capital R anymore,

and that, for me, might be dangerous.

Almost as dangerous as capitalizing it.

You see this boy has been pervading me

This boy has begun to install his being in my bones

And I have started hoping for another kind of home-

[whisper: (danger danger danger) caution-don't you see the red and yellow lights blinking on the tips of your eyelashes?]

I am still myself.

But all my jeans have ripped by now and I'm not sure where to find new ones

The woman on the phone agreed my Lucky flares are out of style and i

I'd better go find self-respect somewhere else.

Nah- I'll keep wearing them,

clinging to threads leftover from when

"Lucky Me" sewn into the fly was a witticism beyond myself

and I thought they were too snug to slip anyone's hand

underneath.

Where have I gone?

Am I still

in spaces ?

Have my muses turned to face white walls while I strip them of lament?

Maybe I've been straining toward another's mind

and abandoned my own?

I never had any muses in the first place.

just a warbling heart.

trying to find its body

in all this blood.

#poetry #spilled ink #poem

[spinmebreathless]

#love #chronicles of a lover #poetry #poem #spilled ink

[spinmebreathless]

so I guess I fell for the possibility of connection, again, like there's something to gain from tracing the outlines of someone else's bedroom closet with my fingertips, from inhaling the darkness seeping through the cracks between their doors, from placing my palm full and flat against their walls like a prayer and promising to hold it there until their monsters come out to play so I can kiss them goodnight and tuck them into the graveyard of knives people have nearly forgotten used to nick another organ each time they shifted their rib cage. So let me run my hands around the rim of your cavities until they numb, until you cannot even retain feel of my skin when I disappear.

#poetry #poem #new poets society #spilled ink #rejectscorner #connection #relationships #shit what am i #finally wrote something though #chronicles of a lover