thetrashbirdfiles-blog

[thetrashbirdfiles-blog]

based on the prompt: aspire

***It should say thetrashbirdfiles.tumblr.com

Apparently I can’t remember my own url. Maybe I’ll see if I can delete the “the” since I never remember it.

#poetry #poem #short poem #short poetry #love #self sacrifice #lights #poets on tumblr #poets of tumblr #relationships #how to love #aspire #i want

[thetrashbirdfiles-blog]

Issue One, Part Two

[thetrashbirdfiles-blog]

My poem "How I Survived" is published here. I'm reading through the issue and you should check it out. There's a lot of cool stuff in here.

Issue One is now live! We will have individual pieces posted shortly, but for now feel free to check out parts one and two on Canva!

[thetrashbirdfiles-blog]

Dear poet,

The only redemption is myself and that is not enough for me to sleep, for me to dream of gold kissed leaves and sainthood.

#dear poet #spilled ink #spilled ink poetry #poetry #poem #spilled ink poem #original writing #poets on tumblr #new poets on tumblr #poets of tumblr #redemption #poet as god #diary #excerpt from a book i'll never write #forgiveness #being a better person #micropoetry #micropoem #short poem #short poetry

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Dear poet,

How do I  exculpate the executioner without a time machine, without killing myself?

#suicide tw #dear poet #poetry #poem #poets on tumblr #poets of tumblr #remorse #redeption #forgiveness #writing #new poets on tumblr #original writing #poems #dear god #poet as god #dear universe #life questions #spilled ink #diary

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Dear fellow White Poet,

A year ago I wrote a poem after Dylann Roof opened fire to a church and took lives, but not love. Not love as: mourners, protesters victims, survivors, orphans, widows. Not love as: fundraisers, flowers, water, tears, soft hands, soft words, revolutionary words so big they were actually tiny pebbles in our shoes. Not love as: god. 

I don’t care about how light can’t exist without dark. I don’t care about free will and Lucifer rebelling and writing sin, I don’t care about Adam and Eve. I don’t care about Eve’s downfall because she was flawed and gave into temptation, because she was what God intended her to be: a human.

I don’t care about justifying it as “we’re all human”. I don’t care about recognizing complexity is recognizing humanity. I don’t care if you think humanity is the definition of depravity or resilience. I don’t care about condemning humanity when we don’t put the word “White” in front of it.

I don’t care about the White God that is supposed to be love created but faults the Black God and his children’s existence. I don’t care about the White God who asks the dead to believe in White humanity, just one more time.

I always said humans are God, and I still think so: We create in hollowed love that is the barrel of a gun. We kill through the very same barrel, with bones and muscle and skin we weave into Bleached hands that are so big the White swallows the gun, the bullet, the body, the devastation so we don’t have to see.

We question why no God stepped in. But whose God? Is it yours? Is he as white as a sterile hospital his victims never got to see? Is it you?

#poetry #poets on tumblr #poem #racism #alllivesmatter #all lives matter #writing #writing on tumblr #dear poet #dear people #dear fellow white people #white people #fellow white people #if you're wondering why i've tagged all lives matter it's not because i agree with it #it's because i hope someone in that tag who believes in that tag sees this

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Poet-

Today I missed them not as a concept, but as the people they were in my life.

But those people don’t exist anymore either.

Time pushed forward even when I remained stuck on the sign on the road flashing orange “sorry” Timing my blinks so my eyes opened when the sign was blank, and closed when it wasn’t. So who am I missing?

Is it time to turn my back  to the never ending “sorry”?

Is this what they call moving forward?

#break ups #heartbreak #moving on #loss of friendship #losing friends #broken heart #loss #grief #poetry #poem #writers on tumblr #poets on tumblr #dear poet #the poet as god

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dear Poet

What should I do?

Ask yourself. you are a poet as well-- the Poet, stop making yourself so small.

#poetry #poem #poets on tumblr #new poets on tumblr #literature #the power of literature #the poet as god #dear poet #self esteem

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when the Poet is an idol

How dare You be human? How dare You not be? How dare I be human? How dare I not be? How dare we have so much blood in our veins that chases us even though we are not running.

#prayers to the poet #god #poem #poetry #idols #national poetry month #poem a day #spilled ink #writers on tumblr #poets on tumblr #humanity #worship #when the poet is an idol

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exhales on my neck

I want to be empty but not the kind that echoes the kind that is like contentment but isn’t really, I just haven’t found a better word yet. I want the kind where everything is still and the only wind in the trees is my breath on an exhale, warm.

#poetry #national poetry month #poem a day #empty #bpd #emptiness #poets on tumblr #writers on tumblr #poem #spilled ink #lit #exhale #softness #echoes #stop #still #in love #exhales on my neck #stress #love #contentment #trees

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Until

Last night  I had a dream you  still loved me.

I woke up late, didn’t have the chance to sort dreams and reality  and synthesize. 

In the middle of taking notes on glaciers I realized you weren’t coming back to me, this time.  Or in geologic time. We are not ice that survived through a summer. We are not even ice in a dirty mound of parking lot that survived until May.

In my dream, you wanted to work things out. In my dream, You weren’t gone forever, just until-- until

Note: the definition of a glacier is a giant mound of ice that survived a summer melt according to my geology professor

#thetrashbirdfiles #heartbreak #broken heart #broken heart poem #look at me writing this shitty poem #poetry #poem #poets on tumblr #national poetry month #poem a day #poem every day #writing #writers on tumblr #friendship loss #loss of friendship #losing friends #aromantic heartbreak #aromantic

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Run Dry

You sucked my compassion through a straw, like a young child does with chocolate milk. While I danced through pure bliss unaware, a princess in the kingdom of the heart thief. An ever flowing river now run dry, waiting  for someone to come along, and quench it again, all the while questioning forever and someday.

#thetrashbirdfiles #poem #metaphors #poetry #poetry every day #poem every day #national poetry month #this is old i wrote this in 2009 but it's one of the better old ones #writers on tumblr #poets on tumblr

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Collective Consciousness

Some days, I forget how to talk. I sit in the middle of our faux tile kitchen floor, and scream, and cry, and bang my socked feet on the floor. The dog stares. I wonder if he sees too. Or if he can just look.  The universe has slowly been teaching me about threads. The way they come out of my belly button, and connect to your belly button, and yours connects to hers, and hers connects to his, to that tree. Threads so tangled. I’m dizzy from spinning in circles, trying to disconnect and untangle, only to make knots. I’ve stood with tree shears, Poised above my threads Only to move them to my wrist. Threads, wrist, threads, wrist, Back and forth, back and forth. Clang.  The shears are on the floor, while I grab in empty space for hands. Sweaty hands, little hands, dry-cracked hands, wrinkly hands all batting in the dark, until they touch: At the fingertips, at the heal of the palm, enough to feel the ghost, enough to interlace fingers. Enough, enough, enough, enough, enough. Is it ever enough to keep the clangs of dropped shears coming? I don’t know how to breathe in and out, in and out in the empty space. I don’t know how to let go of  the shame that sits  heavy on my chest, runs around my insides  with a tilted spoon. I’ve been told to pray, “God will take it away”. I don’t know where God is as much I know where god is. Because every time I try to pray, a thousand broken “I love you”s come out instead. Because last time I cried, I cried for all the people  who see it too. Because every time I forget how to talk on my kitchen floor someone else does too. And each time I scream, I’m looking for your hands, take mine. I just want one favour- teach me how to love you.

#thetrashbirdfiles #poetry #poem every day #national poetry month #poets on tumblr #writing #writing on tumblr #writers on tumblr #studyblr #poem #spirituality #consciousness #connection #universe

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Death is a Daily Event

you remember the sound of their voice in the middle of a business meeting but by the time you get back to your car it has slipped between your consciousness,   gone.

rain slips on your windshield but you laugh and hold that brief moment of remembering in your hands to cherish before releasing it into the rain

we die to each other daily we have no choice but to hold on and let go simultaneously

#national poetry month #poetry month #nanopomo #poem every day #death tw #poetry #writers on tumblr #poets on tumblr

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How I Survived

I said the dark rusted red under my nails, was nail polish I had scratched off when I got bored in class. I bought nail polish the exact shade of dried blood the next day, and painted my nails to prove it, smooth shine. Someone far more observant than the others told me: dried blood doesn’t shine or shimmer No. I said. It doesn’t. But it shines when it’s cliche red apple red down my arm. It shines with my anxiety on my cuticles because I cannot stop picking, picking, picking. At least my fingers are not razor blades. At least my fingers can craft what I cannot say, make them see it blooming all over.

I said no. No he didn’t hurt me. No I don’t want to die. No I have never cut myself. No he didn’t hurt me. He doesn’t hurt me just, just stop asking the answer will always be a battle cry of no for my autonomy. I said no because saying yes was worse than what I was saying no to. No, I am not afraid of breathing, just all the colours that come with it.

I said poets sing me to sleep at night because the fairy lights above my bed are no wishing stars. They are just there to pretty the filth my depression leaves on the floor, on my desk, on the window sill: trash, moldy sandwiches and soup, clothes, an exploded packet of peanut butter to get my very-responsible-adult-professional-heels stuck in. But the poets don’t mind, they talk to me anyway. They show me how to make a poem out of peanut butter and stick it to my ribcage like a secret badge of honour, and show me over and over, no matter how many times I get stuck. The poets will always come back for me.

I said I wait. I said I wonder about what will happen five minutes from now. They tell me in therapy to play the five minute game. So I play the five minute game. I have been playing for the last 12 years. Sometimes I don’t even have to watch the clock or remember it exists. Sometimes the colours are the best thing I have ever breathed in.

National Poetry Month Prompt

Write about how you survived.

#national poetry month #poetry month #poetry #nanopomo #suicide tw #self harm tw #mental illness tw

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March (the year spring didn’t come)

Two weeks before, I ached for spring. The ultimate irony.

 Because we held razors in our hands, and death on the undersides of our tongues.

 And I don’t know if we expected that if we just cut down to the bone we would find soil to plant trees or each of our gods’ answers to prayers we did not even know we said.

 I don’t know.

 Sometimes I think we’ve ached so long and we’ve torn ourselves open so many times that our body stops being able to close the skin all the way again.

 So we just ache for everything: for the slaughterhouses and prison cells for the eyes of the helpless friends watching us crumble for our younger selves in a bleach stained hospital bed of mourning with the nurse named Martha who calls you sweetie, for the earth.

 An earth that is as ravaged as we are, and maybe that is why I ached for spring. For soil and buds, and things that were alive despite all the evidence of destruction.

 I don’t know.

 Maybe we hold onto our razors, inside our fists of tired loss instead of burying them into the ground because the earth holds too much already so we keep them in our splitting palms and wait.

#suicide tw #depression #poets on tumblr #new poets on tumblr #spilled ink poetry #hospitalization #suicide #winter #aching #this hurts #it will always hurt

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jolly ranchers in funeral homes

we store forgiveness like small glass bowls of jolly ranchers scattered on tables of a funeral home pre-packaged sweetened “I’m sorry”s (for your loss) to place on your tongue while waiting to come up to the receiving line, and tuck in your cheek by the time you need to pay respects to the facade of whomever he was before now-- because it’s not really appropriate to have a jolly rancher in your mouth while looking at the dead body the people around you are mourning, and I just want to ask why the fuck are there bowls of jolly ranchers placed around here in the first place? what funeral home schooling says “place jolly ranchers around to make guests of family feel less awkward” and just why the fuck did I just put one in my mouth right before it was time to put the blanket over his face and right before it was time to exit in a procession of car horns and it’s so fructose sweet and sticky, and I’m immediate family how much of an asshole can I become trying to unstick a jolly rancher from my teeth  while-- she says she’s sorry for the argument we had in the car the day before, the you-are-killing-me-inside argument the jesus-christ-how-selfish-can-you-be argument the I-just-told-you-how-worthless-I-feel-and-all-you-can-say-is- why-are-you-doing-this-to-me argument, and I smile sticky teeth and all, she smiles back. we keep “it’s okay”s in the back of our throats and tear ducts the way funeral direcetors leave bowls of jolly ranchers lying around because we take one because there’s nothing better to do, to assuage ourselves while we pretend this doesn’t hurt

#death tw #loss tw #death #loss #poetry #artists on tumblr #poets on tumblr #original writing #new poets on tumblr #spilled ink #spilled ink poetry #jolly ranchers #funeral homes