Pinned
ars poetica
the tears well up, how do I do this? the tears fall, will it stain the paper? the tears stain my glasses, do I clean them? the tears fog my vision, is it enough to feel? the tears turn to sobs, maybe it is.
--April 2 prompt; @nosebleedclub
ars poetica
it is bare fingers deep inside pulp. heartstring plucks are manipulative, the easiest path to the shallow world of clicks and views, mindless likes for the attention deprived. words like gutted carrion that complete the unending circle. words like a bathtub, overflowed. a will weakened by the open door of connection's need. no gauze can hold back a rip current.
-kab
@nosebleedclub day 2 prompt
The tide came in some time ago
My head screamed move but my base stood strong
My heart beat up my chest but my base sunk itself further into the sand
By now it's up to my neck
It'll soon drown me
Silently
Gone
I'll slowly be worn down by the waves
Crumbling down into little pieces
Before being taken back to shore
Maybe I'll become a rock in someone's pocket
Or The thing you kick when you think of them
Maybe something worthy to bring to show and tell
Or sit on a shelf of prized possessions
Never knowing if I'll be one man's trash
Or another's treasure
And so, I take a black pen and white paper: outside the window are gray clouds that promise relentless rain, and I find myself tapping the pen against the stark white page, hoping the words will come down just like rain. (Spoiler alert: they don't)
~ Ely C. Winters. (@nosebleedclub)
ars poetica
I didn’t exist until I took a pen. I didn’t feel until I wrote it down. My world fell and came true. On the ground, the dirt. I watch dandelions fight and clouds laugh.
Once on my feet again, I searched for words. They were kind, and they hungered for more. But the stars in my eyes wouldn’t reach the gutter where I stood.
I might have sabotaged myself, or perhaps I just had more hope, more naïveté. Odes make the shit glow. Odd, how I never fully felt at home.
Nevertheless, and never more— If it were true, me, the master manipulator and swift narrator, got broken-hearted for the sake of craft, Shouldn’t it be easier to write it down?
If I don’t, what was the point? of falling for a lover who wasn’t that kind?
The pen might have saved me from madness, dodging more than this one. If I didn’t love the pen, Would I take it all down?
Did it hurt, or did it cure? If nothing else is true, I would die protecting what saved my life. And for him? I wouldn’t cross the road on a green light.
words hurt. And the more I try to martyr my intended victim, the more I remember— he needed to say it, and then take it back.
I'm back at the pen, and he is back at badmouthing his life.
for @nosebleedclub's April prompt ars poetica
@nosebleedclub Poetry Month Prompt 02
[prompts from @nosebleedclub]
A Poem is a thief–
it takes the time, notices it, records it
stealing it from out of oblivion
A poem is desperate–
every word, every pause
needs to communicate
to communicate, an idea, a feeling, a moment
A poem is a tender thing,
you must approach it.
For a poem can give you nothing
without
Ars Poetica @nosebleedclub
Window of time, plum blossoms
Enbloom the night
Any day, To fight
A heart full of you
Endingly so, right when the wind,
feeling flowing in circles.
Old curses broken,
Old stars and salt water,
Coastal reefs and fish too
As an arrow,,
Showing the waves of air, through a window
Shooting through the skies
Indifferently flowing into water once more
Maroon and blue,
Salt water, an ocean of old stars,
New songs and poets.
how was i supposed to know that? April, my favorite friend. how, to remember you, more than - sand dunes, learning "french" kissing at 11, olive groves, olive oil in everything, it's supposed to be a thing. can you come back, revisit with me those rogue lands. I promise to take your hand and never let it go. we won't leave town, no families bounding us. sleep out with the scorpions. in the dreams, revisited by our old selves. this time we've grown up, tall and strong. if it's the same for you or you're still feeble, afraid of the big blue. i won't tease you , try to be as good as my mama raised me to be.
how was i supposed to know... anything. April, my favorite friend. I was what I was but eleven too. unlike you, you were calm and "28 million years new". they planted for my tears, an olive tree. to soothe me, your memory. I sat underneath my past wishing, making it easy for the haunting to find me. it never did.
how was i supposed to know of the dreams I'd become. April, my favorite friend. my brother thought it'd be fun to tell me it never happened. but olive oil as a salad dressing was too impressive to be unreal. I didn't have to know the world to believe it real;
@nosebleedclub april,3.
Every morning I pull into
the teacher parking lot at dawn.
It’s a drearily unpoetic parking lot. The asphalt
is simply asphalt-colored
and damp. The smell
is of exhaust and dread. The sky is a simple thing,
defying description in even
black fading to blue fading to white.
and through this simple purgatory pass
teachers of every stripe,
as if wandering. drawn
towards the looming building,
good and bad and mediocre,
old and young and jaded.
their eyes hold lives. their lives
are filled with walks from humid parking lots
to a small cool space.
I get out of my car, smile and nod.
we exchange no words. but I meet the eyes
of a veteran teacher of thirty years
as she looks up at the sky.
when she tells me it is a beautiful morning
I believe her. it is a poem
of a morning, complete with redemption
at the end.
@nosebleedclub prompts
April 2 — ars poetica
prompt from @nosebleedclub
Waves wash white
A solid sunken stone
Water wears away
the precise painted patterns
of a solemn stolen statue
Whispers worth no weight
the people promptly pass
a now forgotten face
of a once sensational science star
In a sunken stillness / an echo of the past / waits. / Fish, its only witness; / his words lost / in the water deep. / Only tiny bubbles / float upwards / made from stories / he tries to / tell.
~ Ely C. Winters [ @nosebleedclub ]
I stand very still as if perhaps
between droplets a gust
of mercy will find me if only I do not
move, as if perhaps
themselves the droplets won’t
see me. instead
old pipes spasm hot water
through the dark. when it strikes
steam chokes
skin shudders
and I wrench the cold water tap
and I gasp for breath
and I cling to the tap
which digs clinging into my hand
as it pulls me through shattering ice and into air
above.
@nosebleedclub prompts
April 1 — sunken statue
