Tag: poetry

biandlesbianliterature:

thewastedgeneration:

!!!

[image description: a book opened to a page showing the poem “How I Became  a Lesbian” by Becky Birtha:

It’s not that you
become this way 
so much as it is
something you always were.

someone you one day realize
you are 

like the discovery
that you would have always loved

      star fruit

     

kiwis or 

     

mangoes 

only, you never knew they existed
until
you were half way through your life. 

Maybe you remember the day you
discovered mangoes
when you and a friend
fed thick, pulpy slices

into each other

mouths open in astonishment. 

Maybe you remember
your first taste—
and the startling comprehension
of the possibilities

of life in a world that included

this incredible
sweet
reality.]

growing up autistic / growing up gaslit

theoriginalmkp:

I.

this is the first lesson you learn:
you are always wrong.

there is no electric hum buzzing through the air.
there is no stinging bite to the sweetness of the mango.
there is no bitter metallic tang to the water.

there is no cruelty in their laughter, no ambiguity in the instructions, no reason to be upset.
there is no bitter aftertaste to your sweet tea, nothing scratchy about your blanket.

the lamps glow steadily. they do not falter.

II.

this is the second lesson you learn:
you are never right.

you are childish, gullible, overly prone to tears.
you are pedantic, combative, deliberately obtuse.
you are lazy, unreliable, never on time.

you’re always making up excuses, rudely interrupting, stepping on people’s shoes.
you’re always trying to get attention, never thinking about anyone else, selfish through and through.

it’s you that’s the problem. the lamps are fine.

III.

this is the third lesson you learn:
you must always give in.

mother knows best. father knows best.
doctor knows best. teacher knows best.
this is the proper path. do not go astray.

listen to your elders, respect your betters, accept what’s given to you as your due.
bow to the wisdom of experience, the education of the professional, the clarity of an external point of view.

what do you know about lamps, anyway?

If you’re going to tell me that everyone has the ability to heal,
that everyone has the ability to recover,
then I’m going to ask why I am still covered

in so much shame I rarely go a day without butchering
my own name? Why I can still take a punch
better than I can take a compliment?
Why I teeter so constantly between flight and fight
it’s like I’m trying to beat the daylight
out of my own fucking sky,
like my body will never stop fighting him off.

Do you understand how certain I am
that I could have torn my nails into his wrist
pulled out his pulse
deactivating a bomb?

I could have called that peace.
I could have called that not checking my window
a hundred fucking times every single night
before I fall asleep.

What if I don’t want the monster
to stop being a monster?

What if that’s the only anchor I have left?
What if my sanity depends on being able to point
at the bad thing and say, That is the bad thing.

Haven’t I already lost enough time
losing track of who the enemy is?
I’ve spent half of my life not knowing the difference

between killing myself and fighting back.

What if I don’t want healing
as much as I want justice?
What if I don’t care if justice
looks exactly like revenge?
Do you think I don’t know that I can’t
want revenge without strapping the bomb
to my own chest?

That’s how the dominoes of trauma fall.
You become just another thing about to detonate.

And whatever part of me that could believe in healing
was the part he stole.

So go ask him for my forgiveness. Go ask him.

Upon discovering my therapist willingly shares an office space with a male therapist who is an accused sex offender supposedly recovered from his urge to rape 13-year-old-girls — Andrea Gibson (via unlikelywarrior)

inkskinned:

she asks me what it’s like,
loving a woman when i, too, am a woman

and she laughs,
which is the one who sits and watches tv while the other one cleans?

she asks: how does your love work,
do you trade off who goes off with their friends while the other one stresses?

but our love works like this:
she saw her favorite dessert in our fridge

and she waited until i came home
so that we could split it.

amatalefay:

spaceisprettycool:

wildestranger:

sashayed:

lierdumoa:

sashayed:

sashayed:

sashayed:

lierdumoa:

sashayed:

sashayed:

My name is Calfe
& Im too young
to know yet what do 
with my Toung!

So till my Mom say
“Dont Do That!”
Ill stick it out
And lik this cat.

My little Calfe,
Im proud of yu–
yur living like
the Big Cows do.
Yur doing just
what Mom have said–
for yu lik cat,
and cat 

lik bred.

Bad meme execution. 0/5 stars.

These poems are supposed to be imitative of 17th/18th century middle English poetry (pre-dating dictionaries and formalized spelling conventions) not early 2000s chatspeak, not babytalk.

These poems are also supposed to be in iambic diameter, giving them a pleasing songlike rhythm. The above has inconsistent syllabic structure from line to line.

These attributes are clearly illustrated in the prime:

image

So tired of people on this website and their flagrant disregard for syllabic structure.

No respect for the craft.

1. first of all, how dare you. i would never, N E V E R, put forth a cow poem with inconsistent syllabic structure. these may not be my finest work, but the iambic dimeter is IMPECCABLE. check my scansion again and come back to me. I guess “know what do yet” is not ideal, but it falls within the constraints of the form. i’m genuinely appalled by this. i have SEEN inconsistent scansion in this meme, i do NOT approve of it and i have NOT done it. how dare you. HOW DAR EYOU!!!

Secondly: it is not absurd to suppose that the linguistic constraints of a Cow Poem would depend on the figure to whom Cow speaks. In the original (and perfect) “i lik the bred,” the narrative cow, like a Chaucerian non-characterized narrator, directs her speech to an imagined and unspecific listener; not to “the men,” who are characters within the poem, but to some more general audience. (See the Canterbury Tales prologue for an example of this voice in action.) 

Later, poem_for_your_sprog has Cow address contemporaries like “dog.” You will notice that the voice of Cow varies slightly, in speaking to Dog, from her voice in the original “I lik the bred.” WHY, then, can we not extrapolate that Calfe – who is, after all, a narrator of limited capacity, being only a Baby Cow with a Baby Cow’s simplicity – would have its own variant voice? And why, too, would Cow not speak differently to her own Calfe than she does to an animal peer, or to reverent imaginary auditors? These are experiments within an emerging form – flawed experiments, certainly, but not mistakes ipso facto. Again: HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!!!

image

my name is Cow,
and as yu see,
its worth yor tiyme
to studye me.
but if yu dont
like what yu red,

take 2 deep breths

and lik the bred.

I am willing to concede on second reading that the syllabic structure is passable, and in that regard I’ve wrongly impugned the integrity of your work, however I maintain that your Frankenstinian amalgam of fake middle English with fake modern American baby talk is thoroughly unconvincing as either middle English or as modern American baby talk.

It’s an aesthetic failure, IMH(inh)O*

You’ve created the linguistic equivalent of a spork — vitiating two perfectly serviceable tools by attempting to fuse them.

Writing ‘till mothere says / do not do that,’ would have conveyed roughly the same idea without feeling quite so awkwardly anachronistic.

My name is Rave,
and I can see
you’re bent on pa-
tronizing me!
”Anachronistic”
frankly seems 
a misplaced word 
to use of memes.
But since you want
to start that fight,
let’s step outside
and do this right.

Dude: if you want 
to not get wrecked
you’d better get 
your facts correct.

Like, “Mothere,” friend,
is not a word
that Geoffrey Chau-
cer ever heard.*

(*”Mooder” would be period-accurate, and also a good cow word.)

What’s more, the “eight-
teenth century”
has zip to do 
with, um, “M.E.”
And it’s not spelled
“diameter.”
What are you, pal,
an amateur?

I am not Chaucer
or John Donne
but if you try
to spoil my fun
with words you learned
in English class –

don’t come for me. 
I’ll kik yur ass.

I don’t think someone who thinks Middle English happened in the seventeenth century ought to be schooling others.

“17th/18th century middle English”

My name is Geoff,
John Chaucer’s sonne,
and I my lyfe’s
cours have runne.
Engelish tonges
are now divers,
so pedants, kis

my naked ers

lunasong365:

positive-memes:

I Will Not Be Eaten

The true feminine

I am not sugar and spice and everything nice. I am music, I am art. I am a story. I am a church bell, gonging out wrongs and rights and normal nights. I was baby. I am child. I will be mother. I don’t mind being considered beautiful, I do not allow that to be my definition. I am a rich pie strong with knowledge. I will not be eaten.