On the origin of fear

you taught me
to fear
the world
myself

what you didn’t
know is you
taught me
to

fear you
my mother
fear me
myself

my thoughts
feelings
emotions
goals

you taught me
to fear my
brain
like no 
other ever
would
again

Embarrassed Spoken Word by Hollie McNish

Embarrassed || Spoken Word by Hollie McNish

Poet Shamed By Breastfeeding In Public, Has The Last Word

Untitled

Written early in the morning, 8/21/2012. Influenced by my growing feeling of distance with people and the world. This writing came as an influx of thought resulting from a conversation with a friend.


I took down my wall
so long ago, and here
I am, sitting in a valley
of walls, looking up at
their graffitied sides,
pockmarked by stones
that people threw
attempting to get in,
long ago given up
and moved on.
But I'm still waiting.
Sitting cross-legged
and patient. I'll die
here with my walls
down. And you'll
peer over yours at
me, lying motionless,
just to turn around
and disappear again.

Untitled

Untitled

by Mark Klein

 

my cat surveys my lap

like it's a kingdom she's

recently acquired

through bloodshed

and warfare,

and now she must decide

where to place her castle 

hum

Now that the semester is coming to a close, I will have some time to get creative with things other than theorizing about the world around me. Here is something I threw together with some online magnetic poetry. Not on my desktop right now, so couldn't make the result into a pretty picture. Tried to do it in paint and it turned out all shitty. Enjoy!  

hum 

let water whisper
bare as language is
and after life sleeps,
lie languid over dreams

She left pieces

"Fifteen ways to stay alive" by Daphne Gottlieb

Fifteen ways to stay alive
by Daphne Gottlieb


1. Offer the wolves your arm only from the elbow down. Leave tourniquet space. Do not offer them your calves. Do not offer them your side. Do not let them near your femoral artery, your jugular. Give them only your arm.

2. Wear chapstick when kissing the bomb.

3. Pretend you don’t know English.

4. Pretend you never met her.

5. Offer the bomb to the wolves. Offer the wolves to the zombies.

6. Only insert a clean knife into your chest. Rusty ones will cause tetanus. Or infection.

7. Don’t inhale.

8. Realize that this love was not your trainwreck, was not the truck that flattened you, was not your Waterloo, did not cause massive hemorrhaging from a rusty knife. That love is still to come.

9. Use a rusty knife to cut through most of the noose in a strategic place so that it breaks when your weight is on it.

10. Practice desperate pleas for attention, louder calls for help. Learn them in English, French, Spanish: May Day, Aidez-Moi, Ayúdame.

11. Don’t kiss trainwrecks. Don’t kiss knives. Don’t kiss.

12. Pretend you made up the zombies, and only superheroes exist.

13. Pretend there is no kryptonite.

14. Pretend there was no love so sweet that you would have died for it, pretend that it does not belong to someone else now, pretend like your heart depends on it because it does. Pretend there is no wreck — you watched the train go by and felt the air brush your face and that was it. Another train passing. You do not need trains. You can fly. You are a superhero. And there is no kryptonite.

15. Forget her name.