The End

There's smoke in the air.

I feel it everywhere.

I feel it in my bones.

I feel it in my hair.

And I just don't know

How long its been.

There's smoke in the air.

Time is running thin.

Do you want to know who my favourite poet is? It’s ElliephantBurger from AllPoetry. Her works are absolutely amazing and so heartfelt, and she’s a darling girl who I admire so much. Y’all should definitely check her out!

The night my sister died

the moonlight dusted my room and i sneezed- she knocked on my door, something she’d never done before

I called to her and she came in

She was crying big boiling tears as she sat down on my bed. they burned and bubbled their way down her cheeks and onto my chemistry homework. i frowned at the smudged ink. her weight made no dip when she clutched my hands in hers and told me:

“i hope you forget

i hope you forget all of me but, unfortunately, i know you better than anyone else. i know you like nature knows itself. all i am is branch knowing breeze.

You are the wind: ever free and flowing and i- i am the tree, stuck fast where i stand and desperately growing towards something the would end me should i get too close. the tree will fall eventually, for a house or warmth, book or tissue.

but the wind will never die, it will never be felled. it circulates the world only to greet the same tree with the same gentleness as years ago.

so tomorrow when you wake up and find me all gone (again) know that it is not your fault. i was never meant to stay for quite so long and you and i will eventually agree;

its better this way.”

she said this to me, patted my cheek and wiped her eyes, and left, quieter than ever before.

i closed my chemistry notebook, its pages damp and ruined. i never finished that assignment. i began to think:

she claimed branch knowing breeze, but we were more.

she was no breeze; we are roots knowing storm.

swirling spiraling sky and earth. she was more than mere fuel for burning hearth.

and she forgot the danger of the baneful gale. she was strength who gripped tight, through rain or hail.

no tears are needed when the tree is gone. as long as its roots continue clinging on.

she was the hidden prized possession, the godly gardener’s greatest obsession.

and no matter how often her tree had died, she surged back strong (until she couldn’t anymore), her fate defied.

her death was brutal, forceful and quick. it reduced her heavenly roots down to stick

but the most important words she left behind? hurricane winds killed tree every time.

-Time of Death: 1:34 PM (roots and all)

فکر غربت ہے نہ اندیشۂ تنہائی ہے

زندگی کتنے حوادث سے گزر آئی ہے

لوگ جس حال میں مرنے کی دعا کرتے ہیں

میں نے اس حال میں جینے کی قسم کھائی ہے

ہم نہ سقراط نہ منصور نہ عیسیٰ لیکن

جو بھی قاتل ہے ہمارا ہی تمنائی ہے

زندگی اور ہیں کتنے ترے چہرے یہ بتا

تجھ سے اک عمر کی حالانکہ شناسائی ہے

کون ناواقف انجام تبسم ہے امیرؔ

میرے حالات پہ یہ کس کو ہنسی آئی ہے

fikr-e-ghurbat hai na andesha-e-tanhai hai

zindagi kitne havadis se guzar aai hai

log jis haal mein marne ki dua karte hain

main ne us haal mein jiine ki qasam khaai hai

ham na suqrat na mansur na iisa lekin

jo bhi qatil hai hamara hi tamannai hai

zindagi aur hain kitne tire chehre ye bata

tujh se ik umr ki halankeh shanasai hai

kaun na-vaqif-e-anjam-e-tabassum hai 'ameer'

mere halat pe ye kis ko hansi aai hai

.

Ameer Qazalbash

امیر قزلباش

(959) good poetry

the really shitty part is, you have to live a cracked-open, unwinding madly off the rails spiraling rotoscope of pictures,

or read ten thousand thoughts spilled onto pixel or paper

to mean so much and say so little;

each line a careful glimpse of a facet into a kaleidoscope of glimmering world

and write ten thousand trash words to get them out of the way first.

The Apricot Memoirs by Tess Guinery

This is the Lit nerd part of me speaking:

I just bought a new poetry book (Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong) and I’ve been thinking a lot to myself about what (for me) makes a “good poem”. I’ve seen people say that poetry represents some form of stability or nostalgia, words that can remind one of their past and things they miss. As much as I can understand this point of view and somewhat agree with it, this new poetry book created a whole different perspective for me.

For me, beautiful poetry is ephemeral, transient, something which may be understood for a fleeting second and then lost again. Good poetry is the poetry you would spend hours, days, thinking about, trying to find that different viewpoint that helps you to see the deepest meanings of the poem.

I also think it’s important to recognise that a poem which you can’t understand, which doesn’t click with you, isn’t necessarily a “bad” poem, but a poem you haven’t looked at in enough ways with enough motivation or enough belief.

This was just a rant but let me know what makes a good poem for you?

"You are sexy like good poetry, you really touch my soul in ways that I could never dream.."

Simple as it may sound, you compound the beauty that I see eternally - eUë

My favorite poet, Ada Limón, is out with a new, stunning collection: The Hurting Kind. In this collection, divided by the seasons, Limón writes poems suffused with nostalgia, longing, and grief. In times of pandemic and isolation, she writes about what it means to be the hurting kind of person—the kind who easily weeps, who is soft, vulnerable, sensitive to the pain she sees, whether it be in people or in a dead baby bird in her yard. She writes of trying to nurture seeds into flowers, of exclaiming when new birds rush into the trees like leaves, of seeing the neighbors get a tree cut down. She writes of steadfast love and what she once thought love would mean to her—she writes of trying to run away as a child, of being in an emotionally manipulative relationship that she thought could save her, of her partner and the kind of love that sticks, that holds. She writes of her family and of grief, of burial, of deaths small and large. In one poem, her and her brother in their curiosity crack open a chicken egg to find a nearly formed chick, unborn in its shell. They bury it, she cries, and she wonders if he too would cry, if he were alone and not a boy in summer heat. In other poems, she thinks back to loving fireworks which she now dislikes, to her affection for a foal who died, and wonders if she will find a strong steel that will allow her to be vulnerable again. And in still others, she writes of her capacity for joyful wonder—of getting high and lying beneath the cherry trees, of shouting as new birds fly up to her feeder, of a cat's reluctant trust and a parent sharing something about themselves she never knew. The Hurting Kind is a collection of tender poems about being a certain kind of person. And they all hit me hard, because I am the hurting kind, and because Limón's poems are like sea water, refreshing, cold, salty, teeming with life. This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, and it didn't disappoint. CW suicidal ideation, emotional abuse/manipulation, grief/death.

There is Always that one poetry line, or two, or just the whole thing! But it just hits so hard!!! and I'm like wth! Am I in love!!? Since when !! With who!!!!? I'm feeling so hard right now!!!

never let anyone tell you that trawling through mediocre victorian poetry isn't worth it. we just happened upon an absolute BANGER of a worm poem. go read it or else 🪱🪱🪱

imagination (1963) - harold ordway rugg

"chekhovs cat / schrödingers razor / occams gun"

this pain is a rabid thing

toothless maw, snapping jaw lunging forward

growling with the desperation of a new generation

and the honesty of children

empty aching gums cry out for babyteeth

cavities grew too difficult to fix

but how was the jar of sweets reached

up so high on that shelf?

rotten pearls pile into a fine hill to die on

sit atop the crest and refuse to wonder

how could this have all come from one mouth?

- cavitiesaregenetic (it’s because you don’t floss)

تمام رات نہایا تھا شہر بارش میں

وہ رنگ اتر ہی گئے جو اترنے والے تھے

tamam raat nahaya tha shahr barish men

vo rang utar hi gae jo utarne vaale the

तमाम रात नहाया था शहर बारिश में

वो रंग उतर ही गए जो उतरने वाले थे

۔

جمال احسانی

in internet posts it is easy to cut them out of your life. they are hurting you! they aren't listening to you!

they held your hair back. they lent you lipstick. they held your hand at the train station and got you home safe. they rounded on your bully, got loud, said get fucked, spitting-mad in your defense.

they also cut the hair off again. told you that you should really think twice before wearing something like that. took you for granted. took your insecurities and threw them in your face again.

you know logically it should be easy. all the internet advice comments always read it will feel better. like an equation - if a person is rotten, you just remove them. you pull the tooth that's hurting.

but it was never a big flare-up moment. you don't live in a sitcom. they never tried to take your boyfriend or steal from your apartment. they showed up to birthdays and they wrote songs about you and bring you water without you asking. once you found out they carry an emergency inhaler for you, even though you haven't had an asthma attack in years - just in case.

where is the line? people fuck up. sometimes they fuck up badly. sometimes people have raw personalities, like a powerline, and being around them is dangerous. addicting. sometimes they can't help themselves, but you know they're trying. sometimes they are just rough-around-the-edges. sometimes they don't even realize how they sounded when they said that. sometimes it's just - you've both loved each other for so long now, the way this thing hurts goes back to the root.

and that's the fucked up part. you have pushed your fingers against the sweetheart of memory. things these days are electric, tense, harrowing. they didn't used to be. there were a lot of good days in there. sometimes you want to just close your eyes and say can this be over yet? do we still need to be fighting?

doing that would give up any chance you get of getting an apology, but you don't always know that you need an apology, you love them. once they flaked on your birthday party. once they told you to get over it, people are always dying. they also let you crash on their couch for a week after the breakup, handfeeding you when you were so sad you couldn't eat. they are also judgmental about everything, occasionally react to banal statements with an attitude that is weird and fiery. they also love you like a lighthouse sometimes, so strong they cut the storm like lightning.

but the problem is that you might be storm. you might be the thing that needs breaking. what if you are two forces who are desperately, horribly drawn to each other, shaped by the other person's passions, and both good for each other and bad in equal measure.

what if you're both just people, and you're no saint neither.

just cut them off! swallowing the saltwater, you catch yourself in the mirror. you've been shaking more than usual. there's an ache in you that is oblique, loud, impossible to soothe. is this what it looks like? when life is "easier"?

your mouth will always have a hole, is the thing, if you remove the tooth.