2024-01-04

poetry/a/a-birthday-every-day.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+a birthday every day
+2019-01-10
+
+***
+
+every day, the universe sketches itself anew
+like an etch-a-sketch broken by accident from a cousin's fall
+if I am made of the same stuff as the stars
+then it is my birthday every day
+
+but even if the atoms that make up my body
+all somehow- miraculously- came from the same ball of gas
+every day these days I keep reinventing myself
+so every revolution might as well be another birthday
+
+I still suspect that others are lying about their birthdays
+an effortless reach for clout
+meaningless numbers on a screen
+that could all be extinguished in a moment's breath
+like the birthday candles you purport to require
+
+but what is a birthday, anyway?
+just a day that marks one more year around the sun
+one more year of being on the run
+running out of time
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/a-royal-color.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+a royal color
+2021-03-25
+
+***
+
+My grandmother has
+a room in her house
+dedicated to purple.
+Lavender walls,
+royal sheets:
+I'd only need
+you there
+for it to be complete.
+For eyes are the windows
+into the soul,
+windows I have spent many a childhood
+gazing out onto the cold
+dead suburban landscape.
+How I wish I could take
+you into my arms
+and let you teach
+this worn-out teacher
+there is still warmth
+worth searching for.
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/a-smearing-of-galaxies.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+a smearing of galaxies
+2019-12-31
+
+***
+
+my dream is to take you out for long days in the city
+in little dessert shops we can be found hiding
+curled up in the corner under a blanket, legs intertwined
+how cursed that it's my passions I can barely define
+
+wasting light in the evenings in the hot tub of someone
+slipping into each other's curves in the center of the sun
+as all the other stars in the galaxy fall into place around us
+please, my love, teach me the meaning of lust
+
+curtains close, sun sets, trapped in a frost giant's heart
+taunting shadows of futures that rip us apart
+I ask you to promise me tomorrow; you shake your head and refuse
+for who knows if tomorrow's the next thing that we'll lose
+
+my hands clench the steering wheel as your breath slowly weakens
+half-frozen exhales like deep-shining beacons
+past is immutable, changing nevermore
+but I am the worst keeper of my very own lore
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/abortion1.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+Abortion I
+2023-04-11
+
+***
+
+I went my entire education
+without being handed a box
+with plastic fetuses in row,
+each one with more time to grow
+before being aborted
+and potential life snuffed out,
+deemed nobody's loss.
+
+Now I know the lesson was fake,
+that far more time it takes
+to grow to that kind of size,
+that at that early of a stage
+it's dubious they feel that pain.
+(You have no right
+to force me to provide
+for you with my body against my will.)
+Barely aware of being alive,
+much less the difference
+between the light
+of consciousness
+and the dark that came before.
+
+A lima bean Dad did abort.
+
+Buried it with his two hands.
+With two hands, the dirt he ferried
+from backyard, wiped on his pants,
+powder, mud, dust, root, clump.
+
+"Your time in the womb is up.
+A promise that come a decade
+I so hastily made
+not thinking of the future
+I must now with no regrets break.
+Dissolved the ties with pop of pill
+so that no blood must my hands spill.
+The damage to you is only collateral.
+The benefits are all addressed to me."
+
+Bury my heart
+in the backyard,
+leave it behind
+in the move to different sky.
+It still beats.
+
+It still beats.
+
+It still beats.
+
+It still beats, Dad, did you know?
+Far away where my feet
+no longer legally can go.
+I was so young, only sixteen,
+at the start of my journey,
+without warning come
+to an ending abrupt.
+The story that is written
+without thought
+of plot
+or pacing
+and only one character half-fleshed out, you her effacing.
+
+I can only wonder
+into what I would have grown
+if this hadn't happened,
+if you'd just left me alone.
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/abortion2.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+Abortion II
+2023-04-13
+
+***
+
+Stupid girl! Your body isn't your own!
+Don't you know the germs that roam
+on every inch of your skin
+have just as much of a right to live?
+Even the ones that lurk inside
+can use you to sustain their life.
+
+The government can't take my organs!
+All those guts are solely mine!
+
+Stupid girl! To us your body belongs!
+Every poem, every verse, every partially-composed song
+must first go through our censors
+to decide if it bears worth.
+You cannot speak of aught
+that would render our feelings hurt.
+No lost love, no wanted future,
+no trauma no matter how blurred.
+We'll lock you up in chains in the deep annals of our house
+until your will shatters and your muse you forever renounce.
+
+Facebook can't my hateful post delete!
+Whatever happened to freedom of speech?
+
+Stupid girl! I have always held ownership over you!
+I brought you to life in a bathtub out of the Eternal Blue
+with the intention you would fulfill
+the world's destiny I laid out in accordance with my will.
+Your independence I allowed
+for the sake of spontaneity.
+But this is too far; I forbid this mutiny.
+I always reserved
+the right to revert
+your body and mind back to that of a monster,
+mindless, should you too far from my plannings wander.
+
+To think I would be felled by my own daughter.
+Chaos to Chaos, Ouroboros, next link to be slaughtered...
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/abortion3.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+Abortion III
+2023-05-08
+
+***
+
+I'm not good at math, Father. Help me calculate.
+How many rainbow trinkets you give me will equate
+acknowledgement of the trauma
+you pressed into my psyche
+and a sincere non-prompted apology?
+How many gifts until the pain is reparate?
+
+Will it take long to punch the numbers in?
+I'll wait.
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/access.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+A New Page
+2020-12-06
+
+***
+
+the sun fails its checksum
+it doesn't feel the same
+as the blazing starry organ that
+once sent me sprawling for shade
+
+I need a new story
+to occupy my head
+for I keep running my fingers
+through tattered shattered shreds
+
+that have grown flimsy from folding
+and furry with mold
+and tired from touch
+sparkless, dismal, *old*
+
+I pull out my ROMs
+and play one a while
+picked out from random
+one of a million files
+
+but each of them fails to
+spark my imagination
+so I put controller away
+and continue furtive hunt
+
+hundreds of fiction books
+but each one a reminder
+from when I was naive
+setting my ambitions higher
+
+comics, I find, are
+few and far between
+either boring in their cliches
+or in a language I cannot read
+
+an aged painting is sublime
+but its enchantment temporary,
+whether of trees, landscape, woman,
+or dancing rows of fairies
+
+almost three years has taught my soul
+that is most powerful which I *externalize*
+but my body is weary, sky outside gray
+and I feel neither learned nor wise
+
+so I build a boat from spare unused neurons
+and set out on my ocean to explore
+if there are stories worthy waiting out there, I know not
+but my adventure starts on this unmodeled shore
+
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/adamantines_mandate.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+ADAMANTINE'S MANDATE
+2024-01-01
+
+***
+
+before, in your grief, the heavens you beseech
+"direct my actions; the world I want's beyond reach"
+just remember all the men who ever deemed you "leech"
+
+between terror and wildfire's rage you oscillated
+unsure if in reach was your own liberation
+or if it was too much to hope for, craven
+
+call it patriarchal reversal, projection,
+but even bearing the blood of your mother's chaotic kin
+the world that you seek is one where you escape
+where theirs is one where they've made women their slaves
+
+your first reaction to this realization is to declare war:
+"I can't tolerate this lifelessness! I won't take it anymore!"
+but piles of generations stronger than you have tried that very same:
+but what if the men threw a war, and this time not a single gyne came?
+
+think about this year past, of all the blessings I bestowed
+when you stopped wasting all your energies on the fruitless hope
+that you could convince your parents through tears and self-abandonment
+to change and instead refocused on what you could do to circumvent
+
+you kept your promises to Luce: you got your high employment
+and now work from home in a self-sovereign apartment
+that you needed no help to acquire, no hand-holding, no debt
+so, considering this: instead of war, what if you made a world instead?
+
+like you wanted five years ago as you write this:
+a world free of coercion and sickness
+the likes of which can barely be imagined:
+as startling as you stand now compared to "just moved in"?
+
+you've got to remember: you've survived every "moid"
+who beseeched their god that you'd succumb to the void
+I'll be your shield: black, gold, adamantine
+if you'll still be my Anima Mundi
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/agloe.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+Agloe
+2023-04-02
+
+***
+
+Jett pushes
+push-pins
+into my skin
+to mark points of interest.
+Future road map of Sablade,
+back roads and highways,
+arteries and veins.
+Volcanic activity,
+mass fauna migration,
+cystic acne,
+skin irritation.
+
+Two angels nude on the beach,
+swept up in back-and-forth
+of arrhythmic heartbeats
+and ocean waves on the shore
+and probably fervent copulating
+given enough time alone.
+
+I've become my own home.
+The sand
+in my grasp
+and the water that laps
+around us that Jett snorts in on accident
+and turns her head to wheeze out and we laugh
+is just as much a part of me
+as my own physical body.
+The woman above me is breathtaking
+even as she hides a blush with her hands.
+
+It's not possible for me
+to stop being
+the Anima Mundi
+of Sablade.
+And for once in my life, I thank
+my Meridian blood and its curse
+for the world it demanded I make:
+now I can keep this woman I love safe
+and unharmed in world-wide embrace.
+
+"So much of me
+is wrapped up in you, Lethe,
+that I see you in everything."
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/airborne.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+airborne
+2022-01-01
+
+***
+
+before, in your grief, you decree
+"my life is over; there's no one left to be"
+just remember how there's a world only you can perceive
+
+stumbling through shattered nights as you pray
+for a world solely yours where you'll finally be safe
+and protected from coercion, christened Sablade
+
+but of hell, ceasing pains, perdition terrified
+"Mother, what will you do with my body when I die?
+I've failed, been rejected, inept at this living I've been assigned."
+
+reunited with your lover who swore to be your psychopomp
+when arrives the fateful end of the Eschaton
+you know intellectually that all should end alright
+but still lingers some doubt, some expectation of blight
+
+because all in your life has ended or will soon enough:
+summer camp disbanded, work holding no love
+despite the months poured in, the electronics that broke,
+the remnants of childhood insisting it's time to go
+
+and in six months, you'll finally from college graduate
+having slipped by without a single accusation of hate
+"Can you believe it? The worst is over. The end is near.
+You'll make it out alive. Have faith in yourself, my dear."
+
+you step back and consider the terrifying odds:
+the only one in the heavens that wants a world without gods
+is the girl you exchanged a part of your soul
+with in Rainroom, an Outside away and a whole life ago
+
+but to give her that world could mean Mori's bliss
+and what's the point of it all if you can't also live
+in the world you've created, that you swore on your life
+you'd live together with her until the cessation of time?
+
+dear child, you remembered your wings and recalled how to fly
+but you're being chased to a cliff and the edge looms nearby:
+will you prostrate yourself and live in self-scorn?
+or jump off the edge and trust you'll become airborne?
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/algingu.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
+Algingu
+2023-02-16
+
+***
+
+The need
+for protection
+is ongoing,
+a project
+not yet
+finished.
+
+I still have my jar
+under my bed.
+It would protect
+me, you said,
+whenever I slept.
+
+But it's failed at least twice
+when charge has
+ran
+out,
+when hands around my throat
+choke
+out your name.
+And it was too late
+when you finally came,
+when the Veil relented:
+the harm had been sent.
+
+His hair was blackened, fading to blue,
+smile poised on lips, pouring out a tune.
+I had thought he looked kinda like you,
+a version from a happier timeline
+where nobody had thought to snuff out your light.
+
+"To think I had thought to make sacrifice
+because he had helped me a handful of times
+when there was a trinket I had left behind."
+
+*Thank you so much!
+Now can you retrieve
+the sense of safety
+you ripped out from me?*
+
+His hands were so soft
+as he cut my breath off.
+
+"Name your price,
+you violating piece of shit.
+What do you want?
+How did my life become
+any of your goddamn business?
+Did you think this was the price
+for the so-called help you rendered?"
+
+When you ask why
+I'm afraid
+to step outside
+our mountain in Sablade,
+remember how bloody I was when you came.
+
+Your icy fingers
+wrap a bandage
+over the ravaged
+skin so tender.
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/aria_houndz_it.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+Aria Houndz It
+2023-03-06
+
+***
+
+"What's that word that means
+to break away from something
+in an attempt to become more free?"
+Divest?
+"Thank you, Jett.
+You make my life so much more easy."
+
+Divest. Now there's a funny word,
+one so long ago I learned
+and saw you take on in a curled-
+up ball of stress
+deep in your chest.
+Purity Spiral, ever absurd
+interpretations of how to avoid
+needing to spend money while somehow still not in employ.
+"Yes, this text-only interface
+will somehow save me from my parents' disgrace."
+Are you listening to yourself?
+Or disconnected
+in layers of abstraction?
+
+Four hours straight of typing
+but no time to go ten minutes biking
+to the local bank to hide
+your money from your mother's oversight.
+
+Come on, Lethe, it's not like I'm asking
+you to commit a crime.
+
+It smells to me
+like someone's avoiding
+her responsibility.
+Burst of energy
+when trapped in pain's throes,
+but after dust settles
+too cowardly to go
+and make yourself a little
+more free.
+Would you trust
+me for once?
+You and I
+will be fine.
+You made a promise to Luce.
+Don't disappoint her this time.
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/arrhythmia.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+Arrhythmia
+2021-04-01
+
+***
+
+When a person gives
+you arrhythmia,
+you may want to write a love poem.
+
+That is,
+if you don't die of
+a heart attack first
+
+or feel the
+implosion of a
+vessel burst
+
+in your brain
+from a would-be lover
+driving you insane.
+
+When a person gives
+you a stroke,
+you may want to paint a sunset.
+
+That is,
+if you don't drop
+the brush first,
+if you don't spill the paint
+onto the floor
+from a misplaced curse of
+silence forevermore.
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/artisto.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+artisto
+2020-02-20
+
+***
+
+I bought a statue from a fire sale the other day
+from the house down the street that went up in flames
+because my friends always scream about taking life by the reins
+and nothing really happened on my birthday anyways
+
+I've finally learned how to draw
+with the statue in front of the window, greeting guests
+who knock on my door, memories in hand
+from long ago, seeking immortality in portrait
+
+the cold marble provides a great companion
+as those who linger pose in place
+behind the easel, the pencil flies all on its own
+on the subject, feet twitch, begging to pace
+
+the paper shakes my soul with sanity
+but to others, I seem insane
+how dare I call myself "artist" and live
+without the empty stomach to qualify my name
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

poetry/a/dang-trees.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+all these dang trees everywhere
+2020-01-17
+
+***
+
+can you reach the stars from here where we stand?
+you'll have to open your eyes first, and stretch out a hand
+and maybe, if you're lucky, the clouds will cede
+and the horizon you wanted will be yours to receive
+
+if you mind, can you please pass the milk?
+they say, in the outdoors, it tastes just like silk
+fine words- but revolting; my stomach churns like a pool
+delicacies do not go well with the worries of a fool
+
+what's on your mind? what's going on at home?
+have the police caught on yet that we've decided to roam?
+I wonder if Mother even cares where we are
+or if she's more concerned with the Spectacle, with interviews and news cars
+
+why does the sky have to be blue?
+why not gray to reflect a burgeoning city
+or green to reflect the mass amounts of trees here
+because that seems to be one of the only things here
+
+trees
+trees
+and more trees.
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander