Thesuburbanghosts - Tumblr Posts

we live and breathe words

i’m overcompensating for forgetting to breathe                               by writing too many words

and trying to make them sound poetic when really there’s no artistic way to say

i woke up one morning and drank bleach just to see how it tasted and bled out

in a bathtub dying a thousand little deaths every time i breathed in

so you could imagine how it feels to be told you’re writing too many words

when all you’re trying to do is remember how it felt to have air in your lungs,

what it tasted like instead of the blood that you vomited all along the white tiles.

requirements for magic

the faeries said you had to give up something to be with them.

the wolves said you had to have teeth and claws and a howl like cold air on a moonless night.

the dragons said that fire comes from within and that you needed to have a spark.

the vampires said you had to die.

the warlocks said you had to know sorrow for immortal years and the devil in your blood.

the witches said you needed magic, strong and dark and earthy.

the winds said you had to have hollow bones, a body that could be lifted.

the woods said you had to know how to grow without knowing which way was up and to fight for every inch you gained.

the ocean said you were already a part of it, salt and water and blood. you just didn’t know how.

the cliffs said you had to be made of edges if you wanted people to impale themselves on you.

the mountains said even they started out as little as you. maybe you could be strong one day.

the desert said you had to know thirst before you understood how to love the rain.

the rain said it would wash away everything if you let it.

the storm said you had to be wild and raging for its magic to work. you had to be angry.

the night said you do not how to be a creature of the dark, magic and manic nights. you could not be one of us if you tried.

the day did not say anything. it simply rose and let you learn in the light.

you gave up your sadness to their faeries and learned how to dance.

you showed the wolves your teeth and told them about the blood on your hands. they taught you how to scream and bring down the moon.

you took a drop from the sun (or rather you lit a match) and gained a coat of scales made of burns and grey cold ashes.

you died. there was no coming back until they pulled you from 6 feet under. you died but you were not allowed to leave and that is how it goes.

you told the warlocks that they could keep their devil because you had your own. yours just was your sorrow and your blood.

you brought the witches a tree and laughed when they didn’t understand. they gave you magic and in return you buried the sapling.

you undid the chains that bound you and let yourself go free. nothing could tell you where to go except the winds, and even they would not bother.

the woods were dark and lovely. so were you, even in the light, but you always knew which way was up. that’s where the trees go.

you were the ocean, salt and water and blood. there was no changing that.

you sharpened your knifes on the rocky cliff-face and jumped to prove your point. the edges broke. you did not.

you told the mountains how tiring it must be to be made of stone. they agreed and wished to feel something at all.

you knew how to love the rain long before you knew what it was like to thirst for water and thought maybe the desert wasn’t dry at all. it just didn’t have enough to love.

you let it. the rain poured down and you were clean.

you became wild and raging and fierce like a storm, left alone to run its course. when you were angry, you were a hurricane and even the magic feared the collateral damage.

you learned how to be the night and understood why it was so dark. you could be it if you tried. you could be magic.

the day said you are.

there is a part of me that is terrified or terrifying, teeth bared in a grin. i am ready for this to be over. i am ready to begin. HOW CAN WE SURVIVE WHEN WE HAVE FORGOTTEN WHAT IT MEANS we are still breathing once again. soft, softly. we are monsters on the inside; say this to me. WHEN WE HAVE FORGOTTEN WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN in some sort of strange kindness, we cry. i am terrified of living and i don’t know why. TO BE HUMAN IS TO BE GENTLE WITH YOUR CRUELTY and someone kissed me like they were afraid to be lost. losing in this hope, smile as a ghost. WITH YOUR CRUELTY AS A KINDNESS WELL-MEANT a man stands on a tv and shouts, screams. we are monsters to the end, even in our dreams. A KINDNESS WELL-MEANT DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN WELL perhaps with this we could change. through this we can become something beautiful and strange. NOT ALWAYS DO WE KNOW HOW WE CAN SURVIVE,

but somehow we endure. :: o.m. 20 january 2017

is there a difference between a girl and a galaxy if both are bound to die in the end?

the matter of when, and how :: o.m. 2017

emigrant in a body

i’m not from here you see or i am but that’s not what i meant in life we are all passing through onto some other kind of life. i just meant that i didn’t live here i’m just a visitor in this body, these bones a cathedral the tourists come to take pictures in. stained glass with too many metaphors and the windows are dirty from people looking in, smudged and blurry as they pass by. i pass by and the pavement thuds heavy beneath my feet, visited by a ghost or two on the way the face on the subway poster says ‘in case of emergency’ but it’s always an emergency. somehow you can’t be lost if you don’t know where you’re going sleep in one bed, get up, leave walk the streets without meaning. we don’t belong anywhere. we don’t belong. we don’t belong anywhere but here. i am leaving to pass on from this place and i hope you come with me too.

all the things wrong with me in your mind

do not try to save me 
if i have not asked to be saved. 
i take my shirt off in the dim morning 
light & trace my ribs. 
there is nothing underneath my skin 
that feels the way it should, 
disasters in the making 
the way everything spills out of my mouth. 
white tights & strong thighs & too many 
different emotions. 
when you work your muscles and body 
you are ripping yourself 
apart to create something new, 
the sickle twist of my foot in a shoe 
as i stand in two inch boxes 
with nothing on. my body is reshaping itself 
while i think it is growing 
& the muscles burn in everything. 
i can still fit two fingers underneath 
the cage of my ribs 
or two fingers in between my teeth 
like a kiss. 
the crack of my thighs is a tunnel, 
a cavern, a chasm, a divide 
we don’t speak about. this body 
is one i could be rid of. 
i don’t feel myself here & i’m still waiting for you to tell me i can come home 
to a place without 
this fear of living or jumping off of bridges. 
the things i have let into myself. 
the things i have yet to un-see. 
this image of myself in a mirror, rose-lips 
curled 
with skirts or stockings or dresses. 
a dysphoria of what i want 
& who i am to be. 
listen, my bones don’t know how 
to love in other way. they are fractured 
like the last time i jumped 
in my red shoes & you caught me wrong 
with hands under my arms 
or around my throat 
nobody cared which. witch. which? 
if i recall correctly you said i was. 
might’ve been bitch. i was too busy 
with the funhouse mirror aimed 
at my torso 
to notice any other perception of me. 
in a necktie with the sunrise i compete 
to see who burns faster first 
& i win because there’s nothing left to burn. 
for such confusion of these walls 
i can’t see myself think & in the dark 
it is a good thing because my edges don’t wear out. 
i never asked for this to happen 
& in all honesty i’m not broken 
i’m just waiting for the day when i can sleep 
without covering my body & these bones.

the sun is a boy who loves flowers, chocolate, and other boys

he got burned once, this he told me by solar radiation & a daisy chain. a dove kiss he puts in my mouth, in his, in his mouth, presses it to his lips. he burns too, all the time. not like you thought or had ever known. who imagined being bright could hurt. i’m no different from any other star boy said to boy said to me, cried with a bouquet out his mouth. i still miss it you know. the sun & i are in the same therapy group for reasons unknown & in a hard metal chair he just keeps saying with soft eyes but i thought, it was alright, because he was so gentle.

the moon is a girl who likes my sweaters and other girls

the moon & i aren’t friends to say the least about the status but she’s just jealous i get skinny & she only disappears. once she said she was lesbian and tbh that’s what i thought but i would never tell her so. sometimes i let her kiss me and she wears my clothes till they wear out & afterwards they smell like rain. she said she lets me kiss her too.

the eat-your-feelings cafe

i eat past hungry to make up for the lonely. i eat for the empty chairs around me. this hungry swallows me whole. mouth turned inside out becomes a hole, becomes a table. table sits in front of empty chairs besides me. i am hungry. i am starving for anything more than nothing, something to feed this loneliness. empty mouth has hollow teeth. bite sharp in your own wicked. crave me to create me: inhale me whole.

an uneasy grace

we balance on the line of an edge running perpendicular across a point. tell me the world and its beginnings, a creation. tell me a lightbulb lightening-flash scorched earth sound. waves unfolding across a desert, land rising from an ocean. fire to water to earth to air from chaos and it burst forth: from chaos in a cacophony of light because nothing miraculous ever happened quietly, except, perhaps, that instant before the whole tangled mess broke and the inhale before a silent peace cradled down upon a body unbroken. the quiet god of a girl. is there a beauty in the quantum mechanics of things, black hole event horizons tell me how she does it. how she breaks down and gets back up again. nobody made a world in seven days, not even her, still sleeping it off like a morning hangover. tell me what god wakes up to. a graceless existence into which the descent is easy and we have fallen. sorry god. i believe in you. i just don’t believe you.

occupation day

a girl walks in wearing a NASA shirt and galaxy print leggings, everyone thinks oh, rockets, she’s got the glasses to be an engineer. she raises her hand to ask, is the never-ending void an acceptable job? there was a help wanted sign on the desk of the universe and i’m attempting to fill the position. a pencil two rows over gets pulled in by her gravity (purple with black and blue sparkles) and she just smiles, tosses it back out past her edges and says you’re lucky it wasn’t turned into spaghetti. the physics goes over their head. all over her paper she observes and draws particles and she knows that by doing this she changes what they are but maybe if she didn’t notice them they wouldn’t exist at all. later when the teacher calls on her she says quantum mechanics and the formula for how long it takes to reach the ground because this time an entire desk rolled over to her, the focus of the room. it’s an occupational hazard, drawing things in. red and blue logo and she thinks there’s some light inside it just can’t get out past her event horizon and she wants to know has anyone ever heard of something coming out of a black hole, or anyone coming back? her shoes have constellations like her freckles and no one noticed when they winked, twinkled, she shimmered out of existence. she was going to prove wormholes and timeless stars and maybe dead cats she was just waiting for her rocket to take off the ground. empty desk and David Bowie and the occupational hazards of being a black hole that even in your lack of existence everyone is pulled in by your void, the spaces in between stars and the letters on her t-shirt spelling out G A L A X Y where she left blank spaces for compensation. she’s somewhere out there tearing up a storm or aurora borealis, shining green-blue lights so far past herself she could never lose them. entire worlds and universes she could swallow in an instant with her big, hungry eyes. always looking up saying is there more? and knowing every star by name. a girl walks out of the room, into the office of the universe and applies for the position to fill the spaces, checks all the boxes until she’s told yes. supernova bursts forth from the room but she still says do you think anyone could ever find the edges? and runs chasing after it, laughing, crying, filling up the void.

talking down pluto

i don’t say this right, pluto says at the edge of a cliff, a solar system, a void. i miss my small belonging. i want to jump. i don’t want to. i want someone to miss me too. i think i know what you mean. it’s okay. i’m lonely too.

the unquiet night

TIME IS A CONSTRUCT CONSTRUCTED BY BITTER ENDINGS AND THE SPIN OF A WORLD IN THE GAPING ABYSS THESE STARS ARE DEATHLESS AS MEMORY THEY CRUMBLE INTO DUST LIE AWAKE AND LIE TO YOURSELF THAT THIS IS NOT THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT HOW LONELY WE WILL GO.

of roses

a collection of poems featuring the pieces:

chain of gold

crown of thorns

blood of silver

silvered blood

the ending of the queen

G.O.D.

the g in god isn’t an acronym but if it was we’d have to talk about the a for allah and how guns and arms are too common a theme. shoot them up and all. guns and gods and girls are all the same, sawn-off shotguns pointing in no direction. listen for the crack of the bullet- (or the empty mouth, please, screaming) don’t shoot. don’t shoot. i always come back to this. or fire into the masses. after this god won’t care.

how awful innocence

you can take terrible things and use them to do good. yes, they are still terrible. but take that body and grow flowers from poison in the earth’s veins and you will still have a bouquet to heal and hold. seep aggression into poetry and write beautiful murder. kill every version of yourself that still holds scars and your weeping eyes will start to harden. from coal to diamond we turn combustion into love. firestarter heart that burns or tames; tempered into temperance from abuse. it used to be beautiful to be dying. we are still dying to be beautiful in a terrible, awful way. only innocence can think to turn decay into preservation, capture the spread of sickness from cell to bone and it looks like flowers blooming inside of shattered sidewalks. this thing is gonna kill you no matter what you hope and it’s gonna kill me too. crack the lightbulbs with a scream; turn the power out with heavy winds. open the window to run out. block the doors so no one can get in. you’re leaving behind something terrible and i’m trying to turn it into something good like you asked but that awful innocence of yours left no room for reality. you can be too good, too naïve. i can’t live up to these expectations. my terrible will remain terrible as i run away with anger and roaring winds to escape this good, your awful innocent and how your eyes looked at me weeping then turned to glass and hardened in your death. this thing is gonna kill you, flowers or not, and over your grave i planted marigolds: unspeakable mourning so from your sickness comes light. this body turned deathly into deathless.

i’m overcompensating for forgetting to breathe by writing too many words

and trying to make them sound poetic 
when really there’s no artistic way to say

i woke up one morning and drank bleach
just to see how it tasted and bled out

in a bathtub dying a thousand little 
deaths every time i breathed in

so you could imagine how it feels to be told you’re writing too many words

when all you’re trying to do is remember 
how it felt to have air in your lungs,

what it tasted like instead of the blood 
that you vomited all over the white tiles.

REMEMBER HOW TO BREATHE :: o.m. 2017

i. to live, we require an understanding of our our processes. 
how do we think? synapses fire. 
how do we breathe? expand and contract. 
how do we exist? i can feel it in my teeth.

ii. they ache (everything) to a point of exhaustion. i try for running, i end up exhausted. i try for exhausted, i end up running away. i open every window and leave the lights out to let the breeze crawl its way through this empty house.

iii. i’m making wine inside myself now, a heady intoxication. fermented, the warmth, it spreads through me- every step a wildfire.

iv. anaerobic /x/ adj. without oxygen, only certain things can survive. without oxygen, there is no flame. we ferment our own rejection inside us, call it acid because it burns. that sickness you feel is resentment, warming your bones. hatred. without oxygen there is nothing else and with oxygen-

v. look how brightly we can burn.

vi. to say the difference between us and stars: when stars collapse, we call it a supernova. they spread light throughout everything, permeate the dark.

we are made of stars, and our rib cages only send shrapnel in our shattering.

vii. humanity is a torch, burning through its bases with a wicked flame. at some point we stop calling this arson an accident and instead blame ourselves. we breathe in smoke but do nothing to put out the fire. stand in a burning house and watch it collapse: do nothing, and leave no one to regret how terrible it will fall.

viii. when the first versions of ourselves evolved out of the iron oceans, we call that the Great Dying because anything that could not oxidise could not remain alive. in other words, we took the air and made it poison. we burn, you burn with us.

ix. we burn to survive. a million combustions inside our bodies / raging to fight on against the darkness.

when we move, we are energy / we are wasted potential brought to light.

all that noise, all that emotion / it burns us out. in the end,

we are husks / we are ashes / we are burning and we don’t even know it.

REMEMBER WHEN YOU BREATHE :: o.m. 2017

only two things make me sad: one of them is life, and the other one is trying to live it. i am always afraid of regret. always afraid of the wrong thing. too many days spent in the closet, on the floor, throwing up with my head in a toilet. hands trembling like the wind and i’m still trying to live with this. that tremor won’t ever go away. how can i tell you to live when i don’t want to? and there’s nothing i won’t do to want to. all these admissions and omissions of how much time i really spend trying to function as a human being. isn’t that what we call life? this hell we’re in when we can’t call it hell? we keep on through the precarious existence of the balance between burning fast and flickering out. when it’s beautiful, hold it close. when it’s ugly, hold it the same. if it makes you sad, cry, and i have to cry too. when i see things that make me ache, all over, and want to curl up so i don’t have to face it, i do for a little while. but i still get up when the alarm goes off in the morning saying ‘cheer up. you’re not dead yet’ and when it says ‘one more day’, when it says 'be happy’ and when it says 'ní hên píao líang you are beautiful’ i have to get up. i have to get up for all those who can’t. yes, it hurts to breathe and exist and live but isn’t that what it means to be human? breathe. stand new-made in the shivering light. 
 if you still have a day. live it while you are shaking.

REMEMBER WHY YOU BREATHE :: o.m. 2017

the apparition jupiter

i don’t really feel like i’m there, the ghost of jupiter says. it hovers somewhere in the middle as an unsettling voice booming from above with no body to accompany it. it’s just like i don’t exist, the planet says in a hazy shroud of mist. all the ominous portents are making their way towards jupiter in a procession. that gaseous body shifts even further from view as the spin of red-orange storms whips across beneath the surface, hurricanes and thunderstorms brewing inside with no containment. lightning will strike. but who will get struck? not jupiter, the disaster passing through like the dawn. so mighty, and reduced to so little. the planet fades to a dull sunset, an afterimage leaving this feeling that there should be something there that isn’t.