shinshilada salad

what am i, to the search function? what is my bleeding heart, my calloused hands, the sob in the gap between my ribs and my lungs, to the ticking of the reblog count?

i post art. i refresh my activity page every five minutes for three days, aching for engagement. a wordless reblog. a like from a bot. are you going to publish your writing, asks my coworker when I tell her that I am a poet. 

I am, I say. I send my finished writing to my friends. #timezone reblog. look at me. look at my art.

look at my content. i post content to be nestled in between memes and asks. at the wrong time, perhaps. with the wrong tags, perhaps. i post content, I-

engage with me.

what is content, without an audience? what is an artist, if not content? what, to the algorithm, is poetry not reblogged within x hours?

recommended for you: an artist’s pleading cry. another’s lifetime.

after all, what is content unmanaged? what is an artist not posting on twitter, on tumblr, on instagram, carefully relatable, polished humanity? are you not a content creator? are you not that which chokes your own art before it ever leaves your palms so it might be worth a share?

you: an artist’s pleading cry.

another’s lifetime.

Image 2: Orestes: This was always going to happen. She’s been dead since the beginning.

Image 3: Imagine this: You’re pulling the car over. Somebody’s waiting. You’re going to die in your best friend’s arms. And you play along because it’s funny, because it’s written down, you’ve memorized it, it’s all you know. I say the phrases that keep it all going, and everybody plays along.

Image 4: But I was late for this, late for that, late for the love of my life / And when I die alone, when I die alone, when I die I’ll be on time. / And the only gifts from my Lord were a birth and a divorce / But I’ve read this script and the costume fits, so I’ll play my part.

For adults, the appeal is Sir Patrick Stewart doing a kid’s educational bit in full Shakespearean dress and style; there’s a delightful cognitive dissonance between the very serious presentation and the very simple content.

For very small children, it’s educational: this is the letter “B”; here’s how it’s shaped; here’s some words you know that start with it. Oh, and here’s a word you may not be familiar with that starts with it, so you can recognize that it’s the sound that matters, and not whatever other connection you made between the other two words.

For older kids: you’ve probably heard that “to be or not to be?” speech, or at least part of it, so you can enjoy some of the parody the adults are watching. Also, here’s how to describe how a letter is made - how to teach young siblings who don’t read yet, how to explain both the shape and the sound.

For kids with dyslexia: here’s how you differentiate a “B” from a P or D or E. You may have to go slowly and look carefully at the exact shapes that make up the whole, but there are differences and you can learn to recognize them. 

For teens or young college students: In addition to whichever parts of those are relevant to you, here’s what Shakespearean acting sounds like. Here’s how to enunciate clearly and slowly, so your audience can understand terms they may not recognize and still follow the gist of what you’re saying. If you’re reading Shakespeare in school, try sounding it out like this and see if that helps it make sense.

also ADHD: makes you write in long, rambling sentences

“Nice Does Not Mean Good” Part 2

“My godfather’s truck was a two-seater

Unfit for a family of four, but that didn’t matter

He carved out space in the back and installed

Two jumpseats for his kids, me nestled snug

In between them, their bodies my seatbelt

This was the nature of living in my hometown

You had to work with what you were given

When you didn’t fit, you made room for yourself

And trusted the people around you to keep you safe

Building rooms onto trailers from plywood

For unexpected blessings who never felt unwanted

Putting lawn chairs in the truck beds

For visiting cousins who needed a ride

There were no trees for tree houses, so

We made do with tents pitched on rooftops

I’m telling you all of this so you’ll understand what I mean

When you worry there’s no space left in my heart

And I say I can make room.”

‘But This I’ll Never Tell’ Part 1

around the time i first watched Beauty and the Beast, my childhood play table broke; we had to glue to wood back together. i had a lot of nighttime anxiety as a kid, and naturally this led to me staying up late tossing & turning in bed, because what if that happened to a piece of enchanted furniture in Beauty and the Beast? imagine, you’re an 18th cent french servant and your young dumbass master summons a curse down on the house. he turns into a badass wolf monster while you, a lowly peasant, turn into a fucking TABLE. years pass. one day, that stupid dog-footstool comes running out of nowhere as you’re trotting down the hall, and BAM–your leg comes off! your leg just cracks off, splinters and all. then what? how the heck do you respond to that? well your master has spent the last 10 years trashing the place, so you’re probably not going to ask him to take a look at it, he’d probably smash you to bits (and not in the fun monster-smash ;) way, in the smashing-furniture-bc-he-has-big-claws-and-the-emotional-capacity-of-a-teaspoon way). still, you don’t have thumbs so you’re probably stuck asking that insufferable candlestick for help gluing the damn thing back on, assuming he doesn’t light you on fire in the process. so let’s say that happens, and a few years pass & your master gets his head out of his ass long enough to break the curse. my question in, what now? you’ve spent years walking around on a leg that was literally separated from your body. in an enchanted castle, does glue function as the magical equivalent of reattachment surgery OR have you just been walking around all this time on what would in any other situation be a dead decaying amputated leg? does the leg start decaying as soon as the enchantment is reversed, or is it basically just bone and rotten cartilage by now?? for that matter, has your human body kept aging all these years or is it returned to the state directly prior to the original transformation? does the 10 years spent as furniture count against your lifespan?