Bad Tumblr Poetry

Because of you I see a world of colour and detail

Not because flies don’t like vinegar

Vinegar is familiar to flies

It smells of age and rot, sharp and cruel

It smells of hiding in the bathroom

And the taste of threats in the air

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar

Because honey is sticky

Honey is a stranger to flies

Honey is sweet and fresh, inviting and warm

It smells like apple pie and kisses on the cheek

And tastes like I love you

The fly doesn’t know it’s in danger

Until it tries to leave

I don’t cry and complain like my sisters

I don’t act out in violence like my brothers

I’m sitting quiet and contemplative

What I have never had

What I had and lost

What I kept in clenched fists

Leaves burn in the hot and cold sun

Turning brown and falling

Rain pounds the dirt like it’s trying to drill through

To the worms who crawl out

Your bravery is noted

There is just enough time to kiss the concrete

The rain ends as abruptly as it starts

Making way for the blistering sun which fries

This poor helpless, squirming beast

March whispered you a promise which April would not keep.

March like the rain offered you something

Of certainty and clarity, unwelcome but required

You and I were wrapped in the nervous excitement

A future that was laid out like stone

Lined paths through gardens

But I’m still losing years

To grief, to loss, to loneliness

I raise my glass

Would you still love me if I was mindless?

Would you still love me if I was writhing in the dirt, tasting through the leaves to make mulch?

Would you still love me if I was buried in the soil and only came up when it rained?

Would you still love me if I was trapped on the concrete, burning alive and dehydrating because I lost my way back home?

Music thundering in my ears and lights

cutting through darkness so all you see are moments

Now I just feel tired

And I can make a machine that tells you it loves you

You feel, just for a millisecond, something flutter in that void

The projection of a butterfly landing on a flower

Maybe this is what it feels like when you’re just starting to fill up

You’ll have a million real butterflies soon and the machine that tells you it loves you will project them all

And you don’t need real butterflies anymore

And even though you’re hollow and the people who have butterflies look at you

Like they look at the dying

You’re full of butterflies

But she’s flying me to Morocco,

So it’s up to you. Unless Jay says yes first.”

And I am going to live like this.

Like a dark, unpainted knot of wood against the white

Between it and freedom are invisible webs

Silk to feed

I break the sticky strands with my fingers,

Feel the tug of hunger that put them there

As if a drunk friend asking are you sure is the same

As if r u sure is the same without you bent over the toilet

At is if you sure sit t teb same question ebeb tho can barely feel your fingers

I’ve always been indecisive,

Are you sure was always

When my skin itches, I resist the temptation to peel my skin from my muscles. Instead, rubbing with the pad of my finger, which leaves no marks.

When my hair falls out of place, I try not to follow instinct and tug it roughly back.

I reach up to the wayward strands and find my mother’s fingers in my hair.

How many times have I moved the way she taught me?

Like a copy of her,

Fixing our hair, sipping our coffee, standing

A little off centre

So much of me is her reflected,

And I look to her as I’m growing older

Seeing as much of me in her as her in me

I wonder if my mother was always so rough with us. Was she softer on my sisters? When I look at how she treats herself I wonder if she hates me too. Has she tried to be gentle with herself? Will I fail too?

When I think of how she raised me, she tells me how gentle she was.

The effort of kindness that she took on.

Oh, I see…

Our bodies our minds

Intertwined in dance and rhythm

Shatter shatter vibration

Dance to the feeling in your feet

Forget what you knew about this beat

I don’t care for the stop at the end

I just want to be away from here

One tradie one pencil pusher

Star crossed lovers or strangers in the bustle?