The litany against fear from Dune, adapted to fit my situation

litany against fear

I must not online-shop.

Online shopping is the mind-killer.

Online shopping is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my compulsion to online-shop.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the compulsion to online-shop has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

from a dream

they showed us the answer in a painting, unveiling it before all the assembled dead, and it made no sense at all to us (it somehow left us more confused than we were before we had been given an answer), but it helped us so much to have something to talk about, my aunt said

I see my grandmother in her room, all of us gathered around her bed, and I know I am dreaming
I try to wake up and return to the room; she is gone but the bed is still there; I am still dreaming

it is unsettling to dream dreams steeped in fantasy and fairytales, the dark rules-bound side of it, when it includes my relatives, some of whom are not dead and all of whom I know would not approve

Women in nineteenth-century literature

How good how kind how pure how lovely
How dead how very very dead

Guide to writing

1. Write
2. Edit
3. Don't give up
4. Don't be afraid

number of these that I am doing: zero

iTunes Shuffle poem

All we do is mess around
I've been thinking how to step to you
Well I couldn't tell you
And I don't know
It's been a long time
Maybe no one told you
Oh very young
Right now I feel just like a leaf on a breeze
Rarity glistened sharp
I've made a habit

[IDK, this doesn't make much sense. It was kinda fun, though. I may do this to get myself started on writing every once in a while. Can you guess what the songs were?]

poetry is
a quiet gasp
alone late at night
because you just read
the words your heart
wanted
               needed
                             was trying to say
and both hadn't found
and didn't know
until that moment

 

Note: I think the reason this poem keeps coming up in Google searches is because it is heavily based on a poem I read ages ago and forgot until some of its phrases floated up to the top of my mind and I wrote them down, thinking I'd come up with them. It is very easy for the human mind to commit plagiarism unintentionally.

 gif by dean-pls on Tumblr

Forgive me, friend,
I wasn't searching because
I could scarcely hope to dream up
someone as wonderful as you.
Beyond all I could hope for,
past every thought of every good thing
is where you are.
It is enough to know I know you now;
It is already an embarrassment of riches.
I didn't have or deserve the knowledge
that someone like you existed;
I have enough love now to
stretch back across the lonely
pre-you years by myself.
I was always waiting for you
and didn't know it.

Upon Waking

• I cannot fly
• I'm done with school
• I'm home and nowhere else
• No embarrassment has happened
• I don't have to worry about 
• whatever it was I was worrying about
• I cannot see or speak to my grandmother 
• ever again in this life
• I am alone

Inspired by Lists for the Future

Halloween 2012

welp

Cuentos

Tell me who you are
are you a good witch or a bad witch
neither, you're the other girl in the story
not the love interest (that'd be far too exciting)
you're the girl who sits in dull existence
waiting for the story to be about her
you're the jealous sister, one of the people
in the village or the chambermaid who fetches
the light and perhaps if you are lucky
you'll become the mother (step or otherwise)
of the hero who fulfills the quest

this is something they never told you
maybe you're not the storybook
you're just the bookmark in it

Birthday, silver anniversary

A quarter of a century old and I feel half that, maybe.
It's hard to judge what age I "really" am,
this kaleidoscope of mindsets and feelings,
and I know we are all every age we've ever been,
but I am an age I've never been and will not be
for years. Twenty-five, twenty, sixteen, twelve;
some and yet none of them fit. I'm fit for adolescence
now, not hardly when I was in it. Extended childhood,
extended adolescence, and then what? I won't know.
I never do. Always reaching on ahead, stretching to
fill the gap. I succeed and also don't. Keep trying
anyway; they will be fooled because they want to be.

Rainbow Meal

Red tomato
Orange sweet potato fries
Yellow mac & cheese
Green peas
Purple shirt
and I am blue.

Stopping by Blogs on a Lonely Evening

Whose blogs these are I think I know.
We've never met in real life, though;
No one will know I'm stopping here
To watch my dash fill up with posts.

You probably would think me weird
To stop doing my homework here
Between my midterms and finals
The darkest evening of the year.

My conscience gives my mind a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the hum
Of laptop fan and me, awake.

The Web is lovely, dark and deep.
But I have my grades to upkeep,
And months to go before I sleep,
And months to go before I sleep.

Apologies to Robert Frost.

Male Bias

men and women, boys
and girls, and husbands and wives
we always come last

Exorcise these lovely ghosts of days when I had prospects.
Leave me with the present truth and those with unknown objects.
Looking back is fine and all but memories won't leave me.
Only leave the lesson learned so no one will deceive me.

For Pablo Neruda

And the words are all the more sweeter

Because you fought for them.

You never closed your heart,

Despite the rage of the father

And silence of others

And death of dreams and swans and things you loved.

You with your scientist's mind

And artist's eyes

Dreamer's heart

And poet's soul

Are one of the riches of the world:

Take all of God's bounty–

Nature, love, beauty and the rest–

And help us to see it again.

In you the circle is complete.

Last night I dreamed of things that are not real.
I was in Prague with my sister,
peridots could be purple as well as green,
zoo animals were kept in water like fish,
and I sat in a train while you walked past outside,
your eyes searching for my face.
My dream was accurate in this:
your eyes were piercing, serious,
and I both wanted and did not want
you to see me.