chelchosblog - Tumblr blog

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Makenzie Beckstead's chapbook, Religious Trauma in the Key of Poetry, is available from Bottlecap Press!

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It's my 4 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

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“To have a son or daughter like this is to have portion of the spirit shrivel and die, never to recover. You witness the lost soul of your child floating out into the ethers of eternity. Ethics is a dream, and tenderness a daytime phantasm, lost when night comes. Esther and I, eyes open, held each other until dawn broke. My darling wept in my arms, our hearts in ruin. We live in a large city, populated only by ourselves.”

-Charles Baxter, “The Feast of Love”

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Mahal Kita

In this world you only live once.

And you have to make the most of your time.

Thankfully, I've been blessed with the best times of all,

Since the love of my life is with me, mine.

-

I can't be faulted for falling in love.

My heart oozes with joy and delight.

And her pictures loiter my brain with no end,

Because she is incredibly sweet to the sight.

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Chel is her name, it's my favorite name.

The girl who stole my heart like a robber.

Some day we can hold hands for hours and hours,

While we talk abour our lives and plans for the future.

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Chel

I've never felt this way before

Everything is all so new.

All my sadness is now happiness

And my blues are no longer blue.

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Truth be told,

I am so glad I met you.

You give me a new found joy to life

And a reason to live. Something to do.

So please be my wife.

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I won't bury myself in my childish antics anymore,

And I've turned off my tv and games.

You are now my entertainment, my pleasure and my vice.

You are the new arrow I choose to aim.

-

So never leave me babe,

I swear to God,

As long as with me you'll be happy.

Because tomorrow's torment,

Comes like a furious gust of air,

But you are my refuge in a world that's windy.

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Time

Time is fleeting

Passing us by.

Watching us suffer and cry,

Watching us die.

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Time has no heart,

No feelings no cares.

It watches us grow old,

And gives us blank stares.

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No matter the shouting,

Agony or pain you might have.

The winds of time blow past us,

And they'll have the last laugh.

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So ignore the ignoring.

And don't fight in a lost war.

Do your best now at the moment,

Knowing tomorrow time will still be at the door.

[chelchosblog]

Everything okay?

If you or someone you know is struggling, you are not alone. There are many support services that are here to help. For 24/7 peer support and other resources, message KokoBot on Tumblr.

If you are in the United States, please try:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) The Trevor Project (LGBTQ youth, ages 13-24) National Eating Disorders Association (online chat, text) RAINN (National Sexual Assault Hotline)

If you are outside the United States, visit IASP to find resources for your country.

For more resources, please visit our Counseling & Prevention Resources page for a list of services that may be able to help.

[chelchosblog]

My lowest low

I don't know what I'm doing with my life.

I try one way and I try another.

I talk to this person, I chat with that person.

My friends all gone, along with my brothers.

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The independent thoughts that reign in my head

Keep my spiraling at night, under the covers of my bed.

Wishing for some clue to what I should do,

But I can't find the finish line, much less the starting line too.

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Everything is empty to me,

wishy washy words shake my core.

And I give love to others

Until I can't anymore.

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And for what? Why bother?

It means nothing to me.

Just a simple guy, simple mind,

And third shot of depression with my Hennessey.

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Blank pages fill up the corners of my bed room,

Piling on top of each other. I watch them and stare.

My fingers are too weak to jot down an idea, or impulse.

So the poems remains silent, only in my head to share.

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Guilt from my ghosts haunt me hours strong,

And my blood pressure rises from the stresses I've longed.

The people I've spoken too show me blank faces with no body attached,

Blanket phrases coming from disembodied hacks until I feel attacked.

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The lights flicker on and off at my face.

My eyes shine brightly at my despair.

Nothing has any meaning,

I think I'm going to die.

Life cruel, life's not fair.

Why, god? Why?

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Paradise love without you

My paradise is a hell without you

The palms trees in the artic seem bleek.

And the temperate climate feels rigid,

Since you not here in my arms, not in my keep.

We used to kiss by the sun rise.

I would hold you tightly with no worry.

But you've marched on without me,

Now the sun's clear lights seem so blurry.

The moon we look at is the same,

And the wind blows through your hair just as mine.

Still, paradise is hell without you,

And the holy and evil appear both sublime.

The torture my perfect soul feels,

Breaking down this poor man's heart.

And even though I won't die of sickness or old age,

I'll stop existing as long as we're apart.

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Bloody mess

Clear and shout

Cleans the bloodstains on the grout.

Toothbrush strokes to the tiles,

Soaked paper towels running in piles.

Red spots on the curtains,

I spray with a disinfectant.

I scrub the walls

With brushes and towels.

I hide the knife,

I hide my wife.

I clean with all my life,

And hide with strife.

I take no chances,

I cover my tracks.

This wasn't my first deep cleaning,

And it won't be my last.

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Loud silence

I can only see you through the mirror.

A reflections detection leaves me wanting more affection from a viewing section.

A pretty girl like you shouldn't hide under the covers,

Go out, face the world. Show them how to be a real lover.

A face like yours shouldn't be taken for granted.

Granted all the slanted folks in out apartment compartmentalize their antics.

Either way you stick out in a good way.

Reveal yourself to us and prove your here to stay.

The voices and whispers are quietly deafening.

Eavesdropping, wall knocking, and shouting neighbors word's are threatening.

So keep your ears on mine,

And only see what I hear and listen to what my eyes define.

The men in the shadows wear their long cloaks.

And the folks, who tell their tolks and hide strokes of weapons under their coats

Keep staring at us. Cold eyes, freezing cold.

Or, so I'm told.

Your embrace warms the below degrees eyes,

And hide me from the lies those guys try to enterprise.

But you and i are authentic, until we die.

So we lie together, under the sky. Wondering why we see what we do. Why?

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Open Mic reading of my poem "At the Quake".

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At the quake

I'm only twenty-five years old,

Yet I've been told,

I'm already one third of the way done with my time,

so behold:

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I've got some ideas I've tossed around.

From since the times I played in the play ground

And counted the indiscriminate stars that surround us year-round.

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There's something not right with the world I was born in.

I was raised at the quake of division.

And my peers don't have any answers to what I've seen,

Neither do I, but we need to at least reason;

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If someone is poor,

Why not help that person?

If someone is in need,

Why not give them something?

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Juxtaposed to all those

Whose shoes have holes where they reveal their toes,

You stand tall, knowing what you know,

How dare you claim to be a person God-bestowed,

While the poor die right outside your door in the freezing cold.

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And the old and young get told,

They need to get in debt.

Who sells that debt?

The rich and 1% who don't forget.

They sell your soul,

While they sit on their tower of ivory and velvet.

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The young people, now indebted to a society who claim they have priority,

Are fed lies, knowing they'll only ever be considered a minority.

It's no mystery,

The heart beats of history

Keep repeating.

That's why the disenfranchised keep bleeding

From the cuts of the past and the countless beatings.

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These hard truths have an answer,

Just one I don't know.

Maybe a revolution,

A solution.

Perhaps a little more love as a whole.

-

We need to come together,

And transform each other.

Trust one another,

Be like sisters and brothers.

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Like a peacock's feathers on it's wings,

Beauty surrounds all things,

We just need to show that love,

And see the effects empathy and compassion brings.

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It's expensive to buy a big house in Brentwood,

It's pricey to be selfish and not care,

But it's cheap to hug a fellow person in need,

And free to love, give, listen and share.

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The land of the "free"

Bon día, Sofia.

How do you do?

Can I tell you about the greatest place?

They call it gods land.

Well that's if your rich,

And if you happen to be the right race.

You see,

We have a thing called inequality,

For those who weren't born right,

Yet we disenfranchise those

Whose shoes don't fit their toes,

And aren't what we consider white.

We make it harder for those guys to land a job,

And the ones they get don't pay as much.

They struggle more than we do of course,

And then we go out of way to say they're out of touch.

Work harder, we say, we did it so can you!

An illusion of choice is given.

But we create barriers for those to go around,

When all we had to do was be born with the easy living.

Your family's poor, so go get some money,

In your own neighborhood with your own kind.

Even though our bloods red, and we live and die,

I didn't make this world to be kind.

No, I made it for us, this country is mine.

Why should you have it easier than me?

My parents were the ones who built this country,

On the back of those who were brought here in slavery.

Come by, Sofia, to my house and see

The riches of the land of the free.

Keep in mind that the cost of freedom is actually quite expensive

When you count the live of minorities.

A tall flag we salute,

Red white and blue.

Waves at the winds of unity.

We stand up with honor,

Hands on our hearts,

Knowing we will always have more opportunities.

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Straight of affairs

One nations fears

And it's citizens appears

Rattled by oppression and underhanded tendencies.

Brought up by fathers

Who care more about the top,

Than those who inherit the drought-ridden stocks.

The gains; mishandled and dismembered,

By the owners of their own body members,

Passing down the torch to generations underneath them,

With the flame as dim as the price that awaits them.

They manufacture laws with dollars signs in mind,

And pass them off like white sheep to the powerless blind.

Telling their constituents to praise their well being,

Mooching of their subjects until they they've got nothing.

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A care less caress

I wasn't scared when you stepped into my life.

It didn't startle me when you took over my lease.

It didn't surprise me when you said you were going to be my wife.

I wasn't taken aback when you called our future diseased.

I had no worries when you stole my children from me.

I didn't bat an eye at the way you broke down my front door.

I couldn't care less about your struggling addiction to green.

And when death comes knocking at your house, I'll be indifferent just like before.

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My worries

I worry about the future,

I worry about the past.

I worry about how long my existence might last.

I wonder if I'll get married,

If I'll ever find a wife.

I wonder if I'll ever make anything out of my insignificant life.

I think about my family,

And think about their well being.

I hope and pray some day I can find a meaning.

Sometimes I feel lost in a world with no map,

Falling through cracks that lead to back tracks.

I'm doomed to be by myself, doomed to be on my own.

This torment I have inside keeps my heart alone.