painted-constellations - Tumblr blog

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lavender, aster, dandelion

watercolor

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Springing back into florals

colored pencil

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[R E D A C T E D]

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quaran-spring has me acting up 🥀🖤🤍

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Flotsam

I think I understand the Lethe.

The sister of Starvation,

of Lies,

of Battles

and War

and Ruin,

she, most of all, remembers the evils that abrade the world.

Alive and aware

Throughout the immortal glory of her divinity,

She knows the past is the greatest burden of all, and

Calls to the supposed heroes of days of old

With offers of blissful oblivion.

An old man that wields power and false promises like a double-edged sword,

A young boy that blindly follows his brothers, believing virtue can be born of blood,

His eyes stolen at birth with that state-sanctioned blade,

All end up coming to her,

For eternity, even when spent in the honey-sweet fields of Elysium,

Feels like torture intended for the damned

When you have nothing but ghosts for company.

I think I understand the Lethe.

The daughter of Strife,

she, most of all, remembers the damages life can flood upon the innocent.

Collector and cataloguer of each tear shed,

She is familiar with the salt that hopelessness leaves on the tongue.

The thick film from a young girl starved of her childhood, 

Waiting for her insatiable husband to return,

Well past wishing she’d had the fate of her siblings

Left out to die before they could become one more mouth to feed,

The last with the corpse of her wasted mother beside it, and she

Does not care that her own maternal dissolution is not too far off

Because she finally,

Finally, knows the feeling of a full belly.

Drunk on that brackish surrender,

Each and every drop always running off to that

Same gods-forsaken place,

Yes, I think I understand her.

A wreckage in her own waters,

Dragged along her bed of rocks,

Clawing at those well-worn stones,

She is deafened by the thrum of her own current,

Fast and painful within her skull,

Waves beating and beating against the walls of her chest,

Her shores battered and barren,

She rushes to the understanding Hypnos,

Son of Night and brother of Death,

Where the harmony of their lulling murmurs give them

A chance of respite:

The peace that could come with sleep,

If only she could stop dreaming.

I think I understand the Lethe.

The sister of Stories and Oaths,

She wishes and wants, most of all, 

To rest.

To sink under a blanket of silt and 

Forget.

Polluted with jetsam of mortals’ memories, yet

No one recalls the longing on her bloated, waterlogged face,

Or her murky eyes, holding everything the world has lost within their depths.

Just the scarred hands that offer them their freedom.

Just the kind, caressing fingers

Cold enough to freeze if those who drank from her could remember

What warmth was.

But until the Fates-promised oblivion of her namesake

Settles in its rightful place,

The unintended castaway takes pity

And gives you the gift of 

Forgetting you were ever alive in the first place,

Even if it is only for you to live again.

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Nonsensical Classics and Other Laughing Matters

There once was a huntress so pure

That Zeus couldn’t stand her allure

So he came down and raped her

Then claimed Ursa Major

Trapped in his realm so secure

There too was a woman of beauty

Whom Zeus thought was just a tad choosy

And so as a cygnus

He fucked her with quickness

Repaying her kindness with cruelty

The princess was next in the trawl

So Zeus did what’s now just banal

But the hero was born

So he faced no scorn

Which was no surprise at all

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Sara Andelin - "Breeder" | Classic Slam 2019

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Tableaus of a Depressed Girl

Lost

An old necklace sits on her dresser

Coated in a layer of dust

From a distance

You cannot tell that the cheap, corroded metal is almost as dull as her eyes

And you cannot tell that the necklace

Does not care

Tired

In the eye of a storm made of dirty clothes and rumpled bedsheets

She lies

Gaze seeing nothing but a blank, white ceiling

She lies

Saying that she’s fine

Saying nothing at all

She sleeps but

Rest never comes

Forgotten

The last beloved book awaits

Tenderly holding the missing fire from inside her

Worlds and people she once loved

Traded

For artificial warmth

Generated from electronic escape

Rather than the beating of her heart

And though she does not remember

The dusty pages do

And hope

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Dawn with Arms of Roses

a found poem from translations of works by Sappho of Lesbos

On my knees,

Blubbering,

I pray.

I go unwillingly

From that reeking sewer of my life.

Shackled by love,

Shame,

My mind is divided.

Overcome

With longing for a girl,

I wish I were dead,

Like the wild hyacinth flower

Trodden in the ground,

A scarlet stain upon the earth.

Blame Aphrodite,

She has almost killed me with love.

My tongue is frozen in silence,

I can’t stand

All that my heart longs for:

A beauty desired,

Like the wind on the mountain rushing over oak trees.

Blushing sweet,

Rosebuds

twined around your young neck,

Crying out

With your Lydian lyre,

I am enchanted.

Mountain hyacinth,

Longing for you

And paler than grass in autumn,

Love, audacious and tender,

Drives me on.

Haul up a bucket of spring water,

Bloom

without song,

Purple blossom

Stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew.

In the crooks of your body, I find my religion.

Whatever one loves, is. This is easily proved.

The dear sound of your footstep and light glancing in your eyes,

Violet tiaras,

Braided

Dill and crocus

On your head,

Your sweet voice and your enticing laughter,

Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,

The finest sight on dark earth.

We are all born to lose.

Gods do what they like,

Trod,

For ever tear and wound,

If they have a whim,

With clumsy, rustic foot.

The Cyprus-born goddess

Is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables,

Love,

Bittersweet and inescapable,

If only I, O goldcrowned Aphrodite, could win this round.

It’s no use.

This parting must be endured.

Pierced by thorns,

And the hills quiet,

I now

Whisper,

The way you would a love letter,

Thank you, thank you,

Go, and be happy,

My rose.

You are the crier of coming Spring,

A marigold in bloom,

There hovers forever around you delight,

There is no place for grief.

Think of

all the loveliness that we shared,

The chattering oak-leaves

Softer than rainfall at twilight,

Girls with all that they most wished for beside them,

Happily ever after.

Forget it not.

Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time,

To live forever.

To

Bring you back to me.

Now, I shall sing these songs beautifully.

Swept away in Dawn’s passionate, rose-flushed arms,

Now, I shall sing these songs beautifully.

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response to “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Dunbar

Take off the mask

We were not made from man's rib

And you do not have to be the perfect daughter

When the stranger on the street says, "smile, baby"

"why do you look so gloomy, baby"

"being a bitch is a real turn off, baby"

You do not have to grin back

But bare your teeth

Because sometimes aggression is the only language in which they are fluent

His power over us is nothing but a shadow

Engulfed by the awful tempests they can't help but name for women

Take off the mask

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The Heceta Head Light among the Oregon coast flashes every ten seconds to warn mariners of the upcoming jagged land

A quick in-class assignment

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Love Potion #31

The prefix a-

Meaning not,

Without,

Lacking

Correct uses include

Abnormal

Atypical

Abiotic

Asexual

The first boy I thought fell in love with was Troy Bolton.

Not Zac Efron, mind you, but the famous

Captain of the East High basketball team,

Athlete with the voice of an angel,

Someone any sane girl should be interested in, and

Because the correct response to “What team?” will always be “Wildcats”.

The second boy I thought I fell in love with was Sam. Then Matthew, then Toby, then Liam and Jalen and Gabe and Will and Griffin.

You see, I’m a Pisces,

An incorrigible romantic,

Sensual and sensitive

—According to cafeastrology.com/articles/pisceswomanlove.html. —

I’m akin to Aphrodite herself.

Yes, I suppose a real-life Venus de Milo,

For when you reach for me, I have no arms to reach back.

Just phantom pains in phantom limbs,

A stock-still sculpture you pass by while on an ice cream date with the one you choose to hold hands with.

The plaque at my feet shows a picture of the woman I would be if I were fixed.

I don’t recognize her.

“This is an incomplete human being,” the plaque reads.

“A human being that could totally pick up an ice cream cone herself

If she’d just stop being a statue and find her damn arms again.”

Well, they’ve been missing for two centuries now so I don’t think that’s going to happen, but

You tell me there’s still no need to worry

Because I’ll only grow out of this cringey bullshit anyway,

But this isn’t Night at the Museum,

And I won’t reanimate after one good look at your magic...tablet

Because of

The prefix a-

Incorrect uses include

Absolute

Abloom

Ablaze

Alive

For even though my marble skin does not give when you touch it,

Know I that I still love

And am very much in love,

Because one letter is not a complete definition,

And we live in a world full of things worthy of being adored.

My favorite ice cream as a child was Baskin-Robbins’ Love Potion #31.

Every Valentine’s Day, I’d eat it without fail as if it were my saving grace.

Maybe as a part of some grand metaphor:

The vanilla, the structure of compulsory heterosexuality that framed my youth;

The raspberry, red as the hearts I desperately wanted to think of as more than friends;

The chocolate chips, the bittersweet flavor of self-acceptance I would eventually have to face.

Or maybe it was just because I liked the taste.

(It was probably the latter.)

But either way, a disgusting pizza chain replaced the Baskin-Robbins near my home,

And I can’t say I miss it much.

(Besides, I just buy Breyer’s anyway.)

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breeder

response to “furiosa” by Franny Choi

i look my best when displayed in a casket.

i have two deflated balloons for hands. i have hands

placed where they should be, scaled lips

smoothed, saved from the sin of age.

when i said,

i am not to be consumed, they installed a new mask of false empowerment,

one no man could be threatened by, one painted

with leaden cream and powder, brand-name bone

structure. removed rib bones. my maiden name

was forgotten. i am stuck to the inside of this saccharine body

alongside the residue of my justification for existence, passed on through

birthing hips. i am beyond saving.

my teeth sit still in bleached-white rows. how beautiful, they say. i’ve done

my job. i’ve done it well.

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A Romanticization of the Natural World by a City Girl

because of Mary Oliver

If, one morning, the caress of a gentle breeze is urging you forward,

Follow where it takes you.

To a field where the dirt is more alive than dead, and

The blue of long-awaited rain blesses patient yellow grass.

When you sit,

One creature in a kingdom of things drawn to the green,

Look to the souls of those around you.

A shiny pill bug the size of a fingernail, with a shell,

Plated and ribbed,

Antennae waving,

The pill bug’s inherent bug-ness is trusted, not criticized,

For it becomes perfect the second you accept it for what it is.

With legs scuttling over a meal of decaying weeds,

The final and first steps in a never-ending cycle.

As you stare,

The sheets of clouds above turning golden then fuchsia and violet and deep indigo,

Look to the pinpricks of old explosions in the sky.

A roadmap constellation of arrows and signs, infinitely vast,

With matter and meaning that cancel themselves out.

Reminding that you do not have to hold up the heavens,

Uniting those simply in the midst of this never-ending cycle,

Perfect and beautiful and preciously small, watching,

Guiding each other home.

Whoever you are,

Wherever your war may be,

May this be your peace:

If, one morning, you feel the push of a gentle breeze,

Learn from where it leads you.

Trust in the humanity of others, and

You will again love the stranger that was once yourself.