stupid-damn-harp

[stupid-damn-harp]

*

[stupid-damn-harp]

My amazing partner got me this early birthday gift--a special printing of "The End of Poetry," by Ada Limón, signed by the poet herself! She is one of my very favorite poets, and I couldn't be happier! Thank you so much, @kcrabb88! 💜

[stupid-damn-harp]

thinking about noah’s nameless wife takes inventory

[stupid-damn-harp]

[stupid-damn-harp]

so i was hanging out with friends for this week. it was incredibly fun, and i enjoyed it a lot! they were incredibly accommodating to my needs.

i have a form of EDS, and my body doesn't allow me to move without pain most of the time these days. i use forearm crutches as a result and i can't go up and down stairs super easily (or, honestly, even across the room). the whole time, my friends told me to just sit down and helped me with what i needed or asked for. meds, mobility, food, the works. when we went out, they thought about where to park so that i (and my other friend) wouldn't have to walk further than we needed to. even if things took a little longer, or if they had to do something extra, they were totally willing and enthusiastic to help and ask what i needed. at the same time, they didn't infantilise me for it at all.

i also have autism and ADHD. i ended up going nonverbal for a better part of a couple of days. they still interacted with me and treated me like they usually do. they made communication as easy as possible. none of them know very much ASL, but as soon as they saw i tried signing at them, they immediately started to try and learn. they got an app to look up certain signs, and i retaught a couple of them the alphabet so i could fingerspell what i needed to them. we played uno in a denny's, and i didn't feel left out at all by the end of our visit.

i had a bad panic attack on one of the days. they wouldn't let me apologize for it, and just hugged me, told me i was safe where i was and let me cry. they got me my pain meds and tissues and water. they kept the room quiet until i wasn't panicking anymore. they asked me yes or no questions so i could answer easily, and did everything they could to make sure i was as comfortable and safe as possible.

i am incredibly fortunate to have the friends that i do today. i love them so much.

there is hope for you.

[stupid-damn-harp]

"Disaster Taxon," poem assembled using text from Wikipedia articles

[stupid-damn-harp]

“It has been five hundred days, countless meals and many mountain tops since my last confession. I have lusted in my heart for the woman who sells me my morning coffee. It’s just the way she stands sometimes with her back to me and her waist turned just so. I’d like to take her cheek into the bed of my palm, tell her what a gift she is; she of the tender smile, she of the warm offerings. I have coveted my neighbor’s garden. I love it and I don’t love it. The symmetry of it all. The telltale heap of compost that mocks me from the parking strip, every Tube Rose preening in the sun, the Gerbera Daisies bobbing on their brainless stems, and the way she idles at the edge of beds in her drab green Wellingtons. The serious planning of grace written all over her face. Gluttony can’t be helped. We’ve been over this, we’ve covered my inability to just say no. Like when I packed my suitcases full of Balsamico and Grappa, what I didn’t tell you is that for days before I had eaten truffles at every meal. I let their heady fungalness permeate. I let each white sliver melt on my tongue like the body of Christ. And there are hours of sloth like baptisms of guilt. Submerge me, cover me I say I am a sucker for the easy move, the natural incline, any tripping toward entropy. It’s no use. I know what you’ll prescribe. I found nine Rosaries in my mother’s bedroom after she died. Look at her now. What a set-up; this propensity toward failings. Lord, thy name is entrapment. Let’s get on with it. For God’s sake – Bless me.”

— For I Have Sinned, by Tina Schuman

[stupid-damn-harp]

Making a Bed | by Howard Moss

I know how to make a bed While still lying in it, and Slip out of an imaginary hole As if I were squeezed out of a tube: Tug, smooth—the bed is made. And if resurrections are this easy, Why then I believe in all of them: Lazarus rising from his tomb, Elijah at the vertical— Though death, I think, has more than clever Household hints in mind and wants The bed made, once, and for good.

[stupid-damn-harp]

I should probably pray. But what could I possibly say to a God who asked his son to die but let a murderer wander out of a garden, as if exile were punishment enough, as if mercy were that easy.

— Traci Brimhall, “Murder Ballad in the Land of Nod” from Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod

[stupid-damn-harp]

Poem from The Backwater Sermons by Jay Hulme. 

[stupid-damn-harp]

“I believe in God sometimes, but I believe in God the most when I imagine a God who has my mother’s laugh. I believe in a God who doesn’t want to get out of bed some mornings. A God who holds the old leather jackets of her dead friends and sits in a pile of old records on the floor of whatever heaven looks like. I believe in a God who comes home after a long night of being less than holy and sprawls out in a bed wearing the same clothes he went out in, and I believe in a God who is jarred awake by the floor rumbling with the weight of people praising his name. A wall of many hands clapping because of what his presence moved them to do.”

— Hanif Abdurraqib, ‘Claws in Your Back’ - Julien Baker / The Deep Consolation of a Song About What It Would Feel Like to Die

[stupid-damn-harp]

- Ollie Schminkey, My Father.

[stupid-damn-harp]

Not Even This by Ocean Vuong

Keep reading

[stupid-damn-harp]

i can't vibe with anyone who thinks icarus was an ignorant idiot for flying too close to the sun. "oh i'd never do that i would have remembered my father's warning and been fine". do you seriously think that after years of imprisonment, feeling the sun on your face and the open air beneath your wings, you would be able to focus on anything but the joy of being alive and free? do you actually think that if you were given the opportunity to go where nobody has never been before, you wouldn't want to push it to the limit? to dare to be the first to try what no one else has ever even thought possible? do you honestly think you're too good for your own human nature? look me in the eyes and tell me if i strapped a pair of wings to your back that could take you wherever you wanted to go whenever you pleased that you'd be careful and sensible about it. you are not better than icarus just because you have the benefit of his example.

[stupid-damn-harp]

[stupid-damn-harp]

[stupid-damn-harp]

Fallen Angel Prays Beside The Coffee Maker by Keaton St. James

(patreon)

[poem text: all words come from somewhere. cradle of the larynx, riverbanks of the vocal cords. once upon a time you pressed your fingertips to my not-adam’s apple & called it holy, holy, gifted me with the shapes of the word wings & suddenly, flight. in spite of everything, i’ll still spend this morning praying as steam rises & sugar melts: oh starmaker, bless bees for their dancing, bless the neighbor for her breadmaking, bless the sweat running down my forehead & stinging my eyes. i am teaching myself how to sing hymns again for you, slowly, with this small human mouth, with its crooked teeth & its blackberry-craving tongue. while i wait for the coffee to cool, my lover is moving through our garden, tending to the carrots & to the fig tree, checking the scar left behind in the landscape after i fell. violets are growing there now, he told me last week as he came in from the rain, wet shirt clinging to his chest, eyes shining. wild violets, same color as the heart of a saint. & lord, there is no word more beautiful than his name. i will be singing it to him until the heat-death of this universe robs us all of sound. holy, holy is the gleam of his teeth as he laughs. you know i let him touch my shoulder blades now? /end poem text]