sumofthegoodthings

[sumofthegoodthings]

Trigger Warning: Your Prefrontal Cortex Has Been Fully Developed for Years Now

November 22, 2022.

Exhausted from starring: the antagonist Burned everyone's pages with the name Banned from every city and academics, Wrote embers to ashes to silent separation. Patience in the pile, now fade in forgiving wind To erase tarnished history, forget so soon, To cancel "always" and "never" along with it, The final word and goodbyes all at once removed. A sudden lift, a changing environment Wish to shift to more comfortable clothes The celestial bodies sent a parting gift In unfortunate possibility of a permanent home. Then unconquered enemy: the concrete, The mingling with creatures dying at the shores, A Ladies Night Out and a Bachelor party, The rules wrote none of this was treatment deserved. Meanwhile, praying on destruction of the unfit mind, They're door to door selling crystalline books And magazines packed, somehow still energized, "Buy back your pirated metamorphosis!" But resting spots are scattered in stone crevices Here, it's permitted to oversleep the alarms Cinders stuck, blanketing Earth since silence, What a shame evil adheres to everything, The isolated antagonist letting everyone down, It's impossible to rid the one who's always a villain, Understand love can't be present under such conditions, Alone, even God can never stand her anymore. - ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

COMMENTARY ON SAFETY NETS AND POSITIVES:

a reading of my new poem, Safety Nets and Positives - ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

a reading of my new poem, Safety Nets and Positives - ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

Safety Nets and Positives

July 16, 2019. after two years of not being able to cry, the rain at the end of the drought comes forth, concluding just another night in july in which I think of you in every passing moment, just like every day since we first met. and there is a man there, he is only on my screen but he is also here with me, watching from a distance on my bedroom floor and never offering to rescue me. I thought maybe I saw tears in his eyes, too, but it was just a trick of the light. there is a woman playing piano and waiting for her turn to speak, and we all three observe each other, pretending not to, and hope we will be saved. but the salvaging never comes when we need it, does it? the mass of the earth pulls more and more water from the tired sky and the thin riverbed has had enough, but the water keeps on falling anyway, until an overflow occurs and we are all swept away from our homes. it doesn’t matter how much baggage we had now, it was all lost to the current and will eventually be anchored in sea somewhere. fleeing, I saw you, or my version of you, I noticed how your hair fell and saw the ever present sadness in your eyes, just like always. for me you planned to weave a safety net out of your guitar strings but it was already too late. for you I kept all my promises and positives but those were just words against your brain. if we had had time to speak to each other then, we would have admitted that the rain felt good pouring into our measuring glass skeletons. because it didn’t matter what the water took away from us, we were never at home to begin with. we never had peace within the walls because there was never anything inside of our bodies except the empty air surrounding the wait of a phone call that never came. and over time the circumstances were different but the outcomes were always the same. always leaving us as more of a shell, pieces of ourselves taken away by the ghost of someone else’s. and in the nights before the flood you would go to bed, privileged they said, with four blankets and three pillows, but none of those people ever stayed close by you in the night. and some distance away I would sleep with the mathematical equivalent. and we all just kept waiting for someone to retain us, an imaginary closeness that we believed so hard would become real someday, if we could just be better versions of ourselves, but the narrator understood and tried to warn us: that safety would never come. - ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

Hand Me Down California

July 6, 2019. Even then: You saw roses and dead leaves in the same sentences, You whispered like oceans when I talked about the stream that dried up after we were done with it, You said I made it all up and maybe I did, Reality crashing down and we’re sinking in, Time was slipping out of our flashlit hands, Laying down on the drive under the basketball net, Biking around the block to forget arguments, Confined by parents’ instead of city’s limits; Empty kids in safe gated establishments Made promises not to fake things in the ways they did, Professional attire and stiff etiquette, Scared of first days of school and trips to the dentist, I should have known you’d depart long before you mentioned it. Back to the present: I am driving down the by-pass, Figuring out the time of the sunset, Remembering when and where we lost it, Our sanity in the high school’s lot and sandboxes, The years hardening us a little bit, The things we said and the bullshit we didn’t. This year I am trying to see the good and I hate myself for it, But I’m still constructing fences, I’m still hiding most of my darkness. This year you announce that you’re moving to California. So I hope you catch the rays I didn’t, I hope you let the sun sink in, I hope you know I planned to leave too but never made it. So we talk about luck in hopes you’ll find it, So we break apart our life together again, So I will be right where you left, Thinking about the things we never did, Still trying to save up money for a plane ticket. - ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

The Roommate

Written: March 9, 2019 Published: June 3, 2019

There was once you accused me: I would burn your house down, But isn’t it telling that you’re the one Who lights me on fire for warmth? Isn’t it strange you left all the candles lit, Pounding on my door at 4 am, Calling the police again, Telling your girlfriend we are friends. I never wanted involved in any of it. I never wanted to be anxious, I see your car here and I’m hit by it, Drowning in a home, an ocean, I told you I’m just here to live. Now I lock my door at night And dream of my old bedroom And dream of my father’s death And dream of old friends I miss. I wish you hadn’t taken Everything of myself I had left. Now I’m worried as the wind, Now I can’t fall asleep again, Now I have mace near a borrowed bed And you still don’t understand. I hear every branch scrape And every floorboard ache, Listening carefully for your step, Bracing myself for the impact. I’m all alone at night With the exception of you: Getting home from work early, Sitting in the driveway, Staring at the matches, Making your decisions, Silent window silhouette. It was once that I tried a bargain, But you burned me alive instead. - ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

a reading of my new poem, Zay

- ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

Zay

May 15, 2019

It means we can’t see each other Anymore after the rain blooms the flowers And they have a falling out, too. I would have begged you to stay If I knew it meant anything to you. Instead you hide, but still watching -  I am moving around the room only for you, I am waiting in cathedrals, And concert halls, Trying to breathe in mall fountains, Pushing grocery carts, Praying to what I don’t believe in, Biking down paths that were never meant To hold the weight of your leaving, All because you promised you’d be back someday. I hold my breath, I am still waiting. I have frozen to your high school halls Afraid to move in case I miss you. There was something transferred here And now I have too much energy - I exerted everything I had To convince you to stay in those last days. I wish I could have told you a million ways That I can’t imagine a morning Without your smiling face Until you understood exactly. I owe you everything because you didn’t mean to, But that’s what you gave to me. I want you to know I went home and cried days for you, I’ve left a part of me everywhere I went Until there was almost nothing left, Trying to lead you back to anywhere I am. I want you to know You will always be golden in my eyes. I want you to know Your leaving is just another terrible thing, But our hearts will forever Hold pieces of each other’s, And I want to remember your name. - ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

a reading of my new poem, Fault Lines (Simeon part 2)

- ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

Fault Lines (Simeon part 2)

February 5, 2019. I whispered reasons to the fog But it wasn’t enough Laying down on Muhlhauser And counting time By cars that passed by. But I never had to think a word Because you already knew everything, Didn’t you? That while I uprooted roses And placed them at your feet, You promised me everything And then you didn’t come. You knew by the time those flowers Turned to gold, You’d be long gone. And I can’t help a shifting, An instability, A return to when You knew that I love you. Somehow it’s mostly my fault. I traced the cracks in bedrock, Collected fractures and patterns, Painted a perfect canvas To depict your earthquake heart. I shared your name with mountains And still you don’t return. I gave you space, Or renamed all the stars in your honor - You said that’s what you wanted. And isn’t it funny how That got us where we are now: Lost and slipping down further. The Earth crystallized your name, Cemented your shadow, Fossilized what you mean to me, And one day too late You’ll realize You should have come home. ASRB

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Say what you want about Tumblr's color change, but they finally fixed the double spacing shit on poems so that is a huge fucking win. Thank you @staff !!!!!!!!

[sumofthegoodthings]

a reading of my new poem, Brandon (part 3)

- ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

feel less alone.

[sumofthegoodthings]

a reading of my new poem, Brandon (part 2)

- ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

there were things that i didn't get to say.

[sumofthegoodthings]

a reading of my new poem, Brandon

- ASRB

[sumofthegoodthings]

i’m calling on you to stay.