#anti hero poem

[most-ment]

Vigilante

At first, I thought I was doing the right thing.

The police were inadequate and the government wasn't listening.

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At the time, I assumed that I was making things better.

Justice! I thought I was the dispenser.

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I thought wrong.

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Taking the laws in my hands,

Only coated them in red.

Justice was something I didn't understand,

Despite all the virtuous things I said.

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I truly thought I was doing the right thing,

But for any one battle I lost, more innocent people were dying.

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At some point, I wanted it to end,

But I could do nothing to erase the bounty on my head.

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Hated by the criminals,

Scorned by the popo.

My problems became anything but trivial

And I tried to hear them solo.

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I couldn't though,

Instead I put in danger anyone I brought close.

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Lost I was.

It was the right thing at first.

It was the right thing I thought.

So much fighting for what?

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Lost in distrust.

I was losing too much.

I was losing my touch.

It was grueling to watch.

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How much more to experience?

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Doing the right thing the wrong way.

I thought a saviour was something I could be.

In trying to shield you from the sun, I only brought harsher rays.

I'm not an hero but a vigilante.

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Hello loves, hope you like the poem. This iss pretty much inspired by whatever vigilante movie or books I've read. Mostly DC

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My vigilante tag list: @jayrealgf @think-through-pen @unforgettable-sensations @mk-ranz @timeflieslikeabanana @jordynhaiku

[717words]

[deadlypoetacademia]

*I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror* All my life i have been so insecure that there was a point, i hated looking in the mirror. I was young and alone. Whenever anyone would bully me for my looks, my friends would join them and laugh later on about that. Until this point, no matter what i say or believe myself, deep down i know, i seek validation. Looking at the old pictures makes me realise on how cruel i was on my own self. Because no matter what people say, it was my decision to believe them and i am actually the villian of my story *it must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero*

[final-resting]

character study: ariel carter

anne sexton / maragret atwood / anne carson

[adamimitchel]

“So why must I abide? By all my guts, when you’ve torn from my insides every last morsel of patience. Struggling to keep sacred, you watch me choke and die. And I say thank you sir, Tis the system we surrender to so I’d be more than pained to abide.”

[adria-draca]

Meleys - the prettiest of them all

It's me, hi, I'm the red queen, it's me

At sheep time, everybody agrees

I'll stare directly at the sun but also in the mirror

It must be exciting always rooting for the anti-hero

(Did you say daemon got exiled again? Lmao, Caraxes)

- Spit It Like Taylor Swift (Adria Draca)

An extra cause I'm excited for 2023 and this song was on my mind the whole day yesterday

[lonelypoetandiknowit]

“I wake up screaming from dreaming one day I’ll watch as you’re leaving cause you got tired of my scheming”

This pierces me to my very core.

Because I have convinced myself that it’s only a matter of time until my closest friends push me away because they grew tired of me.

I give warnings instead of welcomes with my friends.

“Hey, sorry I’m like this, you don’t have to care”

“Apologies for my existence, you can leave if you want”

All kinds of doormat bullshit.

I cannot wait until one day when I inevitably say something like this and someone looks me deep into my eyes, far enough to read my soul, and refuses to hear my apology.

They absolutely do not allow me to apologize for myself and tell me that they love me.

My entire existence.

Every flaw,

Every mistake,

Every annoying trait,

All of me.

I wonder how long I’ll have to wait for that.

[elysian101]

My hand was the one you reached for, all through out The Great War.

Taylor Swift

[lili-lees24]

Hammerings in my head

There is a fucking house that’s been building for two millennia. I’ve been crying my head off to stop those hammerings in my head. I suppose this is what it feels like to have intrusive thoughts. A cloud of gunpowder dirtying my walls, resonating endlessly unless I run away. I imagine myself between two walls constantly making building noises with the future that I don’t have in my hands, worried that the past will knock me down when I see the ground. Please, let me put balloons on the ceiling so I can silence this house in my head.

Your imaginary friends on rent

Lili Lees

[boybasher]

Her Majesty 🥀 (my dominant girlfriend dark poetry reading and h&m fashion model aesthetic lookbook)

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•

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my poem:

She wears his coat

As if it’s her skin

Tears his heart

And wears it like a necklace

He’s Her’s

And she’s his territory

If skin’s just leather

“I want you to own me”, she whispers with her legs on his tatted shoulders

Used goods, vintage history

“Polish me til I bust like a chimney baby”

She loves the scent of abandoned boys in her hair

Jealous of the side chicks that call him daddy

She’s f-uking the boss and that makes them angry

Burnt but-ts in her pockets

An open condom doesn’t use itself

Everybody needs a bad mommy

If you’re too shy

She’ll take control

Keep your eyes on the road

“I’m not an amateur”

“I’m the best b-tch in town,” she smirks as she bites his cheek

Ditch the roses, they’re for the pretty ones

She only want the thorns

Pain is her pleasure

Sin is her favorite bedtime story

She’s a living fantasy

The only thing missing is her him

A bad boy with scruffed up shoes to match her tortured soul

Look at him stepping out of his beat up corvette, light me up a marlboro too

Don’t remember her name

“It’ll be easier to forget me this way,” she pleads

Her Imperial Affliction

Bruised knees, Ripped black lace

Left with a smile you can’t shake away

Her cigarettes can only distort her thoughts for so long

Some highs only come in the form of a man

“Let me do the praying

I’m told I’m pretty

When I’m on my knees

Begging for mercy

Pleasing comes natural to me

Bliss is so cheap

Cheaper than me,” she repeats like a prayer for solidarity

[717words]

I’m not brave

[inkskinned]

no, actually, where is the whimsy?

my ex had a best friend named larry who asked me once: what do you think comes after irony?

we were at the bar where larry worked. it was a quiet night, and he'd hopped over to sit with us on the patron side. i swirled the lemon around my limoncello martini.

earnest positivity, i said, while my ex said, art self-destructs.

i stared at my ex. he stared at me.

his argument was the cinemasins argument: look how bad media is becoming! look at the loopholes and the dumb shit!

it was roughly 2011. galaxy print was still in. at the time, i had a favorite shirt that was a wolf howling at the moon. it got ripped in half in the wash and i honestly still mourn it. i dressed like effie stonem, because everyone did. and irony was the name of the thing. men liked MLP "ironically." the internet liked the kind of crass, "anti-mainstream" vibes of things like fuck romance, touch my butt and buy me pizza. we put cats in sunglasses everywhere, which was because we only liked things in irony.

and media had the same vibe in it: anti-hero white men would be "hard to love" and then storm off the scene. nobody was just earnestly trying to save the world: they were jaded, angry, unoriginal. mad you even asked them to try to help.

my ex ends up not being wrong. cinemasins becomes super popular. a lot of people start viewing media with this lens that is the cruelest, most jaded depiction. it's wrong for your character to have unexplained powers, even if the entire movie is about how strange it is she has unexplained powers - that is still considered a "loophole." characters make thoughtless, panicked choices? loophole. characters are actually kind people, despite hardship? loophole. features a woman doing literally anything without assistance? loophole. movies become hyper-aware of scrutiny, and now irony rules the media.

which means you go to a movie, and the character has to turn to the screen and say "beats me!!" or one of the side characters has to have some kind of quip like "are you seriously telling me that you think this is normal?" because nothing can happen in earnest. like a sitcom laugh track, we now anticipate the fourth-wall break: the moment that the media acknowledges it is telling a story. the media has to apologize for itself, or else someone like my ex rolls their eyes.

but here's the thing: i wasn't wrong either.

the difference might be that i am (and always have been) so soft-hearted that any crack in the light of this world will spear me into the ground. and i was the poet in the relationship. (he thought that was the same thing as being naïve and stupid). i was making things daily. i knew how all of us artists are driven by some strange desire to evolve. he notably liked to critique art, not to create it.

so yes, i've made things that are bitter and angry and even ironic. i've made long, sharp poems with all capital letters, and i've made poems about how the silence stretches out like a song. someone wrote once that we will spend our whole lives just circling the place we grew up. i think it's more that we spend our whole lives trying to remake a home. i think it's that as we age, it becomes less exciting to build the castle on the beach - we become aware of erosion, of windforce. we realize what we really want is to come home to our dog, castle or not.

and while art in the foreground is mired in white male violence and irony, and aggression, and not taking anything seriously - i don't think that's true of all art. i think more and more artists are leaning in to the things we love. the world has changed so much. they have taken so many things from us. the only thing we have left is love. at the bottom of the moving box - all we get is the faint sense that we have to appreciate what little we've got. i can't enjoy this stuff ironically anymore: what room do i have for irony? if it makes me happy, that is an amazing thing. there are so few happy places left for me. i want to be happy because of how leaves shiver beside each other like nestling birds. i want to be happy because of the color pink, and how magenta doesn't exist. i have spent so much of this life suffering, i have earned my right to a gentle ending. if nothing matters, i get to assign meaning to the nothing. i get to create meaning. i am an artist first and foremost, which means creation is my thing.

where is the whimsy? wherever i fucking put it. because if this is my last fucking chance to do any good in this world - i want to do it earnestly. i want to write things that make you happy. that make people feel heard and seen. what comes after irony has to be positivity.

it was close to my 21st birthday. in 7 years, i would end up writing a book about this relationship, which is hopefully coming out somewhere around May 2024. i come back to this bar scene in my memories a lot. i keep thinking of how pale my ex was. the look that crossed his face. how i looked back at him. how for a moment, both of us couldn't recognize the other person. like the gulf between us was a suddenly wide and cavernous thing. like we were alien to each other. he never took my opinion seriously, and he always seemed surprised whenever his manic-pixie-dream-girl ever broke free of the plot. like in the whole time we were together, i wasn't human enough.

this knowledge: where he said nothing comes after, my only instinct was what comes after is love.

[ashiqui]

THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO LEAVE AND PEOPLE WHO KNOW HOW TO BE LEFT.

jan heller levi, waiting for this story to end before i begin another / interstellar (2014), dir. christopher nolan / taylor swift, anti-hero / ocean vuong, on earth we’re briefly gorgeous / the national, pink rabbits / jungsuk lee (x) / rien ne va plus, margarita karapanou (trans. karen emmerich) / 9-1-1, 1x10 / maggie stiefvater, the raven boys / richard siken, the worm king’s lullaby / john banville, the sea / beginners (2010), dir. mike mills / it’s time to go, taylor swift / wildest dreams (2014), dir. joseph kahn / karese burrows, poem for your leaving

[allthornsnopetals]

Prologue: Stain the Parchment E. Bridgerton

Description: Flora Deluca -Lady da silva- is the pen pow and beloved author of Eloise Bridgerton. With her travels around the world, Flora finally travels to Mayfair London, in the hopes to inquire inspiration for yet another successful story, one in London, away from France and Italy with the aid of her pen pow. Unknowingly enbarking her romance mini-series.

:Master list:

"Miss Flora, you have received a few more letters from your readers, a lot more." Said Claudia, lowering a stack of folded and sealed papers, all written from the same sender.

Eloise Bridgerton: A new and quite fond reader of Miss Flora Deluca's novels, poems and volumes. She always wrote but Flora only ever read her letters, too busy to answer all her fan mail, especially Miss Eloise, who writes so often, she simply could not read them all.

But tonight is different, it's stale, cold and without excitement. Once left in peace, she began to sift through each written text, enjoying the character of the writer. She found amusement in every letter, all with a different perspective on love, marriage and romance. To simply put it, Miss Eloise is anti-love, which is ironic given, the reminder that Flora's genre is predominantly romantic.

But Eloise doesn't seem to mind, enjoying star-cross lovers, unrequited love, right person wrong time and general adventure. Adventures throughout France and Italy, Flora's mother lands. The more she read the more interested she became, intrigued in the young lady, who seems to have a gift for literature. Ideas racked her mind, ones of adventure, travels and new stories.

Without a second thought, Flora began to write to Miss Eloise of London.

Dear Miss Eloise Bridgerton,

I find your mind fascinating, intriguing and fresh. I like your take on the topic of romance and the rights for women. I do hope you put it to good use, for a woman like yourself has skill and potential. I am to travel to Mayfair London in four months, before the debutante season of marriage, for my father is to inherit his family estate there, and I am to start a new life in the Ton. By your letters, you seem to be a local, someone to show me around and help me to settle in.

I do hope to see you, perhaps get some ideas for a new story.

Yours truly,

Lady da Silva

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

"Eloise, you have a letter from... Italy?" Violet turns the letter in her hand, holding it out to her daughter with great confusion.

Eloise cracks her gaze from her book, eyeing the parchment, snatching and ripping it open. "From Italy? From whom?" Hyacinth inquires, trying to see the letter.

Eloise scowls. "From no one, mind your own. It is not your business." Said Eloise, shooing her little sister away with Benedict slumping himself beside her, also very excited.

"Is it from Lady da Silva?" He questions in a hushed voice, wetting his lips.

The two share a love for the author and artist, who illustrates her own books and covers. Both, sending letters frequently, but only one receiving a reply.

With a gasp, Eloise clarifies their suspicions, her grin far too wide for a typical letter. "She likes my mind, she thinks it's rather fascinating," She gloats with a smirk. "And she's moving to London!" She screams, jumping for joy with Benedict, like fools, sharing an embrace.

"I am to write to her right away!" She runs up the main stairway, leaving her family in silent confusion.

Dear Lady da Silva,

I am greatly honored to receive word from you and to be given the opportunity to aid you in your next book. I have plenty of ideas, adventures, character personality and genres. How about a heroine? A woman hero, who embarks on a quest, an adventure.

I cannot wait to finally meet you, to brainstorm with you, to work with you! Your novels are legendary here, in the Ton, enjoyed by all— yes, even by men. Genevieve Delacroix, the modiste introduced me to your books— surprisingly we mingle a lot, discussing your books over tea and fittings. She too, is quite the literature, she adores your poems, always quoting those of affection, frequently, must I add.

She would love to meet you. Oh, and my brother, Benedict, who found himself looped into our little book club— if you can call it that— and writes to you as well, but it seems you have only replied to my letters, which I thank you greatly, truly. You bruised his heart for only replying to me, forcing him to quote your latest publish: Irony is of the Heart. Your best work, if it means, he too, is quoting your work.

I can't wait to see you,

Eloise Bridgerton

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Time flew by rather quickly, sending letters, the two made a connection, forging a friendship by letter, staining their parchments, their minds occupied with the other. The two became pen pows, rather quickly, their letters becoming more intimate and personal, Flora was beginning to think she were already with her.

Sooner than she thought, she were in Mayfair London, unpacking her chambers, decorating and finding new furniture for her study. Once sat for the night, she wrote to Eloise, informing her of her arrival and her need for new garments. Marking a time to meet and unknowingly a new beginning.

[letterful]

Romanticism is the primitive, the untutored, it is youth, life, the exuberant sense of life of the natural man, but it is also pallor, fever, disease, decadence, the maladie de siècle, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the Dance of Death, indeed Death itself. It is Shelley's dome of many-coloured glass, and it is also his white radiance of eternity. It is the confused teeming fullness and richness of life, Fülle des Lebens, inexhaustible multiplicity, turbulence, violence, conflict, chaos, but also it is peace, oneness with the great `I Am', harmony with the natural order, the music of the spheres, dissolution in the eternal all-containing spirit. It is the strange, the exotic, the grotesque, the mysterious, the supernatural, ruins, moonlight, enchanted castles, hunting horns, elves, giants, griffins, falling water, the old mill on the Floss, darkness and the powers of darkness, phantoms, vampires, nameless terror, the irrational, the unutterable.

Also it is the familiar, the sense of one's unique tradition, joy in the smiling aspect of everyday nature, and the accustomed sights and sounds of contented, simple, rural folk — the sane and happy wisdom of rosy-checked sons of the soil. It is the ancient, the historic, it is Gothic cathedrals, mists of antiquity, ancient roots and the old order with its unanalysable qualities, its profound but inexpressible loyalties, the impalpable, the imponderable.

Also it is the pursuit of novelty, revolutionary change, concern with the fleeting present, desire to live in the moment, rejection of knowledge, past and future, the pastoral idyll of happy innocence, joy in the passing instant, a sense of timelessness. It is nostalgia, it is reverie, it is intoxicating dreams, it is sweet melancholy and bitter melancholy, solitude, the sufferings of exile, the sense of alienation, roaming in remote places, especially the East, and in remote times, especially the Middle Ages.

But also it is happy co-operation in a common creative effort, the sense of forming part of a Church, a class, a party, a tradition, a great and all-containing symmetrical hierarchy, knights and retainers, the ranks of the Church, organic social ties, mystic unity, one faith, one land, one blood, `la terre et les morts', as Barrès said, the great society of the dead and the living and the yet unborn. It is the Toryism of Scott and Southey and Wordsworth, and it is the radicalism of Shelley, Büchner and Stendhal. It is Chateaubriand's aesthetic medievalism, and it is Michelet's loathing of the Middle Ages. It is Carlyle's worship of authority, and Hugo's hatred of authority. It is extreme nature mysticism, and extreme anti-naturalist aestheticism. It is energy, force, will, youth, life, étalage du moi; it is also self-torture, self-annihilation, suicide. It is the primitive, the unsophisticated, the bosom of nature, green fields, cow-bells, murmuring brooks, the infinite blue sky.

No less, however, it is also dandyism, the desire to dress up, red waistcoats, green wigs, blue hair, which the followers of people like Gérard de Nerval wore in Paris at a certain period. It is the lobster which Nerval led about on a string in the streets of Paris. It is wild exhibitionism, eccentricity, it is the battle of Ernani, it is ennui, it is taedium vitae, it is the death of Sardanopolis, whether painted by Delacroix, or written about by Berlioz or Byron. It is the convulsion of great empires, wars, slaughter and the crashing of worlds. It is the romantic hero — the rebel, l'homme fatale, the damned soul, the Corsairs, Manfreds, Giaours, Laras, Cains, all the population of Byron's heroic poems. It is Melmoth, it is Jean Sbogar, all the outcasts and Ishmaels as well as the golden-hearted courtesans and the noble-hearted convicts of nineteenth-century fiction. It is drinking out of the human skull, it is Berlioz who said he wanted to climb Vesuvius in order to commune with a kindred soul. It is Satanic revels, cynical irony, diabolical laughter, black heroes, but also Blake's vision of God and his angels, the great Christian society, the eternal order, and `the starry heavens which can scarce express the infinite and eternal of the Christian soul'.

It is, in short, unity and multiplicity. It is fidelity to the particular, in the paintings of nature for example, and also mysterious tantalising vagueness of outline. It is beauty and ugliness. It is art for art's sake, and art as an instrument of social salvation. It is strength and weakness, individualism and collectivism, purity and corruption, revolution and reaction, peace and war, love of life and love of death.

— from Isaiah Berlin's The Roots of Romanticism.

[merp-blerp]

I would like to announce that I am thinking Thoughts™

"Glitter in My Wounds" is a queer poem by CAConrad, written in 2018 I think, about how straight people need to stop being blind to queer people and their suffering as they use queer people as accessories or toys they can play with. The line "I have no room in my life to audition for your pansy mascot" kinda reminds me of "I don't cater to all these vipers dressed in empath's clothing" from "But Daddy I Love Him". And "You people can’t kill me and think you can kill me again" reminds me of "Pierced through the heart, but never killed" from "Anti-Hero". Of course, the title reminds me of the sparkly lavender goo from the "Anti-Hero" MV that comes out when Taylor is wounded. Just thought the community would enjoy this tidbit...