#dissecting poetry

[thedearidiot]

Did you know anyone can be a graveyard if you dig deep enough? Did you know at the edge of every scalpel there is a prayer? Imagine this simple vivisection: I make an incision from chin to collar bone. I drop a small white pearl down my throat & like a song a hive of writhing bees spills out.

- Brandon Melendez, Alprazolam.

[softsweetwhispers]

The line is drawn on the body perfectly, meticulously — cold hands don’t shake once as their latex-covered fingers grip the marker. The air is frigid, and beneath the one in control, the body twitches. It won’t be able to feel anything under all that anesthesia, and it’s been put under for a long while now, so the reaction is strictly biological, but he hesitates nonetheless. You can never be too careful.

The next moment is silent, still, absent of any suspicion that anything could be alive in the room. The one in control grins — for it is a miraculous thing to be granted this opportunity — and sets down the marker. He picks up the scalpel next to it, both the odd shade of crimson red for different reasons, satisfaction settling in him as it gleams in the Gray Room’s lighting. 

The one in control feels adrenaline from the ends of his fingertips to the heels of his feet as he makes the smooth, red line straight down the subject’s chest. The sharp edge splits the skin and opens it, and the blood immediately rushes out. He watches in morbid fascination as warm rivers of blood flow down to the dip in the stomach, rolling off the ribs with a beautiful vibrancy.

He reaches his hands into the ravine it makes, gloves stained red and blood slicking up his arm and filling the room with that repeating shlck, shlck, shlck. The predictable shiver of pleasure he always gets slithers into his brain and activates something he rarely feels, but in moments like these. He takes a deliberate breath and pulls himself back together not even a second later; he can take care of it later tonight, if he’s lucky enough to be able to remember the feeling.  

He can’t help but wrinkle his nose in disgust at the way the intestines slime together, the familiar squelching of bloody fluids. It always gets everywhere — point in case, disdainfully, as it slips from him when he tries to place it on the plastic covered counter — and the inevitability only adds to his disgust. 

He shudders. In this line of work, very few things truly disgust him. This never fails to. There’s a reason why humans aren’t his favorite subjects. Rabbits, small dogs, even raccoons — they’re the easiest to handle. Humans are… probably the worst.

Regardless, this is what The Master asks for. What The Master Wants, The Master Gets. He will carefully package every part of this precious, beautiful body, from all ten carefully pedicured toenails, to the billions of billions of strands of hair upon the subject’s head. It’s what he’s asked of him. 

Besides, he'd be lying if he said a part of him — a rather large part of him (eight inches, to be exact) — didn’t enjoy it. There was a thrill to the chase. An excitement to the cut. 

@nosebleedclub april xv. vivisection

[sparklepirate]

I'm reading the scene where Arya and Eragon are sitting around the campfire and talking for a long time, just after killing the group of soldiers, and it's all very nice and touching and interesting, but I love how Arya is just constantly fidgeting the entire time. Girlie can not sit still.

[creationsabyss]

Sing For Me (Your Fatal Flaw Is Your Gilded Hubris)

A small piece inspired by @chocoenvy's playing god series but also their writing in general. I got an error when I attempted to send it in through an ask so I don't know if it got sent through or not so here it is in post form.

Pretty little songbird

With broken wings

A melody that shatters

A voice that no longer sings

Silenced by cruelty

A delusion of lies

Fracturing mirrors

Of spiderweb scars

It is not the light that shelters

Not the winds that follows 

Or the earth that steadies

Nor the storms that soothes

It is the dark that hides

The ice that guards 

Steadfast and strong

The wolves of winter prowl

Fervently devoted

Even steeped in madness

They are not blind

They see and they hear

They answer the call

With little hesitation

Ruin the foolish idols

Bring the heretics to their knees

No mercy left for the merciless

An eye for an eye

You have sown this sin

So you must reap your punishment 

Atone for the crime that can not be forgiven

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

we dissected salamanders in class today. did you know the eggs have to travel half way up their abdomen, loose in their belly, to get from the ovary to the oviduct?

he holds me close and calls me his little monster because of how much this (me and him, him and me, us) scares him. it scares me too

i'm flaying back pieces of skin, offering him slivers like organs like facts about how salamanders mix their oxygen-rich blood with their oxygen-poor blood and its inefficient but its alright because they can breathe through their skin

and he keeps taking them gently and smiling and is slowly fitting them together like something worth cherishing and it should hurt but it doesn't. its never been so fucking easy to peel back a tangle of veins and give them away.

i'm crazy, this has got to be crazy, he's interlocking our bones with every word and every touch and i want it but i'm terrified. the ribs on a salamander don't surround anything, but if this doesn't work its going to take breaking all of mine to remove him from where he's grafted himself into my chest

salamanders lose their gills when they move onto land. they don't ever get them back. do they realize as it happens how much is changing?its not that i want to stay in the water, but what if once i leave its too late to come back. the call of void equally opposed by the fear of the unknown

it's good, somehow its so good but i keep anticipating my scalpel to hit rotten flesh (is it pessimism or prophesy) listen to your gut, but mine only trembles (is it warning or anticipation)

i don't know what i'm doing, peeling back muscle and viscera to say here is my heart, fragile as a liver

after this is free fall

[slippingintostones]

Donate me to science,

I want to be dissected—

pulled apart, examined—

have my body go to use

and feed some minds

before the soil.

[doehoney]

I’m just pre-warning you all I’m going to be insufferable when Taylor Swift’s new album drops tonight

[speckledsolanaceae]

Mary Oliver describes a hummingbird as floating in “Lilies” and I was trying to think if I agree. The first accurate verb that occurred to me was “glide” but that is a technical word for birds, meaning something specific. “Slide,” is a word close to “glide” does not work, because it implies a surface to me, and the air is not a hard surface. “Whir” is an option, but it does not translate the amount of distance implied by “float,” which is a quiet word. Since hummingbirds are shockingly loud up close, “whir” does not work. The replacing adjective has to be quiet or silent without introducing an adverb. There’s also the visible distance provided by “float,” where that perceivable whir of the wings is altogether absent.

All in all, “float” isn’t the word I would use when describing a hummingbird’s flight, but it does communicate both a distance and soundlessness that other verbs do not.

[thedoorsofmyheart]

“You will care for somebody, and you’ll love him tremendously, and live and die for him. I know you will, it is your way, and you will and I’ll watch.”

- little women

[deliciouswastelandgoddess]

I'm not trying to sound like 'ooooo I'm not like other fangirls' or whatever but I have genuinely never had an actual crush on a celebrity or a fictional character in my life so why...... am I thirsting™ for Porsche now huh? I'm a simple nerd please I don't need this in my life I was doing fine leave me alone

[nicohischier]

PLEASE DO DISSECT THE FRAMES TO THAT POEM

i mean. we all know i give in to peer pressure very easily so... okay. under the cut :)

btw this is 800 words. sorry.

i'm not going to dissect every frame because some i don't have any worthwhile comments on, but some slides gave me mild brain rot and those are the ones i want to talk about

FRAME TWO: "to all this wickedness" against tk going down the high five line.

so, this poem was originally written in russian, right? so its translated, right? so there's multiple variations of this poem, right? WELL. one of the translations for this line is "to the evil of my life" and it punched me in the mouth because obviously the roster is a creation of the organization's management. so if the team and its players are a representation of management, then the management that is creating a team built to crumble is the evil/wickedness referenced in this slide.

hopefully this "built to crumble" narrative ends with danny coming in as gm, but for now (particularly this past season) the team is falling apart around travis and there's no one to blame except the terrible management that put it together.

FRAME THREE: "to you" against the team in a celly

what struck me about this frame is that the "to you" was placed on the fans and that op chose not just a picture of travis with his teammates, but a picture of travis celebrating a goal with them.

granted, there's not much space to place the "to you" unless it's against the ice or on the players, so maybe op didn't put that much thought into it, but i feel like it's important. because the picture was taken after a goal, the fans are up and cheering and that's all you want as a player right? to be apart of something that makes your fans cheer?

idk i just think it's important because the placement of the text makes you pay attention to the fans, so you realize that he's not just doing this for his team (because everyone notices the fact that he's in a celly with his teammates and everyone knows that he's playing hockey for his team) but he's also doing this for the fans who love him.

FRAME SEVEN: "the lie that has betrayed us" against a photo of travis and claude hugging

obviously he was traded so it's not that i think claude betrayed the flyers (honestly i think he would have stayed there until retirement if they had wanted to keep him) but i think it fits really well because like. claude was travis' first captain in the nhl and they (the team) probably talked about winning a cup together and travis probably got a lot of advice from claude when they were teammates and when travis envisioned winning a cup, he probably saw claude on the ice with him, yknow? and now he's in ottawa.

so it's not that i think claude himself was the lie that betrayed travis, just the vague entity of claude that travis always pictured as being next to him for the whole of his career that is no longer his to stand beside.

also i think it's funny that claude got his 300th career goal against the flyers.

FRAME EIGHT: "the coarse brutal world" against travis with a blurry nolan in the background

i won't lie, this is the frame i referenced in my tags as being the one i wanted to dissect. it just. shattered my brain.

there's just something about travis, so sharply in focus, contrasted with nolan, facing away from the camera and blurry, that broke my mind.

we all know how close they were when they were on the flyers together, but the universe fell apart and and nolan got injured and then he got sent to vegas and he's just. a blurry aspect of travis' world now.

he's out of reach. he's unable to be kept. he can't be saved.

and travis is still here, in focus, while his friend slips out of reach, and travis can't do anything to stop it.

FRAME TEN: "that god has not saved us" against a photo of travis looking upwards

i don't fully know what it is about this frame that sets something off in my brain tbh. maybe it's how he's looking upwards, maybe it's how his face looks relatively blank, maybe it's how he's the only flyer in the shot, maybe it has something to do with the empty seats behind him.

maybe it's a combination of all of those aspects. i don't know.

i debated not including this one since it's not any kind of dissection whatsoever but it feels wrong to leave out the frame that broke my mind the most after frame eight.

[thedearidiot]

I.

You may find it emotionally difficult to dissect signifiers of personhood, says the anatomy professor, meaning these knuckles, these nails still with dirt underneath them, this stiff hand I hold as I trim away skin to the tendons beneath, thin ropes that, puppet-like, pull up each finger. Their names flexor digitorum profundus abductor pollicis brevis sound like a prayer counted off on a rosary. The bodies’ palms are all frozen open, their arms stuck in extension as if they are asking for something.

II.

You can’t just reach in like an Aztec, says the anatomy professor, gesturing where to cut the cadaver. I break into the body, pick the lock of the ribs, take the clavicle off like a necklace. Lifting the lid of the chest wall, light illuminates the muscles between ribs—stained glass sinew into which the music of the organ rose, lub dub lub dub. I clip the pericardium, pulmonary trunk & veins, aorta, vena cavas, until the gush of formaldehyde subsides and I can touch the primal valentine, not offered up for love, but sacrifice.

III.

Guess he didn’t make any films, says the anatomy professor, our cadaver poorly endowed and ravaged by cancer. We’re instructed to fillet the tight skin of his penis, peel it back like a glove to reveal the sponge of its center, deep dorsal vein, dorsal nerves, and urethra. The shaft that someone once hungered to touch, to fill themselves with, now sallow & bloodless & halved by a scalpel. But his hair strikes me hardest, a soft mat of curls dark and thick as my lover’s, whose body I return home to hold and will not, cannot let go.

- Celeste Lipkes, Anatomy Lab.

[saintashes]

ACID DROPS. // a c!quackity poem. (click for full images & quality)

text below :) feel free to reblog !!

IMAGE ONE:

God’s mouth is where everything goes

to shrivel & die, shrouded

in faith & devotion

as his teeth close in around you,

caging you in, sharp & slippery.

tongue soft & wet, wrapping you up

& holding you down, his throat leading down.

with nowhere else to go,

do you trust him enough

to let him consume you?

(the way so many others

think they consume him?)

he’s forcing you down

with hundreds of other souls, nothing special

about any of them.

you fall down, clinging

onto His insides but it’s nothing

He hasn’t experienced hundreds of times

before.

there’s scratches & scars

older than half the world.

you’re in his stomach & it’s full of people

just like you, scared & confused,

slowly getting eaten away

by the stomach acid.

(God’s no different & Adam was shaped

in his image, afterall. like father, like son.)

God eats at them

until there’s nothing left.

—

IMAGE TWO:

God’s mouth is where everything goes

to shrivel & die, shrouded

in faith & devotion

as his teeth close in around you,

caging you in, sharp & slippery.

tongue soft & wet, wrapping you up

& holding you down, his throat leading down.

with nowhere else to go,

do you trust him enough

to let him consume you?

(the way so many others

think they consume him?)

he’s forcing you down

with hundreds of other souls, nothing special

about any of them.

you fall down, clinging

onto His insides but it’s nothing

He hasn’t experienced hundreds of times

before.

there’s scratches & scars

older than half the world.

you’re in his stomach & it’s full of people

just like you, scared & confused,

slowly getting eaten away

by the stomach acid.

(God’s no different & Adam was shaped

in his image, afterall. like father, like son.)

God eats at them

until there’s nothing left.

[mo0nr1se]

ARTIFICIAL

Mom and I made

piles of color coded

lengths of artificial

tree limbs in an organized

scatter creating

pathways; white, grey

black, green, yellow,

but where is the base?

Daddy, where

did you put it?

Somewhere secret with

the Lowe’s folder.

I thought a tree

would be a

tad garish, considering.

The past is gone

Father, you are forgiven. Daddy,

it’s 11:11,

look I’m

light on my feet again.

[ghavialis]

I love you poems that need buckets of context I love you art as a genuine expression I love you art that comes with an explanation I love you imperfect lovers felix gonzález-torres I love you songs that aren't made to be famous I love you stories with no moral I love you amateurs I love you first drafts that never get finished because it was about the idea and not the quality I love you pouring yourself into something even as you know it won't be understood I love you genius lyric interviews

[i-told-u-its-skittles]

Your are so lonely, so very very lonely

You know this as you know your name

With an unwavering uncertainty.

But you think you are lonely

As you look at the empty screen

And hear others talk of their full ones

Complain about them.

But you think you are lonely

As you don't speak up

And no one seems to notice.

And you say you aren't lonely

When your mother says she's worried

When your father says he's worried

When you ask yourself

"Am I broken?"

And you think that you are lonely

Not deep down, but on the surface

When you sit at the corner.

When you stand on the empty stage

And sing to a crowd that does not know your name.

But you don't cry

Not but for the tragedies

Save for the music that comes like a soft blanket

On your very lowest days

And traps you there like lead

Like poison.

You never cry, except at movies.

Lonely, lonely, lonely.

Lonely, says the internet

You are afraid to be alone.

Lonely, it says

You make beautiful things from it

But they are all so lonely.

Everything you have ever made

Has been saturated with your loneliness

Tangible like raindrops

Leaving a bitter taste on the air.

You are so lonely you cannot breathe of it

Cold fog fills your lungs so you let yourself suffocate.

You do not know if you don't know how to stop

Or just don't want to learn.

As much as it hurts it feels right

You crave it like cigarettes, like phone screens, like air.

It feels so lovely to be alone

Your melancholy is so beautiful you cannot help it

Cannot help but to love it.

You wonder if you watched the sunrise from the crucifix

As you starved

And you wonder if you liked it

If you knew this was what you were meant for

And accepted.

You are so lonely, so very very lonely.