#poemsbyylois

[aielylois]

isn't it funny how we give gods blood? how we give them the life force that flows through us even though they are supposed to be the source.

in all our stories and ballads we show their pulse, spill their guts. a reminder that we can make them bleed if we wanted to. a reminder that they can also be hung to dry.

isn't it fun to thumb the pressure point? feel the bob of an adam's apple on a god who created it. what came first - the apple or the pulse?

it is through our lives that the gods are granted immortality. they say ichor runs through their veins but no one ever told you that ichor tastes a lot like ink.

so wet the nib. prepare the parchment. be ready to carve flesh from words and don't stop until the ink bleeds through the page and stains your fingertips.

-after this incedible poem by @glasswaters, ylm

[aielylois]

what you can do about it:

Be a more open person, they said. Reclaim yourself, they said. It'll be fun, they said.

cry. put it in the calendar. pencil it in. never mind how it somehow turned into a group invite. you’re already overdue one anyways. might as well be in good company if not good spirits.

question everything. remember that stupid meme you made in year 11 when you did your Socrates presentation that your teacher tried to turn you off of doing? turns out you spent your whole life living it. Socrates would be proud. or as Rainer Maria Rilke more eloquently put it: Live the questions now. you may never know the answer, but I’m proud of you for asking. so please keep asking. even if your voice shakes. there is no way to live but in the questions.

panic. it’ll happen and it’s ok. it’s ok to be scared. I get it. you’ve been backed into every corner except your own. but look at where you are now. your past self would never have dreamed you’d be here. your childhood self never dreamed this was an option. so make it worth their while. make it worth their questioning and nerves and discomfort and fear. you’re gonna make it.

regress. well, that’s what other people might say. call it freedom. call it reclamation. call it letting your inner child laugh and play and sing and be silly. call it a realisation that you are still that child. that you have always been that child. so ingat, anak. take care of yourself.

breath it in. breathe it out. you’ve been good. you’ve settled down. and that’s the thing that scares you. but diyos how long has it been since you felt comfortable like this? (the fact that you have to think about it is all the answer you need) so sit with the comfort. be gentle with it. be glad that it stays when you wake up tomorrow. and tomorrow. and tomorrow. and if this is as good as it gets? then how good’s living?

-ylm

Prompts: ___, they said. It'll be fun, they said. - #promptsbyshibs on ig // Write a poem that answers the question, 'What can you do about it?' but don't explicitly explain what 'it' is - #AmyKayPoemADay24 on ig // as good as you'll get - @nosebleedclub // accidentally after Northern Attitude - Noah Kahan

[aielylois]

you are: blinders on, sure-footed as a heartbeat, eyes on the prize

she is: mirrorball dazzle, light at the end of the tunnel, high on your pedestal

I am: collateral damage, left in the dust, blinded by your grace

[aielylois]

dust motes enraptured by sun in an empty room- movement in still life

Prompt: sun in an empty room - @nosebleedclub

[aielylois]

Between you and me, kid: you ain't much.

But in the whole scheme of things, that's pretty standard. I mean, what, you get a few decades of life on this pale blue dot and you think you're anyone special? You're asking the wrong questions, kid. To be special to everyone is to be a mirror- a reflection without a body, an echo without substance. You will always be what they want to see.

See, everyone's a critic. But to be special to some? Now you're getting it. Because to be special to some is to be seen. It's having the space held for you, all of you. From fingertip to fingertip, along all your life lines, fault lines, and heartlines - and yes, even every millimetre of your crooked teeth.

It's someone who takes in all of you and still decides to take your hand. It's someone who has seen you grow and change and break down and build up and still greets your every form. It's someone who prays for you when you don't remember how, who still welcomes you, you whirlwind of a being.

(And one day, you'll wonder why it took you so long to figure out why that someone could be you.)

So, sure, you're not a big deal. Newsflash, kid: you never were and you never will be. And if you ask me, the whole thing's overrated. Don't you get tired of holding up your mirror so they only ever see your reflection? Spend too long toeing the line and all you'll ever see is a tightrope.

Keep your eyes up. You live on a pale blue dot and isn't that a miracle already? Keep your hands open. Hold on to what you love. Keep your breathing steady. Take it in one at a time and you'll make it through.

Listen, you ain't much, kid. But you're all you've got.

-ylm

Prompt: a bit of advice - escapril on ig

[aielylois]

empty cathedrals iii

I write of empty cathedrals like I write of missing you quietly and often never admitting to myself that this act will not teach me how to pray

I write of empty cathedrals like I write of missing you you, blessed by the ethereal I, haunted by your memory not sure whether I should ask for forgiveness or an exorcism

I write of empty cathedrals like I write of missing you with reverence and a quiet sort of sadness there are no congregations in an empty church just as you were never there to begin with

-ylm

[aielylois]

look ye upon this monolith a monument of alabaster, of marble, of stone carved, chiseled, hammered strength imbued with a chip of a chisel and the touch of a hammer piece by piece a pièce de résistance released

you see, sculptors work in the space between find the form and figure between fissures and fractures coax them out of the rough it is not the stroke of a paintbrush but the strike of a mallet not the addition but the subtraction

there is no room for error granite does not forgive (not least of all because of its stony centre) once it is carved away, you are either left with form or nothing

-ylm

Prompt: grecian - @nosebleedclub

[aielylois]

Prompts: vision of the future - letsescapril on ig // write a poem where the last word of every line combines to create its own 'secret' line - @cgcpoems // divine intervention - little_indigocloud on ig // to be a person - amykaypoetry on ig

[alt id under the cut]

human, err(or)

They say to err is to be human and I cannot help but think that it is all I have. to stray off the beaten path to seek what cannot be seen- to err is to be skewed to be slightly off the pace because life isn’t straight or narrow and the future isn’t actually in front of you. You pull it from the aether and spin it with your own hands, hold on as it sinks in and pray to your deity of choice that They stay out of it. For this life is about believing you can conjure control out of chaos and I cannot help but think that unexpected is all that I am for what is the most unexpected thing in this irrational world than to be alive

-ylm

[aielylois]

12.09.22

I told a friend that I wanted to curl up into the foetal position not cry or sob nor wail or rage just give my shoulders a rest from the yoke of my clavicles and the weight of the world curling my back into a question I don't know how to answer

-ylm

Prompt: clavicles - @nosebleedclub

[aielylois]

you said "do you trust me" and somehow it didn't sound like a question like you held all the cards in your hands and they spelled out my answer Y E S I did I do but you were always better at dealing out than keeping them close to your chest I was shuffled around until you only had one card up your sleeve and I knew it was time to cut the deck I never had any cards to play in the first place so thank you for teaching me to count them thank you for teaching me the rules of the game thank you for reminding me that we are not drawn from the same deck it makes it that much easier for me to leave the table

-ylm

[aielylois]

06.9.22

half way across the world they are saying goodbye to summer it's hard not to laugh at the irony the feeling of watching something slip away is all too familiar as you welcome September to the threshold

September is more violent than you remember- more unruly, more unpredictable set to usurp the fragile order you thought you had locked in a glass case

still, you let September in what other choice do you have? you try not to think about its entrance and focus on learning how to slip away when you are faced with the shards of August

September, you liminal fiend may you not steal from me as August did as July did may we learn to live together teach me how to work with wood and stone instead of glass and sand

September, I cannot say I welcome you but I can meet you at the threshold step up to see you eye to eye so that we may understand each other and walk forward together

-after this post by @sadfishkid and this poem by @the-narrative-foil, ylm

Prompts: final summer rites - @nosebleedclub

[aielylois]

1. It is no stretch to wrap my arms around everything I have ever loved. The only question is: how much time do I have left? How much time do I have to return all this love I’ve been given? All this love that I hold dear. All this love I am learning to give.

2. The fact of the matter is this- I am no stranger to the push and pull of my memories. But I know that the rose-tinted glasses become rusted if you wear them for too long.

3. Surely it’s strange to think that walking a tightrope between your past present and future is as simple as toeing the line? As if a dip into your memories doesn’t submerge you in the end, leaving you wallowing through that pit in your chest filled with all the time you thought you had left but-

4. Time is a cat in a box. Every time you remember to look you realise how ahead how behind how on time you are. Sometimes you forget to look and the next time you see the cat, it’s grey, when you swore it was black before (or was it white?). And sometimes, you forget the box exists. Forget the cat curled up or yowling or purring inside. Forget that everything is in motion and you’re never exactly where you were a second ago because the earth moves under you and it moves around the sun and the universe expands and the cat is neither dead or alive and sometimes you just need to remember-

5. I am I am I am. Between this crush of time and the throes of these people I am still here. I am still this thing, this being, this creator, this writer, this friend, this anak. How miraculous that I should exist in this time in this space. How improbable that I should exist at all and yet and yet and yet I stare up at a cotton candy sky watching the birds fly-

6. Home? Where is home? Is it in the country that birthed me or the country that raised me? When my tongue betrays me in both lands, who’s to say where I belong? Somewhere my syntax isn’t a sign post. Somewhere my accent doesn’t accentuate how lost I am. Somewhere I can truly be heard. Somewhere I can trust my voice to carry me home.

- ylm (with credit to Ocean Vuong for the footnote poem structure)

Prompts: a poem beginning with "everything is easier when you're home" - The Remnant Archive on ig // limbs + strange behaviour + crush + time (nonlinear) - Escapril on ig // love you've given + rusted - @nosebleedclub

pic id under the cut:

Typed text in black ink on a white background. The text reads: "Everything is easier when you're home." After each word there is a superscript number from one to six, so 'Everything' is 1, 'is' is 2, 'easier' is 3, 'when' is 4, 'you're' is 5, and 'home' is 6.

[aielylois]

This tenderness is a curse hanging heavy around my neck another albatross who will never get home

you know I was a migratory bird once I know what it's like to yearn for a home you've never seen never been told about when all you have is that feeling in your gut pulling like a tide set to drag you under except down is up and isn't that the way to heaven?

the Germans have a word for it, you know fernweh I've tried to wrap my tongue around it but it never sticks so it beats in my chest instead making its way around my body until it rushes to my head and all I see when I open my eyes is a vision of home I have never been to

Do you think that's what moves them? These birds, these travelers, these voyagers- is it the promise of somewhere to land, or the freedom to start again?

Sometimes my shoulders ache and phantom wings haunt my peripheral vision even long after the migrations are over I find myself looking to the sky wondering if there is a bird hanging heavy on someone else

Oh god, may they be blessed with birds instead so that they may keep their albatross-heart from breaking and so that they may always know what home looks like

- ylm

Prompts: after this post // the fragility of longing - The Remnant Archive on ig // when I open my eyes - Escapril on ig // long after - @nosebleedclub

[aielylois]

confession

poetry is my religion. I am christened anew with every click cascading into my eardrums. every murmured sound of acknowledgement my heavenly choir. I hear you. I see you.

the first time I read my poetry live to a real-life audience, I told them I didn't believe in God but I forgot that they were sitting in the room with me. because in a room of such passion such acceptance such honesty- how could it not be filled with something holy? something divine.

I listened to poets who spoke stories that could have been my own gospel truth. poets who saw stained light filter through every window they looked through. poets who believed in their God and for a moment, made me believe too. all of them welcoming me into their sacred space.

I bowed my head to read from my phone when I spoke my poem. I told my mother that it was that or doing it by heart but I would I could find it in my heart... for truly I could not. not yet.

one day my words will ring true from my tongue. one day the organ will play and I will sing my hymnal by heart. but until that day comes, I will clasp my hands around my phone, cradle this illuminated scripture, and breath. let this poem pass through me and sigh

amen

-a confession, after reading live at my first poetry slam (24.6.22) ylm

[aielylois]

I fell in love with you on fawn's legs- trippingly, stumbling, and suddenly all at once everything was coming up roses and I was learning to walk through thorns

Your love was piercing tasted like iron on the tongue felt like dried blood on pelt sounded like a gun shot across an open field

Loving you just stuck a bullet in my side an arrow through my heart hung dried and quartered skinned to keep you warm

No one taught me the difference between a bow and a rifle between falling in love and being caught in your crosshairs- but what does it matter? I was hunted either way

They say female elk know how to become bulletproof know their rifles from their bows learned to survive the huntsman's call and I think I've grown tired of being fawn-like

I will learn from the elk follow them into the forest across the rougher terrain and maybe- just maybe- they can teach me to survive another hunting season you

- ylm

Prompts: fawn-like - @nosebleedclub // a separation - Escapril on ig // You are in love with someone who does not want to love you back. Say what you wish to. - harnidhk on ig

[aielylois]

stay human

Must one really talk to humans to stay human? Is it not enough to watch life pass by and ride on the eddies of its momentum to spin the next tale?

Must one always try to be good to stay human? Is it not enough to wake up every day just to see the sun only to close the shutters and wait for the stars to come out?

Must one always create to stay human? Is it not enough that one learns not to step on cracks not to make a sound not to take up space because to do so would create a problem and then you'd be less human and more problem- wouldn't you?

Must one always strive for reclamation, a proclamation, a cry in the night to prove the echo has substance in order to stay human? Is it not enough to cling to the trellis grow on the walls hold on to everything you come across just to pass the time?

Must one always crave intimacy to stay human? Is it not enough that one becomes the eyes in the dark blinking slowly in time with one's breathing even if there is no one to watch?

Must one remember to stay human? Is it not enough that one has déjà vu for a life that was never theirs?

Tell me: how do you stay human when you feel like a ghost haunting your own body?

-ylm

Prompts: trying to be good + act of creation + intimacy -Escapril on ig // reclamation + espalier + eyes in the dark - @nosebleedclub // déjà vu - bynicoleting on ig