#poetry on medium

[fastlivenostress]

World on demand (poetry)

Pixabay In a world on demand,Everything at our command,Instant gratification,A new form of temptation. We want it all and we want it now,No time to waste, no time to allow,For patience and for reflection,As we seek constant satisfaction. But in this rush to obtain,What we think will ease our pain,We forget the joy of waiting,Of earning, of hesitating. For in the moments we pause,We may find a…

[cynical-crypt]

reminder to writers/self

its ok to write shitty poems its ok to write shitty song lyrics its ok to write shitty stories its ok to be unoriginal its ok to reuse a line from something else you wrote its ok to reference other works its ok to be proud of shitty writing its ok to be proud of great writing its ok to be proud in general its ok to not use overcomplicated intricate wording in writing its ok to write about dumb shit its ok to write about fictional events its ok to write something awesome but have one weak line you cant really fix its ok to write something terrible but have one amazing line that doesn't fit its ok to write about emotions you don't really grasp its ok to write

[catilinas]

Hera Lindsay Bird, from Waste My Life

[filmnoirsbian]

[commissions4aid-international]

DONATION MATCH EVENT

Match my donation of $15 to these aid groups, then send proof of donation to us via submissions (NOT ask box), along with a small prompt (can be words or an image), and receive 2 sketches and a poem based on your prompt! These donations will also get you 2 entries to our raffle!

event runs until Friday 26th july

Note: these are requests, not commissions, so you can’t give feedback while we are working on our sketches and poem. must match all 3 donations to receive art. proof of donations must follow these standards

Mona’s initiative (food aid and hygiene items for North Gaza)

Helpgazachildren (aid to children in Rafah)

Crips for Esims (esims for all of Gaza)

[02nique02]

[iiconspo]

i choose to bleed, i'm sorry for staining your clothes.

[trinalwilliams]

"With perspicacious eyes, she sees beyond the veil”

Tlw/Lumina

[whitmore]

actually can’t stop thinking abt the phil wilbur maze argument bc phil has him lassoed the entire time because he’s trying desperately to pull him along to the middle of the maze where everybody else is (meta note this is mostly an attempt to speed up the event which is like 40 minutes behind by now) and . this is less about the lasso and more about what the lasso represents. because wilbur literally begs for a warp scroll to get out of that goddamn maze and phil tosses one and walks away and wilbur gets dragged along with him, demands to be let go again, but he CANT unlasso him! physically he can’t! phil drags him INTO the warp scroll and reiterates that he should leave but again this is Not about the actual physical lasso this is about how wilbur has been unwittingly dragged into this narrative and mission without really understanding or believing in it. this is about phil’s attachment to wilbur and his attempt to include him in the ‘egg rescue’ (fed event) and wilbur’s abhorrence of that idea, his rebellion against what is expected of him by both peers and authority. and it’s even better because he doesn’t even get unlassoed when he warp scrolls out of there. his ass gets launched into the nearest spruce wall the minute he gets home. he’s always attached. he will always be pulled into their plot. this is about how the letter tells us qlovejoy was a fed-funding operation— he will always, always be playing along. the lasso is a familial bond and a guitar and puppeteer strings and an arguably meagre sum of duck coins in his mailbox

[myriadeyed]

Something happened to me today. I looked at the sequoias tearing up the sky and thought aren’t you my cousins how-many-times removed, crawled from the same sea? Something grand. Something very small. I looked at the stars putting the sky back together and thought, aren’t I part of that, too? Something interconnections. Nothing separations. באַרוך האַם אַנכנו, גאַנאַנים האַ׳אָלאַם, who fell in step with the rhythm and made it a whole new dance. If there is a god, he’s probably jealous.

[always-a-joyful-note]

Low quality and low effort explanation of my feelings about the two recent song releases

[colouredyoublu]

i once knew of love —

[renquise]

A friend once told me how a door wants a threshold;  how a threshold wants a body; how the body lingers in the doorway long after the passing-through.

(She spoke in reference to fey methods of cross-planar travel; I digress.)

The first time you stepped in, you raised your hand to the lintel  as if to fix it in space. 

I thought you might leave only the gilded print of your thumb; you thought to touch the wood  lightly for fear it might stain.

The jambs and the lintel burn last, I know, still bearing the weight of a structure long gone.

But you flattened your palm to the beam, pressed a negative image of the creases  where your flesh gives and articulates and folds. The summer sweat of your skin anointed the wood: the newly-hewn thirsts for benediction, you see.

The toes of your boots face outwards when you place them by the door.

And yet:

here is the lintel here are the jambs here is the threshold here are the green beans climbing the trellis

here you step through, again and again

(Photos cropped from "The Doorway at Darkness, by Henry Söderlund and "Old Doorway" by Simon Evans)

[brickwall1yrics]

Be Your Boy - Medium Build

[gingermintpepper]

Mother Love - Demeter and Persephone in poetry

Alright, so, let's finally talk about Mother Love.

I've spent the past couple of weeks compiling most of the poems from my physical copy of Mother Love into a publicly accessible google doc because there is a quite frankly embarrassing lack of archiving of this particular anthology of Dove's work and I am genuinely and greatly saddened that it is not a work more commonly brought up when discussing Demeter/Hades/Persephone retellings and reinterpretations for modern audiences.

In order to speak about what Mother Love is, I first need to address what it is not. It's not a coming of age story which portrays Persephone as a caged bird under a too-smothering Demeter. It's not a love story where Hades is some valiant hero who rescues an innocent maiden and through his love empowers her to be her truest self. It does not demonise Demeter, who has forever lost her daughter, it does not demonise Hades, who took that daughter away.

Instead, Mother Love is, perhaps, the truest interpretation of the themes of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter that I've seen, down to the structure of the anthology mimicking the hymn's narrative structure. It is the story of a mother who loses her daughter, of the grief that ensues as she worries for her, of her being pitied and given empty words instead of help finding her, of her trying to soothe herself by filling the void with new children that are not her own. It is the story of a daughter who loses her way, who went seeking flowers and was unwittingly caught in the machinations of those in higher positions of power than her, of the kingdom she is promised and refuses, of the changes she goes through in this new, strange world without her consent and how those changes will define her the rest of her life. It is the story of a lonely king overrun with ennui who wants companionship but never asks, of he who tries in vain to tempt with wealth and land and must ultimately yield to the love of a mother. Not even the lord of the dread Underworld can escape that all-consuming mother's love and this was a theme found all over greek mythology and their literature, and it is also the theme that has been unfortunately and miserably lost as we've told and retold the tale of Hades and Persephone time and time again.

Please, please read this work, and if you enjoy it, do consider picking up an actual copy of the anthology. There is so much to be gained from speaking of the Demeter/Hades/Persephone myth as one of nuance and devoid of the unnecessary moralisations and accusations that we habitually foist onto cultural figures and heroes in an attempt to validate our opinions and interpretations to our peers. In my compilation, I did leave out three poems: Breakfast of Champions, Blue Days, Nature's Itinerary, mainly because I did not think they were relevant -- but I'm always open to requests for those poems to be added to the doc if anybody gets curious. Below I've also attached a few of my favourite short poems from this anthology so people can get an idea for the content that is included in the doc.

@gotstabbedbyapen who requested a way to read these poems but could not find them, I sincerely hope you enjoy them <3