#the one you write poetry about

[withdenim]

So uh. How about that time skip huh. (Corvus composing and performing the best track in the show was so hot of him btw if you care)

[asoftepiloguemylove]

William Shakespeare // pinterest // Feel Good (2020-2021) cr. Joe Hampson & Mae Martin // Natalie Diaz These Hands, If Not Gods // Sandra Cisneros Woman at Hollering Creek: Stories; "Never Marry a Mexican" // Holland NUMBER BOY // Richard Siken Crush // 스물다섯 스물하나 Twenty-Five Twenty-One (2022) dir. Jung Ji-hyun // Sappho // Dodie She // Maureen Seaton Furious Cooking; "Swan Lake" // unknown // Frank Ocean Forrest Gump // แปลรักฉันด้วยใจเธอ I Told Sunset About You / I Promised You the Moon (2020-2022) dir. Naruebet Kuno & Tossaphon Riantong // Danez Smith Recklessly (via @tendermimi)

[redactedcrowart]

regardless, i wasn't built to be alone

part of this series 1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 4

[fromtheseventhhell]

"I have no sister." The words were knives. What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister? | Jon VI

--metaphorical knives at feigning neutrality regarding his sister

Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger's hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. "Ghost," he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold... | Jon XIII

--literal knives from breaking that neutrality to save her

[melit0n]

Nobody talk to me

📸: metalmusemedia on insta

[luthienne]

[lokilysolbitch]

DO WHAT YOU CAN AND DONT BE A DICK ON THE INTERNET

i was writing a post about how it's unhelpful to shame average people for not meeting your standards of activism and calling them evil and things like that bc shame is not a reliable motivator and you don't know these people blah blah blah. and then i ended up writing this so here u go:

like. let's imagine you're an average guy. you work a job under a shitty manager and you still can't pay rent and afford groceries at the same time. you have untreated physical and mental illness and/or trauma. you don't have energy to cook a full meal. one of the microwave foods you like is being recalled. lead or e. coli or something. you can't remember when you last had water. you are too tired to clean the mold and algae off the corners of your brita. and who knows what is in the tap water.

a new episode of your favorite show just came out. you post about it. someone comments or makes a video about you and several others who are not posting about [serious issue]. saying you are heartless and inhuman. and you've heard about [serious issue] on a site or from someone who is supposed to be the most trustworthy on this topic. this random person on the internet is telling you things that don't match up to that. they're telling you that you should've had researched more. that not knowing enough is not an excuse. there is mold in your brita filter.

the video about you has thousands of comments. they're saying they think you should know what it's like to experience [serious issue]. then maybe you would take it seriously. you have the privilege to post about your favorite show. you are being lazy. these people are like piranhas. your dinner has e. coli or something. you have to clean your brita.

you want to research [serious issue]. you care about people. you started to but you are hearing different stories. one of your sources is from the same internet the random person came from. you thought you weren't supposed to trust the internet? another source can't even stand up against itself. that one is supposed to be trustworthy.

you see someone getting torn apart for posting misinformation. comments say they should have done their research. these people are like piranhas.

now you're seeing it. raw footage. you need a break and your notifications are flooded. why haven't you posted about this yet??? it's the least you could do. are you lazy??? don't you care??? these people are like piranhas. you still need to clean the brita.

no more internet. you need to clean the brita. sponge, soap. tap water. thin green and black streaks coming off the corners of the pitcher. all done. well now the sponge has mold on it. new sponge. your brita filter is getting old. new filter. do you even deserve a new filter? do you deserve fresh water? whatever, just refill it. tap water. waiting. tap water. waiting. tap water, fridge. check your phone.

brita filters are getting recalled.

lead or e. coli or something.

[youngster-monster]

You're gonna carry that weight

Cowboy Bebop | All These Things That I've Done, The Killers | On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong | Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), Emma Sulkowicz | You're So Cool, Nicole Dollanganger | Every Day I Am Trying New Techniques To Make Myself Disappear, E.E Scott | Papyrus of Ani | Impossible Weight, Deep Sea Diver | The Gang Carries a Corpse Up a Mountain, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia | an old poem about reflections, Grendel Menz | @jb-blunk | @intactics | The Glass Essay, Anne Carson (thank you @grapecaseschoices )| Henry V, Kenneth Branagh | I, Carrion (Icarian), Hozier | Carrying the Skeleton, Marina Abramović | Atlas, Serhii Hetmanchuk | Dark Knight questline, Final Fantasy XIV

(image descriptions in alt)

[emry-stars-art]

YES, PLEASE AND THANK YOU @snazzy-jas-z-is-a-fan-of !!

(Find the royal au writing masterpost here 💕)

And I’ll do an art-only version of this post for your reblogging pleasure here :) there's always always more to be said about this so I might make another post on the same topic but later

Anyway onto the juicy stuff

Okay so. Evermore and Palmetto both have glove etiquette, but in Evermore Nathaniel never had to worry about it, because he was expected to constantly be wearing gloves from first day he’s able to after getting nasty scars on his hands. Except for when he’s working or helping Nathan work. The nobles and specifically Prince Riko made it clear that they had no desire to see how ugly his hands were. (This is also why he has a habit of wearing a little of his hair down on the left side; it helped cover the scars on his cheek that ruined his pretty complexion.)

Then he comes to Palmetto and Day introduces him to a whole new set of rules. Gloves are a common and important part of dress and fashion, but people are also able to decide whether or not to wear them at any given time. The only real rules on gloves are when not to wear them; you always take off gloves to eat or drink, and to offer your hand in greeting or service.

Nathaniel gets to kind of ease into it; he’s not around anyone important enough to need to offer proper greeting or help, so mostly he takes his gloves off to eat in the servants quarters, where he doesn’t deal with more than curious glances. There’s a lingering fear of letting anyone important see his hands, no matter what Day says to assure him otherwise.

Then Nathaniel becomes the prince’s guard. Nothing changes for a while - the prince has always been more self-sufficient than most - until one day Nathaniel sees the prince eyeing the fall from his horse. (Really Andrew is trying to get up the courage to dismount, because even if the fall isn’t actually an issue for him, his fear of heights sometimes catches up to him when dismounting horses.) Nathaniel understands by now that he’s allowed and expected to help, so he reaches out - and remembers. He’s also acutely aware that the prince hasn’t yet seen his hands, then also also acutely aware of how serious Day was about the proper etiquette, and slips off his glove. The prince gives his hand a curious look, but accepts the help and all but crushes Nathaniel’s hand in his as he finally makes the fall. Even on the ground, though, he doesn’t let go quickly. Instead, the prince’s thumb brushes once across the back of Abram’s hand and he turns his hold, pulling Nathaniel’s hand up to examine it. The only thing keeping Nathaniel in place is the bone-deep instinct that he isn’t to deny anyone, especially a prince. Maybe the prince would decide he didn’t actually want to see Nathaniel’s hands and Nathaniel could go back to wearing his gloves with little more than a strike to the cheek for making the prince look at them.

But the prince does no such thing. He drops Nathaniel’s hand and continues on as normal. Nathaniel does his best to do the same, but that’s probably the first kind skin to skin contact he’s had in years. He isn’t recovering as quickly as he imagines he should.

(Meanwhile Andrew was NOT about to let an opportunity to hold Nathaniel’s hand slip like that, and he finds that he doesn’t mind the roughness. Most other guards were pulled from a much more privileged crowd - usually who had some callouses or scratches at most. Nathaniel’s hands show Andrew that this one isn’t all bark and no bite. Andrew… really likes them.)

Gradually, Nathaniel (likely soon or now Abram) gets used to taking off his gloves. He doesn’t without reason, it takes him a while not to feel naked without them, but it only takes a few more instances for him to realize that the prince truly doesn’t mind his scars. Helping the prince from his horse becomes easy habit (GS isn’t necessarily tall, but neither is Andrew. No step stool = Abram’s help).

Maybe there’s even a few times Abram is completely gloveless when he’s around only Day or the prince. He finds himself hiding his hands subconsciously when he’s not thinking about it, but he’s never once told to cover up.

Then Abram is kidnapped, taken back to Evermore. All the same rules are enforced and more. In this case, gloves aren’t all that different or upsetting. That much is okay.

It’s when he gets back that things change. Since he’s blind for a while, he’s relying much more on touch and hearing. It’s also a good tactile reminder; if he were still in Evermore, he would never be bare handed. This is when he truly gets used to not wearing gloves. (During this time he’s also touched more gently and more often than ever in his life. Others’ bare hands on his naked skin to care for scars and rashes and fever, first Day and medics and then Day and Prince Andrew. Abram finally, finally realizes that this is what he’d been missing. He actually finds himself calmed and cared for in being touched.)

Even when his sight returns, Abram only wears gloves out of doors or to formal events. Slowly and so, so carefully, Andrew finds more small reasons to touch Abram’s hands, and Abram always finds rationalization to accept. Then Abram even leaves his gloves in his saddlebags or pockets when they go out.

Winter hits. Abram has very few burn scars on his hands, but even the simple knife scars can seize and ache in cold weather. By now Andrew is very attentive to Abram’s pain or discomfort, so he notices. Abram’s hands hurt.

So Andrew buys him new gloves, lined with soft, warm fur. Abram is both pleased and disappointed - pleased because any gift from Andrew is a good gift, and disappointed because the prince expects him to wear gloves again. But the first time Andrew sees Abram wearing them indoors, he says easily, “They’re to keep your hands from the cold. Wear them only as much as you need.” (Because, again; he’s not going to admit it, but he loves Abram’s hands.)

It probably takes a long time for Abram to get accustomed to much more touch. He likes holding the prince’s hand, he’s used to that this far into their courting, but anywhere else with anything more than clinical intent - sometimes including with clinical intent - he gets overwhelmed very easily.

Andrew is careful with him. Like we mentioned in the last post, Andrew’s had about six to eight years longer to get readjusted to wanting and touching; Abram is essentially starting fresh. It’s a lot for him to handle.

(Don’t worry, though, I promise they figure it out. Just like they always do, in every universe, for all of our mental health.)

[six-white-venus]

MY FAVORITE WORD EVER

rot

OR!!

gone

you find my corpse on a bright summer morning.

you break into my freezing cabin with a raised eyebrow. unphased. curious. then, a slow smile appears. i am immediately wary.

it has been years since i’ve had visitors in my humble abode and i like it that way. the cold keeps me safe. my body rots like a bruise swells; slow, painful, with withering purples and blues. it stretches the time of my body in this land into an endless limbo that i clutch with my cold, dead hands. my heart is still and i am numb, have been so for a long, long time. i am safe.

you find my corpse on a summer morning and stomp into my home/hell with eyes ablaze and teeth flashing and if i was alive, my heart would’ve seized at the sight. you lug my body to my backyard, unflinching. the sun burns my skin and everything hurts and i want to kick and scream and thrash in your hold because you idiot, you stupid motherfucker, don’t you know the rot sets in faster when life is around?

but dead men don’t scream, don’t move. you drop me on the grass with heaving breaths and all i could do is burn while the cicadas sing of my second demise. then, you start talking.

you tell me about your day and ask me about mine and barrel on when all you’re met with is silence. you tell me of the sky, the wind, and your favourite sundress. you must be insane. out of your fucking mind. don’t you see this rotting vessel of mine? my unseeing gaze and blue lips and cracking skin? don’t you smell the rot, the death? you surely do. then why aren’t you running? no, stop. stop moving closer. you madman, leave me in this wretched place. the warmth of your touch will only make me fester, don’t you see?

but you stay. you tell me how the crisp apple bursts into a delightful sweetness when you sink your teeth into it and pull my head to your lap. you tell me about your mom’s cooking and let my cold seep into your skin. my mouth is sewn shut and you are holding me so gently and i want to scream for mercy, for an ounce of cruelty. give me back my home, you villain. give me back my hell.

ice melts. the heat thaws my flesh and the rot digs into my body with its talons unsheathed and merciless. you pitch a tent next to my body and spend your nights here. night after night, i listen to the lull of your heart and watch the rise and fall of your chest as my body breaks itself down from inside out. i am warm.

and you, stubborn, baffling, ethereal you; you stay. the next day and all the days after that. the stench is getting unbearable now. i can see it in your eyes, in every ragged breath of yours. a corpse will remain a corpse no matter how much it is loved. there are only so many stories you can tell without gagging at the sight of this monstrosity. the sun always sets. stories end. love lives where life does. your kindness never did have a place between my blackened teeth and diseased heart, my dear.

but you come back with a gentle brush of lips against my decaying forehead. your hand cradles my rotten head. my sweet warmth, there you are. won’t you leave?

you won’t, right?

you dig my grave all by yourself. six feet deep, seven feet tall because you want me to be comfortable. what a useless gesture. i learn love feels like the glow of the moon and feather soft touches and a grave dug with bare hands.  you lift me in your arms, careful not to jostle me too much, lest i fall apart. kindness feels like a siren’s lullaby and i can feel my eyes droop. it’s dangerous and so very beautiful.

things are different in my new home. numbness feels so far away. there is life thrumming in my veins and eating away at my flesh. you bring me flowers everyday- chrysanthemums, dandelions and tulips- you tell me they remind you of me. how foolish. how very wonderful.

soon, i will bloom into all the flowers you can dream of from this very earth you laid me in. soon, i will rise, petals unfurling, laugh booming. i will weave myself in your braids and take root in your chest and spread down to the very tips of your fingers. my darling, my sun, my rose; i promise i will find you on a bright summer morning.

[fictionadventurer]

Beauty and the Beast for the WIP game?

My only real attempt at writing poetry before this year happened during a stretch when I tried to write a Beauty and the Beast retelling in verse. I got about two-thirds of the way through before it fizzled out and languished forever unfinished.

When it comes to my recent novel-in-verse obsession, the simplest option would be to take another look at this work and try to finish it. There's a lot of terrible poetry in there, but there are some that are somewhat better than I remember. I can't claim to be a judge of what's good poetry, but some of these are readable, so I'll share some of them here.

The first set of semi-readable poems covers the first meetings between Beauty and the Beast. (These are all numbered, and I'm leaving the numbers in place to better differentiate between separate poems. I think the speaker in most of these is fairly clear from context, but just in case, I'll put the speaker's name in the title, too.)

VI. beauty and beast

he is every nightmare i’ve ever forgotten he is thunder and darkness and death he is fear with fangs he is beastly

she is every dream i’ve never dared for she is roses and sunlight and life she is hope with jewels she is beauty

*

VIII. beauty

the chair creaks when he sits

my knees quake when he speaks

the master laughs when i ask

when i will die

my ears doubt when i hear

my mind reels when i realize

the master wonders when i began

to think he’d kill me

IX. beast

the rules are these you are mistress of this castle the servants will obey your every whim the rooms and all within are yours including me

you will dine with me at dusk we will not speak if you want silence you will look at me and try not to scream

i will not harm a hair of your head i will not cause a moment’s worry you will do whatever you wish except leave

X. beauty

his mercy shatters my world makes it bigger and at the same time smaller

how can i live in a monster’s cage

my life will be long and lonely with him my friend and at the same time jailer

how can i look at a monster’s face

the castle teems with wonders that all belong to him and at the same time me

what do i do with a monster’s love

*

The next set of poems I feel like sharing starts with Beauty finding a portrait in the castle, and then leads into her sharing a dance with Beast that makes her kind of freak out over the fact that she might be falling in love.

XXII. beast

today you found a painting in a long-forgotten room covered in cobwebs and shrouded in dust

there was a reason it was lost

the portrait showed a man with a face like the dawn and eyes like the sea you thought he looked kind

he was young and a fool

you may keep it if you wish or lock it back in darkness it matters not to me i used to see him daily

i doubt i’ll see his face again

*

XXIV. beauty (and beast)

if rooms have souls the ballroom is wise a radiant beauty long past her prime

she treasures the days when she lived and was loved she keeps them and counts them like pearls on a string

(she is not the only one, my dear)

long past midnight in moonlight and hush this sleepwalking girl can glimpse former days

a flash of a gown and a whisper of waltz what glorious balls must this room have beheld

(they were marvelous indeed, my friend)

it seems a shame she grows old alone with nothing but darkness and dust held within

i would dance for her return the spark of life if only we had music and i had a partner

(i will gladly dance with you, my love)

XXV. beast

my dear beauty don’t you know i learned dancing long ago

one step closer take my hand with a waltz you’ll understand

let the music guide your feet in a dance that’s slow and sweet

hand in hand and heart to heart it’s not love but it’s a start

XXVI. beauty

he is hulking beastly

i am small delicate

i should be stumbling crushed

but

we marvelously miraculously dance

and it feels like flying

XXVII. beauty (to the portrait)

man on the wall i may be mad but i must give voice to the storm in my heart and you are the only one near

the master puzzles me i know his home as well as my own but i know so little about him

(is he beast or man or nightmare or dream or captor or friend)

i saw his face and thought him a beast

(but he grows roses and reads poems and has never killed or even raised his voice)

i heard his voice and thought him a monster

(but he spared my life gave me his home and all he owned offered his heart and never once has been anything but gentle)

i watched him dance and thought him a man

(with grace like an angel or a prince and i think that maybe he was not always so lonely and that his heart aches for things lost)

what am i to think do say be feel about him now

and why do these questions always come at midnight

*

The final poem is one that I had completely forgotten about, so I was shocked to find it lurking in the latter sections of the document and showing signs of using some decent imagery. By polishing up the last couple of lines, I've got something that's not half bad as a standalone poem.

This one occurs during an extended period when Beauty is still trying to process her feelings toward Beast and figure out if this is really love or if her feelings are being warped by isolation and close proximity.

XXX. beauty

if this is love it is a dark and grasping love a child stumbling in the night crying for a candle flame and cherishing the smallest spark of light

if this is love it is a bleak and desolate love a skeleton tree in a barren desert windbeaten and scrubbed to bone and bursting into bloom at the first drop of rain

if this is love it is a smoke and mirrors love a sleight of hand or trick of light that takes my broken heart and fools me into thinking he can make it whole

[moregraceful]

my hot take as a person with an english degree and a library degree is that some of the dorkiest fiction and poetry ever committed to paper in the english language came out of the iowa writer's workshop so it is at best goofy and at worst completely futile to argue that your average amazon unlimited writer is having a more deleterious effect on literacy and literature.

[zytes]

neucypher

[ro-sham-no]

calcium apatite / appetite, a poem by me.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

a lot of people carry around an assumption that a work of art which is “good” in certain ways is going to be received pleasurably (i’m using an extremely broad definition of pleasure here that encompasses things like art-induced moral discomfort or sadness don’t @ me) by, like, people at large. this comes up in two different areas of interest for me: on the one hand, People Having Takes On The Internet; on the other hand, discussions about pedagogy, particularly around writing. i have, i mean, a lot of different thoughts about this - still marveling over the interview with a book critic and harvard philosophy doctoral student i read where she casually espoused the belief that if people were simply taught better what makes art good they would like bad art less, which continues to strike me as one of the stupidest things i’ve ever seen a person i temporarily had a positive opinion of say - but like in pedagogical considerations for example something i had started to wonder about when i left the classroom was like… our writing instruction relied a lot on modeling. like, “notice how this published author does this thing; see how i try to do it also; now you try.” and i think that an unarticulated/unrecognized problem in that sort of modeling is that it kind of assumes the student finds pleasure in say a thorough visual description - that the student agrees “yes this part of what makes the book good.” (an adult can probably choose to learn craft lessons from a book they dislike - but i think that’s a tall order for a seven year old.) but not all of them do, and i picked description specifically because it’s something plenty of adult readers dislike as well - “too much description” is a common goodreads complaint! to me this is viscerally sort of insane because what are you even reading for then? but the answer is that they’re reading for different reasons than i am and i’ve never heard an argument i found compelling in favor of the idea that there are objectively better or worse things to seek from art (an area of life that quite literally doesn’t matter, which is precisely what gives it meaning, IMO). and also a surprising number of people very deep into art generally or of a particular kind seem ignorant of or opposed to the idea that, for example, someone who cares about a medium as an art form is probably going to have different criteria than a person who doesn’t care and just sometimes wants to go to the movies or see a book, and this is actually normal and not a problem to be solved. which i find strange. no real conclusion here except maybe an argument for spending more writing time in elementary school on things like learning what a complete sentence is and how to write one, which is a skill that will prove valuable regardless of personal tastes.

[crossbackpoke-check]

Why I Am Not Coming In To Work Today [abridged], Jess Zimmerman

part one | part two