This blog is a dedicated space for poets of all kinds. Our aim is to share the work of those hidden in the writing community and of course some from our favourites. We try to find new talent, as all of the staff members have different, diverse taste. Thank you for visiting -- Let the inspiration flow.
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The first time I watched a beheading, I was thirteen. It was an American soldier. I can’t remember if it was from Afghanistan or from Iraq. The video was put online, and my brother brought me into the room when our parents weren’t home, and he pulled it up. The video was grainy and buffered a lot,…
5 
i. don’t listen to her when she says she’s okay. pry. make her squirm. make her honest. make her into more than a sample of herself. flood her lungs with promises of a brighter future until she suffocates on false pretenses. show her the difference between being happy and being whole. she’ll thank you later.
ii. kiss her just because. write poems on crumpled napkins and leave them in her shoes and beside her tea every morning. teach her how to ride a bike. travel to cities she’s only read about in grocery store paperbacks. she is going to have a panic attack on the subway. let it happen. don’t worry, she’ll be okay.
iii. remember that she is quietly falling apart. there will be bad days. there will be bad weeks. there will be bad months. count to ten. buy a needle and some thread and stitch her back together where the seams are ripping. offer her a helping hand when she doesn’t ask for one. even if she declines, she’ll aways remember the gesture.
iv. remind her that she is not her anxiety. she is not her depression. she is not her past. she is here and now. take her hand and guide her through the dark until she can see the light at the end of the tunnel. it’s distant, but it’s there. she’ll make it.
v. show her your scars, and maybe she’ll show you hers, too.
118 Irresponsibly and skillessly. Where at all. That was the first sign that something was off, something was off and wrong. He rolled over with an exaggerated lift of his legs. There was no reaction. Looked down. No dog. Looked over. Not anyone. Looked around. Only rectangular swaths of street lamp light reflected in a mirror. The formless shadows of unfamiliar furniture.
9 cal was all bones—edges and corners and jutting angles. people would ask, “cal, why don’t you eat?” and cal would reply, “i do, i just have a fast metabolism.” nobody pushed it.
his faucet was broken. he’d complained once or twice to no one in particular and, as expected, it had yet to be fixed. every night it would drip and drip and drip until the gentle melody lulled cal to sleep, and every morning he’d wake feeling twice as tired as the night before. people would ask, “cal, why don’t you go to bed earlier?” and cal would reply, “i will, i guess i just have a lot on my mind.” nobody pushed it.
on a thursday in november, cal walked in on two people in his parents’ bed, one of which was his mother. the other was a man with thick, chestnut hair (brown wouldn’t do it justice) and a waxed chest. cal’s father probably would have called him a pussy. cal didn’t call him anything. instead, he turned on his heel, sprinted to the toilet, and vomited up six saltine crackers. people would ask, “cal, how’s your father dealing with the divorce?” and cal would reply, “he’s alright, but he needs some time.” nobody pushed it.
christmas came and went like a flurry even though cal had secretly hoped for a blizzard. he went to a party and drank far too much and a pretty girl with a blood alcohol content of 0.2 stood on her tip-toes and kissed him under the mistletoe. sometimes he still wonders if it hurt when she was ejected from the passenger seat of his 1996 chevy malibu. people would ask, “cal, did they ever get around to fixing that guard rail?” and cal would reply, “i’m not sure, i don’t really drive much anymore.” nobody pushed it.
cal was 6 foot 3 by the end of his eighteenth year. he felt awkward and gangly and wrong in this big man body that was surely meant for someone else. the doctors said that cal needed to gain weight; they claimed that 118 pounds was too thin for a boy of his height. who were these strangers in white coats to tell cal he didn’t meet their standards? he was pretty, and pretty was thin, and thin was good. people would ask, “cal, are you eating breakfast?” and cal would reply, “sometimes, if i remember.” nobody pushed it.
his mother moved to colorado because she wanted to take up skiing. besides, the man with the waxed chest had a nice place in the mountains and fiscal security, whereas cal’s father was a lazy alcoholic and didn’t mean it when he gave cal that black eye last month. cal continued to forget about breakfast and his parents continued to forget about cal. people would ask, “cal, are you okay?” and cal would reply, “no, i want to fucking die.” nobody pushed it.
cal’s father accidentally slept through the first half of his funeral while a handful of his former peers sat in the third row from the back and clung to one another like leeches. his mother wept for three weeks, wiped away her sorrows with an embroidered handkerchief, and hit the slopes once more. “it’s what he would have wanted me to do,” she’d said. the man with the waxed chest didn’t remember cal’s middle name. it was joseph, by the way. calvin joseph.
people would ask, “cal, are you in heaven now?” and cal wouldn’t say with a goddamn word.
nobody pushed it.
Yasmin’s note: This is such a great piece of writing, truly incredible. Watch her, she’s something special.
14 I’m going to tell you a story. I can’t guarantee you’ll like it. It won’t be earthshattering or dazzlingly beautiful and there probably won’t be a happy ending. But I hope in the end you’ll see a little grain of truth.
i. Most of the world is born to the sun. Bright and glowing warmth overflowing. They live for the day and dream in the fields of daisies. She was different. She was born to the dark side of the moon and her days were spent wandering through dried up riverbeds gathering the remnants of lives gone by.ii. She rarely laughed. But when she did it was loud and splitting. The sound shook birds from the trees.
iii. She liked the night. Every job she ever had she worked the night shift standing in conveniences stores as zombie like people filed in for coffee and granola bars. Thus it goes without question that her greatest love in life would be the stars.
iv. She wanted to study astronomy. She made it through two years of university until reality took its toll and she dropped out. Maybe it was lack of funds, draining ambition, or lack of motivation. I do not know. That detail is not key to this story I give you.
v. I do know she picked up one day and left. No one heard from her again. After a while she stopped getting talked about at parties or mentioned by friends. Long enough had passed and finally no one knew who that girl in the photographs was. Dark eyed, raven haired looking long past with a stormy stare.
vi. Some say she went to the stormiest sea. Where the only thing there is black glass ocean and frightened feelings. Others say she took to eternal sleep in a riverbed. I figure she went to the place where she belonged. To a world of night where the stars and the dark side of the moon were one.
(Source: with-original-energy)
16 I lost my virginity to a girl named Isabelle. I met Isabelle when I was nineteen years old and on holiday with my parents. A cousin about seventeen times removed introduced us at a birthday party where we were practically forced into a table to be “left alone so we can get to know each other,” while all of our close family and friends very indiscreetly stared and giggled from a distance. Surprisingly enough, we hit it off pretty well.
Eventually we’d spend our days holding hands in the park and smiling at each other, and that was about it. She was quiet and soft spoken, and when she said something she thought was witty she would never laugh at her own jokes. She’d only bat her thick eye lashes thick enough to catch flies but made for hearts, and there was something in the way her light brown eyes looked into mine that made me remember. It made me remember I could die tomorrow, I could die right now, and nothing I have said or will ever do means a God damn thing really. Nothing since has ever made me feel quite so alive the way her stare did. That was when I realized I fall in love all wrong. By the end of our first week together I had started planning arguments, waking up restless at 4 A.M. to fantasizing about how she looks crying, and I couldn’t wait to see her face light up when I got her exactly what she wanted on her birthday.
One night we’d gone to a moderately upscale but none the less sleazy. I’d been to maybe five or six after then, but none of them were like this one. It could be my brain overpainting things but I’m pretty sure this place was different. The lights could only be changed to florescent green or mellow red that I assume were supposed to be romantic but it really reminded me of red light districts you see in foreign films, so I felt I was shopping for hookers in Amsterdam when I was having a night with my girl Isabelle. In all honesty, I was surprised she even agreed to come that night and I completely expected she would bail at the last minute, which she did. Cold feet they call it, although I remember hers being small and strangely adorable even though her pinky toe was slightly bigger than the one before it.
I wasn’t upset because I figured I was sharing a bed with a beautiful girl I might be falling for, so what did it matter if we had sex or not? But then something happened, and what exactly I can’t quite pinpoint. The girl from the park changed. At first it was exciting but slowly I began to feel separate from all the things we ended up doing. The sounds she made, the way she bite her lips, how she’d pin me down and play this devilish seductive smirk. Rather than be in the moment I found myself wondering what happened to the girl who would only bat her eye lashes. The whole time I feigned excitement and must be the only guy in history to fake an orgasm. I felt nasty and ashamed of myself the entire time, and all those fucking mirrors on the walls and ceilings didn’t help much. There isn’t anything quite as spirit shattering as watching yourself not enjoy something everyone, including God damn nature, tells you you’re supposed to. Eventually I couldn’t take the sight of me any longer and just stopped. She wanted to keep going but I told her that I was tired, that I just didn’t have it in me.
Funny how true that statement was.
9 1. She had eyes that went from blue to green with the changing of the seasons and the passing of her moods. He called their color that of the stormy sea. One day aquamarine the next like foaming emerald glass. The sun baked her skin to a deep brown. She had hair that she kept far too long. He squinted in the sunlight that warmed her skin. He had a face with too many freckles and he didn’t believe in sin. He fell in love with her in August when the burnt winds came to stay. It took him five days to tell her his name.
2. He had hair as dark as midnight but with no shining stars sprinkled through. She had hair like sunlight and she plucked wild violets from the ground and tucked them behind her ears. They met on a rainy April day in the city. He shared his umbrella with her. They later shared coffee for him and tea for her.
3. She had hands with long fingers like matchsticks. He had a crooked grin that hitched up to the left. They grew up in houses across the street from each other and their love story was inevitable like snow in January. She baked him cherry pies and he brought her hair ribbons for birthdays. She ran her long fingers along his cheek each time before they kissed.
4. She was a ballerina with long legs and excess grace. He had paint stained fingers and dark green eyes. They fell in love fast and quick and their love burned like film in the light. They wanted so desperately to be together forever. But he left one day. And she waited. And waited for him to come home. He never did. They became an unrequited love story never to be solved.
(Source: with-original-energy)
12 i.
Samantha thinks of himself as Sammy and screams at pretty purple dresses.
Rob prefers to be called Robert, because it sounds more grown up. All his classmates laugh at him. Inside his backpack is his briefcase. Inside his briefcase is his lunch — peanut butter and jelly, a Capri-Sun juice pouch, and a note from his mother saying “Good luck in 1st grade.”
Z doesn’t have a name. All she has is an initial. Her teachers say she has an attitude problems, mainly because she refuses to look anyone in the eye.
ii.
Samantha is approached by a falling leaf while a tree trunk digs into his back. He watches the other boys wrestle and race. He used to try to join them, but they always laughed. “What are you doing? You’re a girl!” He has given up, instead staring at them with unblinking blue eyes.
“You’re so pretty Samantha,” the leaf whispers.
Samantha sighs.
“I don’t want to be pretty.”
Rob is approached by a piece of paper as he slurps his juice pouch. The paper lands itself on his knee. There are undecipherable scribbles and numbers. He laughs. This couldn’t be his handwriting, could it? Rob ignores the business stamp of a local accounting office in the corner.
“Why don’t you fill out the rest of the form Rob?” the paper asks.
“Will do.”
Z isn’t approached by anything or anyone. She just closes her eyes and dreams of faces and names, holding them close to her. Her teachers say she has a disability, that she obviously doesn’t connect to others well.
iii.
Sammy’s faster than the other boys for a month’s worth of recess, but then his heart falters in the middle of a race, unable to keep up. Sammy is buried in a pretty purple dress anyway.
Robert swallows another bit of his quiche, sliding his glasses down to the tip of his noses. He still cannot see anything. he writes in a few numbers, then realizes that this will be the 10th paper this week he will hand to to his boss blank. Robert is shocked by this fact. Robert is still shocked 2 years later: shocked at the grey of the sky and the cold of a re-purposed refrigerator box.
Z holds Sammy and Robert in her mind and sighs. She swallows their given names; they travel to her stomach. She carries their true names wrapped around her fingers, in order to remember them forever. Z walks away, laughing as her teachers scream for her to come back. Z doesn’t.
Yasmin’s note: So perf. She never fails to astound.
(Source: cateyesindisguise)
17 Sometimes I sit in the bathroom with the shower on
for hours on end, dreaming I had a machine that
created the sound without wasting water,
my dreams are to have the things I have.
That or they are me being inside of a police
Station that doubles as a roller coaster cart
And I got tossed in the clink because
I was an outlaw porn director who made all
the girls wear little plastic pig snouts,
Then there are the ones were I wake up
sweating and I swear that the shadow of my
jacket on the chair followed me back from the
gossamer dreaming world as a glowing neon green
skull occasional does
but then I just go in the bathroom
turn on the shower, listen to the rain
and dream about not being capable of
wasting water.
8 the night remains naked of moonlight, contemptibly ceding to the snowfall; a turtle fighting a rabbit, at ease to give up the battle for the sake of the war. ”but what if it never ends,” she whispers to herself. she doesn’t want to drown in an avalanche, misunderstood, with frozen digits from…
12 Jeffrey loves Maria very much. Unfortunately, he is a ghost.
This presents all kinds of problems.
They cannot properly hold hands: Jeffrey’s ghostly tendencies make it very hard for him to keep his hand on top of solid human hands, and his hands are cold to the touch. Maria is not like Bella Swan; she does not like chilled ethereal flesh.
It is very difficult for them to kiss, as Jeffrey’s lips merely go through Maria’s and, she jokes, it feels like she is drinking a fruity iced drink. She says that ghosts taste a little bit like almonds and eternal sadness.
Jeffrey sits and watches Maria while she sleeps, because sleeping next to her makes her cold, even with blankets. The few times they tried, Jeffrey also began to sink through the bed and woke up six feet under by the time it was morning.
One of Jeffrey’s greatest worries is that Maria will get into some kind of trouble one day, and he won’t be able to help her. He does not know how to play poltergeist, and can at most, make someone feel very creeped out. Maria assures him that she will stay out of trouble.
Maria loves Jeffrey very much. Unfortunately, he is a ghost.
This presents all kinds of problems.
Jeffrey sometimes suddenly disappears. Maria has gotten used to this, though it alarmed her at first. Jeffrey has responsibilities to attend to on the other side; spirit guardian sort of things, he explained. Even though he is absent frequently, she admires his sense of duty.
Maria cannot bring Jeffrey around her friends because they get scared. She tried to explain to them that he was only a ghost, and there was nothing to be afraid of, but they couldn’t get over his translucency and his slightly unhinged head.
From time to time, Jeffrey gets a far away look in his eyes. Whenever Maria asks him what’s wrong, he only shakes his head and says something about the sadness of being pulled between two places at once, forever.
They have long fights when Maria talks about killing herself to join him. She could even have someone cut her head off badly. She’s sure that the brutal death and her longing for him would make her be bound to the earthly plane. Jeffrey always explains that it doesn’t work that way, that there’s no guarantee.
Jeffrey and Maria love each other, truly, but perhaps only because they’re afraid of having to have something real—whatever that means.
(Source: johnnypitt)
23 If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
-Ernest Hemingway
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(via john-chrostek)
63 Sign up for the October 29+ session.
What is Camp Parnassus?
(Source: , via grouchomac)
6 Nahlia’s Note: Wonderfully written and an excellent message delivered.
Athena curled the ends of her letters when she first learned to write. But she was fascinated with caligraphy then and the intricate words in her King James Bible. Then in middle school she became infatuated with the way Egyptians carved themselves into history and she drew simple figures, imagining a legacy of her own behind owls that represented the danger of the night. It didn’t matter that Athena had a step father who used her as stress relief. Athena was too young to understand. Athena was too full of life and curiosity to be broken. Too innocent to know worry. What I’m trying to say is, I’m telling you about Athena and it clutches your heart. But it’s far enough to move on from because you are looking at words on white sheets and not at eyes who sink into you deeply. What I’m trying to say is I did and it didn’t kill me. I looked into Athena’s eyes and became addicted to reality. As I taught her to breathe out the pollution, she taught me to breathe it in because there is beauty in darkness and thorns of roses too. Because living without it will only make you unchanging. And that is the greatest curse you can bestow upon yourself - choosing to disconnect from life.
56 