May 28, 2023

poetrex:

EVERY CHOICE IS LAVA EXCEPT THE ONE WITH THE MOST VOTES

Where are you going?

Quickly! Everyone! Choose the first option if you want to live!

I know a spot. I’ve got a warm feeling about jumping in cold lakes.

Wherever we want to go! I have inherited an airship, let’s be pirates in space.

As far as we shall ride on a long summer’s day.

Werner Herzog’s butt-dial instructs me to lay flat in the desert of my own hope.

Underground! We can climb down this hot, glowing rope. The volcano is my friend.

To the Palace of Reason! The Council will know what to do with this information.

Wrong! I’m putting on my anti-lava boots. Later, alligator!

Please. This is our final universe together. Don’t let it end like this!

No more games, Professor Manwolf. The options aren’t lava. What are you hiding?

We regret to inform you that, in the event of a tie, lava kills everyone.

Yes, even the ones who took the anti-lava boots. There were no batteries in them.

1:17am  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdulIqcyq00
Filed under: polletry very pleased with this result final score Lava 23 Voters 0 blame air piracy 
May 17, 2023

EVERY CHOICE IS LAVA EXCEPT THE ONE WITH THE MOST VOTES

Where are you going?

Quickly! Everyone! Choose the first option if you want to live!

I know a spot. I’ve got a warm feeling about jumping in cold lakes.

Wherever we want to go! I have inherited an airship, let’s be pirates in space.

As far as we shall ride on a long summer’s day.

Werner Herzog’s butt-dial instructs me to lay flat in the desert of my own hope.

Underground! We can climb down this hot, glowing rope. The volcano is my friend.

To the Palace of Reason! The Council will know what to do with this information.

Wrong! I’m putting on my anti-lava boots. Later, alligator!

Please. This is our final universe together. Don’t let it end like this!

No more games, Professor Manwolf. The options aren’t lava. What are you hiding?

See Results

12:43pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdrMX1saa00
Filed under: poem poll poetry polletry lava 
May 15, 2023

poetrex:

MY CHOICES WERE LARGELY AESTHETIC, BUT THE UNIVERSE ACKNOWLEDGED THAT A CHOICE WAS MADE:

What are you saying?

We’ll circle back to that eventually. I need to get inside the Tower first!

[Nothing. A giant sea-witch has my voice & I’m not even mad about it!]

I am shaved & in control. I am still defined by wearing pants.

Sorry I hacked your diary & fell in love. I was environmental storytelling!

Oh dear. It appears you have committed a genocide on my behalf.

I’m glad you held my hand. You didn’t have to do all that for me!

I am a living weapon. I have made myself a bow. I am 22 years old.

I’ve died before. The odds were bad, but the choice was still worth making.

I want so much more than this world will give me. Let’s build infrastructure!

No more questions. Show me who you think I am, Doctor Dracula.

See Results

Choices matter! I am turning these into songs. Your votes will determine the number of harmonies.

10:01am  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdqh02nGi00
Filed under: music song songwriting lyrics polletry SoundCloud 
May 14, 2023

Body positivity says, “All bodies are beautiful.”
Body neutrality asks, “Why are you nicer to the ones you find attractive?”

Body positivity says, “Real women have curves.”
Body neutrality admits, “It’s true that women are not composed of flat polygons, but when you share this next to a picture of Jessica Rabbit, that kind of defeats your point.”

Body positivity says, “But I’m a chubby-chaser!”
Body neutrality explains, “OK, but ‘there there, I’d fuck you’ is not the soothing panacea you think it is.”

Body positivity says, “Fat is healthy!”
Body neutrality cries, “I just want a doctor to listen to me for once, and concede that I’m an expert on my own existence!”

Body positivity says, “I want this for you.”
Body neutrality says, “I am owed this human right for all my life.”

3:56pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdqRU7wue00
Filed under: body positivity body neutrality fatphobia spilled ink 
May 14, 2023
HOW MANY CHARACTERS WILL FIT BEFORE THE LINE BREAKS?

No wrong answers. You only get the one:

I have met at least a thousand by a hundred names & they embrace me.

All that shame is lifted from my shoulder. Only joy is left, infinite.

This is the bad place, but we have each other. I love you. This is not a line.

Can I trust you with these figures? What you intend to fix is not yet broken.

But I want so many more! & none of them the last. Does this have to end?

Please choose me in answer to your limit. I am empty; I am not yet boundless!

Mother Mary comes & makes me queasy, as per my request.

Perhaps a dozen; only one who knows me best.

Please don’t make me metaphor, you won’t like what I represent.

80. The correct literal answer is 80. Now show me what my peers have chosen.

See Results

12:12am  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdqD_Tmeq00
Filed under: poem poll poetry polletry 
May 13, 2023
MY CHOICES WERE LARGELY AESTHETIC, BUT THE UNIVERSE ACKNOWLEDGED THAT A CHOICE WAS MADE:

What are you saying?

We’ll circle back to that eventually. I need to get inside the Tower first!

[Nothing. A giant sea-witch has my voice & I’m not even mad about it!]

I am shaved & in control. I am still defined by wearing pants.

Sorry I hacked your diary & fell in love. I was environmental storytelling!

Oh dear. It appears you have committed a genocide on my behalf.

I’m glad you held my hand. You didn’t have to do all that for me!

I am a living weapon. I have made myself a bow. I am 22 years old.

I’ve died before. The odds were bad, but the choice was still worth making.

I want so much more than this world will give me. Let’s build infrastructure!

No more questions. Show me who you think I am, Doctor Dracula.

See Results

11:04am  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdq2iR84q00
Filed under: poem poll poetry polletry roleplaying 
May 12, 2023
I’LL TAKE MY IODINE. BUILD A POWER PLANT IN MY BACKYARD.

Choose a dream:

Björk takes you to a bunker where you scream & break things into echoes.

You meet Neil at a party. He illuminates the secret meaning of your birthmark.

Your teeth fall out again. This time it doesn’t matter.

You wake inside the dream! You’re dancing all alone inside your skull.

Go into the black water & be nothing, or everything that isn’t meat.

There are many kinds of torture without pain. You do not escape.

It is summer & your friend loves you so much. Mysteries need solving.

Kissing 3.0 is free & ready to install. Update your system now?

[THIS DREAM INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK]

I dare not dream. Show me the metrics.

See Results

7:17pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdprA4cGW00
Filed under: poem poetry spilled ink poll 
February 1, 2023

fjskdhszx:

we’re literally being held to the planet by an invisible force. it’s magic. people will shrug and call it gravity but the fact remains: we’re literally being held to the planet by an invisible force and I think that’s mysterious and humbling. like you can call it whatever you want but I won’t take it for granted just because we gave it a name. I’ll always be amazed

I get this way about the intersection of contingency with agency and just how relatively recent all of recorded history is. Two hundred years ago, the Great Lakes were militarized and you could legally own human beings, and I won’t take that for granted. I can read an epic poem from four thousands years ago, and that’s a kind of magic. For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal peoples encoded star maps into songlines to cross Australia; today, those routes are highways made of concrete that still can’t match the Romans’, and I think that’s humbling.

(via joanhawley)

11:33pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdJjlbjSq00
Filed under: history gravity 
January 23, 2023

heartmagician:

If you follow me on other social media you might know that I was accepted into a writing residency this spring, & I’ve been fundraising, saving & selling for the past 6-ish months to get there. My funding deadline is January 26th (I’m posting this on the 22nd) & I have about 400 to raise before that.

I don’t post my writing as much on here as I once did, but this is really where I got my start. Tumblr was the platform for some of my very first poems in 2011, which feels like an entire lifetime ago! I am living out some of my teen self’s dreams today, & this is one of them: weeks of uninterrupted time to just write. I’m working on a manuscript right now that is quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever written; this residency is crucial to me getting it from manuscript to book.

So, hi Tumblr: in some ways I’m a writer because of you, & I need your help. I’m selling broadsides of a poem excerpt over a photo I took & developed in a darkroom myself, available with sliding scale prices. More info on getting one of those is here. In addition to writing, I’ve also been a freelance fiber artist for the past year, & I make fluffy circular little guys like these. Do you like them? Do you want one? DM me & we can talk about commissions!

& if you have the means to, & want to throw some bucks at me as a tip of sorts:

V*nm0: Lyd-Havens

Ca$h4pp: $LydHavens

P4yP-l: LydHavens

I know we’re all struggling to survive right now—I’m still fundraising with days to go because I’ve been struggling to survive!—so please, take care of yourself first. But I needed to ask for help from the place that first made me want to be a writer. Any & all purchases & contributions help, as well as reblogging & sharing.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. <3

PS: since I don’t post my work on here very often, here are some poems from this manuscript that have been published in various journals—

(via heartmagician)

10:30pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdGpSDNiu00
Filed under: signal boost please consider supporting one of my favourite poets ever lyd havens coming up from the mean streets of tumblr help the heartmagician make more heart magic 
January 23, 2023

that crows have flown away with the dead meat of me;

that wolves lick at my bones & a green plant

grows from my belly, say

I am healer I am no more wounds


that all this hungry hollow fills my mouth;

that all my teeth are black & fallen out

& dirt lives in my lungs, say

I am truth I am no more lies

say I am left

when all that living dies.

* * *

Written January 2023.

9:20pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wdGoSVF0a00
Filed under: poem poetry spilled ink 
November 14, 2022

I love explaining that barista is a unisex term. You expect a language to follow its own gender rules? Sorry, usage trumps grammar every time. No baristo for you.

8:30pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wcwFmzO0m00
Filed under: about me 
October 12, 2022
Bloodlands

(after Timothy Snyder)

a man walks through a window:
the joke with a thousand faces—

stop me because you have heard this before;
a postcard from our imminent murder  says

Wish You Were Here
the redistribution of hunger.

a man walks in with a bar,
two rabbis and a blonde (stop me)

says ‘who is going to pay for all this glass?’
14 million times 1

and between one and nothing an infinity.
a man walks in with a nun—

we do not know them  we cannot tell
a rescuer from a rapist (stop)

a postcard from our imminent murder.

* * *

Written October 2022.

9:46pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/Zi-g2wcleDeZCe00
Filed under: poem poetry murder cw genocide cw rape cw bloodlands timothy snyder