Recorded Dec. 25th, 2021. 

It was a rough year. I'd been kicked out of my place the year prior, in the midst of the 2020 pandemic chaos, and found a place within 15 minutes. I signed the contracts maybe a little too hastily. And for a year, I mourned things I didn't think I'd ever mourn (still-living family, my past self, security, you name it). 

There was a reason the place was available for so cheap: a broken heater I couldn't fix for a year despite a rough winter, windows that leaked every time it rained, little-to-zero insulation... I was desperately trying to rebuild "home" under the stresses of graduate school, poverty, and grief. One day, I found a letter in my mailbox, trying to contact the old tenant a year after he had left. Such bids for connection were foreign to my mailbox (though boy, it knew credit card statements) but here was such an eager one,  and for the ghost of a stranger that it may never find. And for some reason that did me in.  I wished I could tell someone all of the grief I'd been holding inside me, and there was something about the care and kindness in the sender's handwriting that made me wish they'd hear my story.

I've since received a lot of therapy and am doing a million times better. I just sort of liked this mediocre piece, or the marker it represented.

Return To Sender - repressed adulthood ramblings

I'm horrible at writing with expectations, but here they tumbled out, and I'm really not ashamed for the raw state - just maybe for your ears. 
I wanted to write slam poetry, though this is the only exposure I'll probably let it see (I'm really not for writing or competition).

*a dear friend commented on breathing carbon, and I was inspired to use that in this, because it described the expectations I felt exactly, despite their comfort. So no credit taken there. 
___________________________________________________
I look for codeine on the faces of boys, in the taste of thumbs wiping underneath my eyes, in the mattresses with three untucked corners and the stain of loneliness tattooed onto the hem of its comforts, where she fucks herself just to feel loved because no man should touch the demons in her spit, the death in her lungs, the disease of her mind. And I cannot give it away, because I am a sheep-in-a-wolf’s-skin virgin. And I feel that by speaking this, by the end of the night, I won’t be. That’s the relationship I have with humanity. 
I have makeup on my hands from trying to make all of the ugly pretty, and they don’t teach you in high school how to breathe through the carbon; they tell you just to make diamonds. Tell that to the little girl halving my insides, locked in the cupboard because she doesn’t want anyone to hear her cry after the father figure of her life ripped himself from it in the burn of Velcro, and why the fuck did she make herself like Velcro? Did she not know it only burns for the surface left behind? That the bandaid feels no pain being ripped from the scraped knee of a toddler? That the mask simply falls after the masquerade, leaving the unseen seen and vulnerable? Why did she make herself of Velcro? Why did she make it so easy for broken to smoke his twelve pack inside of her… like the hand beneath her blouse, and why does everyone justify it with the insanity of age?
No! I was too young to be split like the hairs on my head, the ones my mother wasn’t pulling to make sure her palm connected. What sound are you even supposed to make when you’re being massacred in half? And I can’t stand myself long enough to fully love myself for the propriety in hating myself. And you had no right to tie my apple limbs around your own and shake the produce from my face - this is not a game of how quick we can spoil the fruit or break in the jewelry cases of little glass girls. Because she was a girl, and she trusted you. 
And my words are not baseball bats in a messy, touching collision with your chest. My words will not bring the cheering masses to crest on the lonely shore of my lonely mind, because these words are not poetry. 
These words are the words spent too long in silence. They are the words ripped from a young girl’s rusty, faucet-throat when she’s screaming nothing but the made bed of silence. These words mean nothing to those standing on the shore of the riverbank, watching the currents as they drown boys too young and baptize girls too old; and they will not matter to the bodies beneath them, cheeks bloating in the salt of their embryonic pockets. 
But these words matter to a girl at war with herself and god. To a sister constantly worrying when she will lose to the water. To this girl, who is screaming her eyes dry to you now, because these words nesting in the caves of my throat have been silent for too long.


(Speak Up) - a slam poem (sexual abuse triggers)

I was sent this song by a friend a bit back. This is a very painful song for me, but I wanted to record it. I wasn't worried too much about 100% accurate pronunciation, since expressing the emotion seemed more important, and it's even harder to speak Japanese, for me, in song. I am a bit pitchy at times and apologize. Here is the general gist in English:

Even if you embrace me until it's suffocating 
We will never become one. 
In a place deeper than gentleness 
Touching each other is merely pain. 
Please bind the two of us. 

We will dream no more, 
Joining hands in uncertainty 
We will surely overcome
The cruel new dawn. 

True words are surely 
Somewhere in the true world, 
Lurking In our wordless night. 
Surely even now 
Meeting each other in order to know loneliness, 
We won't know until we exchange a kiss. 
Even so, I am trembling with the joy 
Of having met you. 
Please support my heart.
 We will dream no more, 
We can't run to a warm place. 
We will surely overcome
The cruel dawn. 

The abandoned quietness 
Will surely find 
The true words In order to lovingly hurt each other. 
Someday surely.

Even if you embrace me until it's suffocating 
We will never become one. 
O cold starts before dawn, 
Please light 
The path that's just for us.

Michiyuki (Kaori Hikita) Cover

This isn't really poetry unless thought mush counts. But maybe I don't want to view it as thought mush, and maybe that's allowed.

Senses Of Proportion - random musings on a river walk

If you put me on a pedestal, I get scared of falling. I like to be with people who let me be flawed and encourage me to better myself. If you only ever see the good, I'm not allowed to grow with you.

Pedestals and Ripples - ranting-musings about relationships

My voice is weird and like a mouse because emotions, but also getting over a probably-sinus infection. 
I probably will delete this later, but for now it was therapeutic. Yay for finally being able to write something I guess

i don't want to describe the flowers - a venting, emotional pit

I have been sneezing all day and coughing, so excuse my mess of a voice. It doesn't sound better on a good day, either. Clicks are because I'm wearing earphones with a microphone, and moving equals sound. 

Some mess I just sort of liked and wanted to record. Bonus points if you can identify some of the spoken-word artists I'm mimicking when giving inflection to some words. 

I'm tired of feeling like I don't deserve or know love. So I decided she'll be whatever the hell I want her to be, and we'll go from there. Yay, decisions!

Could/She Could/Love Could - a thought-pile of written words on a journey to self-love

Whelp. There it is. 
Got bored and felt like it needed a recording and the after-thought notes felt like they could belong here in a scrap pile.

Matriarch (and similar thoughts - writing therapy from closets)- spoken word

Maybe I'll edit this more and polish it up. Maybe I won't. I wrote and recorded it during a thunderstorm, today, and its cessation by the end seemed perfect. 
(There is supposed to be an "h" in "refurbished," though.)

Our history is in our memories, and aren't those the currency of life? It's what we mostly get to keep, in the end. I guess I just am growing tired of those who use one to condemn, in a way. For those who are punished past unfortunate circumstances, which by others' opinions seem to brand you until death. And, in the end, it's hard for *them* to stomach? Not saying people can't have their preferences, and that they can't make their personal choices, as they are allowed and entitled to... merely, I am protesting the way some make a memory a mug shot that follows you indefinitely - those who define you by the very thing you're attempting to conquer, and as if you are to blame for its occurrence. I have several choice words for those people and their gavels.

Station - rainy musings

Shouldn't have to say "not all men" every time. I just live in an area with a lot of bigots, and I'm tired of a lot of things and wanted to get it off my chest. And by the way, motherfucker#4: I got into that PhD program.

Even if parts of society try to paint me as less or nothing, I remember myself, and I won't apologize for being what I am and respecting myself in asking for what I deserve. I refuse to shrink myself. 

I slightly stutter sometimes when I'm pissed. So apologies for those two spots. Also laughed at the title's innuendo. Kind of wish the material was better but oh well... it originally started out as me writing about how the dealership put my car in my father's name, despite me taking out the loan, scheduling payments, having great credit, and, you know, being a full, grown ass adult. I feel like I reigned it in a lot. Whatever. At this point, we're all screaming into the wind over and over.  I feel better, now, at least!

Put Out (a subpar feminist rant - lots of cussing)

Pine tree wannabe.
Clichés and pieces. 
Posts result from boredom.

Nullibicity

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