titles are for chumps

these are the accumulations, the teeth of
my downward spiral, a
double helix of
everything I am unable to mutate out of

I am jealous of the birds
for their escape artist exit strategies
(my roots aren't even deep enough to

hold me upright.)  You had a nightmare,
you tell me, where I was thirsty and you
offered me water that killed me when I drank it

I am surprised and pleased to find a metaphor that
finally makes sense

any way you know it

"I don't wanna know, leave me in the dark
If I can't hold it then I can't tear it apart
And it seems if, everything I touch comes to pieces
I toast to another head rush for when hell freezes
Increase the dosage, take me there
Make me numb, I don't wanna care
Turn your back, move towards the sunset
Forget about the past, the drama, the unrest
I resent what inspires me
The struggle between apathy and irony
Tryin' to see, and it's driving me to that place
Where every face gets erased
You don't exist, it's just me and this fist
That I use to beat and abuse my grin
If I was a little bit more intelligent
I would protect my skin from this wind"

I know slug is from Minnesota, not North Dakota... but it probably gets pretty cold there too.  When I walk to school tomorrow it will be -13 degrees, -29 with windchill.

I SHOOK HIS HAND ERMAGERD I LOVE SLUG AHHHH I need to go to bed.

run

How easy is it for you to like someone? 

This weekend I'ma meet some people and try and figure out whether I am a judgmental person.

Will they be babies dressed as old people?  Probably not.

I have no desire to go to Europe.  I have no desire to see the Eiffel Tower, to see England...  However I WOULD like to go to Tomorrowland.  Not Europe for the sake of Europe though.  I'd rather do Thailand.

eventually typing over and over again ESCAPE ESCAPE ESCAPE ESCAPE would do just as good as this poetry. oh well..

I've been

methodically slicing up my

choices

and tossing them back overboard

since I was old enough

to dream of fish

that are always greener in other

oceans

the oil-spilled tide

is rolling in

this place is a

boarded up house

I cannot wait to stumble out of

Idiot.

I am changing my major for the sixth and last time.  At this point I just want a degree and I want to GET OUT. If I continued with English Education I would graduate in May of 2015. I can't do that. My scholarship only covers four years, not five, and to be honest, if I have to pay for college, it isn't worth it.

(This is not my picture)

All I need is a degree to get a decent teaching job overseas. A degree in anything. So! Bachelor of University Studies it is, I am now officially a non-major. I can take whatever classes I want (mostly upper level though) and I will graduate May of 2014, like I had originally planned. WOOH GETTING OUT GETTING OUT GETTING OUT!

I'm getting TEFL (teaching English as a Foreign Language) certified this summer in Thailand.  That, together with a degree, should be enough to get me a job most places.  Except America, but hey, who wants to teach here anyways, all the kids are disrespectful.  (is that a stereotype, also, why do I like parenthesis so much?)


anyways: poetry. (mine)

Untitled

jet trails slice

what every crystal ball

has been too overcast to show me

across ursa major

I would rip apart my cupboards

smash everything breakable

sacrifice my household appliances

on an altar of

materialism

if I thought my possessions were

holding me back

like a tree I have always been

my own cage

do not ask me to stay

do not wish on the night sky

that your arms will be strong enough

to keep me

flightless

---

Oh amy, why ya gotta be so melodramatic?

Cages are just dramatic that's all. Even when they're imaginary.  Takes violence to get out.  Fun fact: I've still never punched anyone.

..

jacked this off tumblr, don't remember where

"If you laugh at jokes about raping people I will laugh at my fist punching your throat because sure it’s violent and demeaning but I think it’s funny so why aren’t you laughing get off the floor and stop whining I am trying to assert that my desire to make a joke out of your traumatic experience is more important than your pain it’s called Freedom of Speech read a book"


Applause to this.  APPLAUSE TO THIS.

also:  a song.

university

I just want to change my major to whatever will get me a degree fastest.

I don't care what, I just wanna get out of here sometime in the next 1.5 years.

I feel like this guy:

fly like paper

I have always been impressed with how you

wield your shrugs

your careful smiles

how your handshakes are always the right amount

of indifferent

I would have liked to see you

dancing oblivious

window-shades open

I would have liked to see you

drunk

you manifest unknowable

you doorless wall

all hard edges and

unfathomably

blank

eyes

I would have liked to see you unmasked

shaking your fist at god

feet bloodied from kicking mirrors

having finally reached the realization that

sometimes there just

isn't enough apathy

to go around

---

trying to study. Whenever I'm writing a poem and it seems kind of boring I fix it by making it ridiculously melodramatic and I think maybe that is not the right way to go about things.  also, I will be buying my tickets to Korea at some point this week. kinda nervous. I have never really traveled without my parents and that is sad. 

52 card pickup

I've made a lot of people sad in the last two years.  Often while making myself sad in the process.  Although, when you think about it, you can't really blame that kind of thing on anyone.  There just isn't enough emotional strength for us to each have enough.

Sometimes restaurants are really

Rorschach tests

and your

last statement

hit me like an ax to the

throat

I was not in love

I was only

sleeping

I saved 6 Indians from Freezing to Death outside of a club on New Years

I knew two of them, and four of them were FRESH OFF THE BOAT! 

fun fact.  "Gori" means white chick in Hindi.  Kinda like Gringa in Latin America.  So! If you ever walk into a group of Indian people and you are a white female, tell em your name is Gori.  I work with International Student Orientation tomorrow and I think that's what I'm gonna do.  wooop!

Or alternatively you can yell "GORI AA GAYIIIII!!"  (ga eeee for the last one.) which means "A white chick is coming!" 

here's a song.  I like it, perhaps you will too. 

untitled

I've been waiting three

winters

for your skin to soften into something

I can recognize

counting your edges when the tea is cold

with your frostbite

spoon-feeding forgetfulness to your grudge-

child when you are too hungover to

sharpen your claws

I have been waiting three suspected counts of arson

for the ashes to give you back to me

------

I write about the sun and fire quite often, especially in regards to destruction and rebirth (Icarus flying too close to the sun, the phoenix, the sunset as a violent death followed by a night that births a sunrise).  Birds too.  I identify with birds, especially the cage part.  yellow birds with clipped wings, caged birds that still sing,  limping, broken messes of feathers that somehow learn to fly again.    This poem doesn't hold any of that, except the ashes bit is definitely a nod to a phoenix.

Pieces / Scraps

here's to the dirty-winged

angels

out on corners

praying for cigarettes 

---------------------

every muffled
“are you home yet?”

whispered to myself

begs a new set of limbs

to be my first and final confessional booth

---------------------

Sunsets always look so

violent, bleeding into

dark like a

crucifixion, like the cuts you sometimes still

flaunt

---------------------

I caught the fear making you thinner,

exposing your deepest bones, but I

was discovering how to fall in mad love with the

sky, and that's where we

parted ways

-----------------

I arrive, and you're standing there

like an ostrich in a crowd of imaginary friends

brutally upright, hesitant, filled to the brim with

small talk

 -------------------

(I never like anything fully, so here are the good bits, chopped out for you, plus a few things on their own that I couldn't quite find the thread to complete)   

random thought:  The thing about men is that I really don't know what I'm doing and I don't want to be excessive.  So I rarely get in touch first, and I know this makes me seem detached. I don't know what to do about it though, or whether I should change it.  Ah better not.  An obsessive Amy is not a pretty sight.  You'll know if I'm into you, I can give you that much, while I may not be excessive I am definitely obvious.  and then you will be left with an unspoken "let me know" because once I make myself clear, I make myself gone, and it's up to you whether to cut or uh. um... glue. cut or glue.  

I am in Mott and essentially this post is only because I haven't posted in a while.  So it was not born out of some need to throw myself into a wild fit of electronical expression.  anyways all the poetry was written at some point in December.  Goodnight.

also.  I like someone.  and I think I'm at the point where I can admit that.  Goodnight again.

Megan Falley - IN MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT A GHAZAL I SAY THE ONE THING I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD

The last thing I expected to write was thank you.My fingers cocked for hate’s hot heat, and all I could do was thank you.

I will never have my bones licked clean again. I can
spot a predator from a jungle away. I am a lioness now. Thank you.

I know that Evil rarely looks homeless. I know it wears the sharpest
suit, spit-shines its own shoes, says thank you,

you’re welcome, and please when it meets your parents. Arrives
a foreign dinner guest, leaves a son-in-law. Mothers thank you

for the wine and the circus of laughter. But now I know how a man can turn
like a coin. How he can duct-tape your mouth and then thank you

for not disagreeing. But the fever of you
was so bad, I’d never kiss your brothers. Thank you.

I will never again let anyone make me small. I am bigger
than any lie you could decorate. I know who my friends are. Thank you

for throwing that severed foot into the middle of a crowd.
Naming it Crazy. Bruja. Most scattered like rodents, thanked you

for the warning. Pretended the foot was a ghost. But some carried the foot
until they found the leg it belonged to. Helped her stand. To them I say thank you

every chance I get. I thank them by never going back. By not forgiving.
Someday I will raise an army of daughters. Thank you,

they will not have your face. Your carnivorous heart.
Every night they will crawl into their father’s lap and say thank you

for loving our mother. For the lilacs in the kitchen, which are only
lilacs. Not reminders of your purpled fistprints. Not a thank you

for not calling the police. You taught me what love is
not—that’s how I learned what it is. Your absolute opposite. Thank you.

happy birthday

Welcome to the new world
---

“And if I was to say that I really, really wanted to get to know you,
it would just be an understatement:
Me, I want to pour your thoughts into a wine glass
and sip them slow with a straw like I’m on vacation;
I want to light candles and bathe for hours in secrets that you’ve just never had the courage
to say out loud—
I’m ready.
I’m ready to grab onto your dreams and jump in a pool head first just to see if
hope still floats—I want to float next to you.
I’m talking like, ten feet above cumulus clouds
so no one can ever rain on our parade.”

-Rudy Francisco

The Water Cycle

Falling in love with you was a kind of melting, and
falling out of love with you wasn’t at all like rebuilding
ice cubes out of fog, but rather
evaporation, condensation, and then the rain
once more.

My heartbeat keeps me awake at night
and I don’t understand what language it speaks in so
I put a stethoscope over my chest and plug
it into my laptop,
but Google Translate
still hasn’t found how to translate water into words,
or an ocean into a novel
about the back of a whale’s throat.

The heart
is never as simple as a one-liner.

The heart
is a burning shipwreck under four thousand layers of sea.

What I’ve come here to do tonight is this —
salvage what I can from the wreckage
so that I can rise again, like a phoenix, into my own
skin.

I touch you and my heart undergoes the water cycle.
Evaporation and condensation, and then
always,

this rain.

"The Water Cycle" - Shinji Moon

yellow

Discovered Miles Walser, and yes, our homegirl is in LOVE.

Perfectly Human

Your heart is a geyser and for that you will always feel strange.
Most people shut down when they get over saturated with feeling;
most people harden into hate
- into indifference -
because the biggest risk we ever take is to love without fear.

You are not afraid.
You are a cathedral waiting to be filled with hymns;
you are an infinite playground;
you are sky-bound and sprinting,
so cover your heart in goose-bump armor.
It will only beat stronger,
beat louder.

Keep hoping.
Stand up on subways and shout compliments to strangers,
dance, poorly, in public if it makes you feel better.
Love until it hurts.
Then love more—you know how.

There will be days when you’ll wish you were numb;
when you’ll want to rip your heart off your body
 and find something easier to take its place.
Collect those days like bricks
and marvel at the buildings you will make.
Stand on top, chest open, head up—
Nobody will ever see the world like you do.

Never try to be better than the best version of you.
You are not perfect.
You are perfectly human

Now, Now - Wolf

It's been almost a year since I've been full-on obsessed with someone. I don't think I'm capable of it anymore, perhaps once I turned 20 that was the cutoff point. I really dig this song though, and here's the picture. that I made. BAM

APOLOGIES hashtag hashtag personal

I came home to find a blue screen of death on my computer, so I am in the process of putting all my files on my external drive.  I stumbled upon my old journal, from back in 2010 and couldn't help but read through some of the entries.   It's funny how I used to password protect anything.  Fast forward to now, where my writings reflect the fact that I really do not care who knows what about me.  Also, the poems I wrote back then were horrendously terrible.  but hilarious.

I really need to find my handwritten journals... They must be back in my hometown, in my old room. I think I started writing poetry in junior high, maybe freshman year of high school, I should check.

Excerpt!  This is from freshman year of college, the first time I ever went to the hub to dance:

"We were all dancing and getting super sweaty ( I shoulda worn flats instead of boots) and all of a sudden... ! Foam fell from the ceiling! Soap bubble foam with purple and pink and blue lights lighting it up! It was magical. And beautiful. I had this huge smile on my face and all we could do was throw our hands up in the air and look up and dance and dance and dance. It was like some fairy tale. Cinderella's Ball or something.. gorgeous and magical and out of this world. I was so confident. That night was just awesome.  Argh. :) and my brother came for a while, with Tyler and this 20 year old I never met before named Thomas who was SUPER hot I might add. But probably pretty unattainable."

 jhahah

That night was happiness of the first order. Easily makes it into my top 7 nights of Freshman year. I feel sorry for people who don't like to dance. They must lead very mundane lives.

I am happy I have the night I met Thomas documented, although he only makes a cameo appearance.  He is the man who raised my standards.  He is the reason I don't settle for less.  Amazing human being.  And not just because he looks like Heath Ledger, although that doesn't hurt. 

okay. sorry this is so personal and obviously not relevant

No Lies, Just Love - Bright Eyes

I haven't cried in a long time.  This is the closest I've been, just reading these lyrics.  Kills me. 

So please forgive what I have done
No you can't stay mad at the setting sun
Cause we all get tired, I mean eventually
There is nothing left to do but sleep

But spring came bearing sunlight
Those persuasive rays
So I gave myself a few more days
My salvation it came, quite suddenly
When Justin spoke very plainly
He said "Of course it's your decision,
But just so you know,
If you decide to leave,
Soon I will follow"

I wrote this for a baby
Who has yet to be born
My brother's first child
I hope that womb's not too warm
Cause it's cold out here
And it'll be quite a shock
To breathe this air
To discover loss
So I'd like to make some changes
Before you arive
So when your new eyes meet mine
They won't see no lies
Just love.
Just love.

I will be pure
No, no, I know i will be pure
Like snow, like gold

---
so's you know, the 20 seconds it took you to respond were just about earth shattering.  I worry.

in which I try to leave, but am not able to pull it off

you are

a cigarette in a drought-yellowed

forest,

to be gotten rid of quick

the way birds flee from

forest fires that

only you can prevent

but don't

 ---

Finals week.  wrote something interesting but it's in my journal at home and tonight I live at the library.

also. .. ..

 huh. tonight there is no also.  I really just want to shake my fist at my laptop and not do my final paper.  apply some good old Ctrl-Alt-Delete to my life.  (I think that doesn't make any sense).

peace.

there's a fine line between surrealism and pure pointless drivel.  I ate that line and licked the plate clean.

peace again.

I dunno why the word drivel always reminds me of food.  Rice pudding maybe.  Something that shouldn't be liquid but insists on being so anyways.

last piece AH peace. (p.s.)?  turns out there were a few alsos after all.  And that word is underlined in red and it looks terrible.  The only things that should be underlined in red are the noses of gingers with really nice mustaches.  Surprisingly enough, even in this enlightened age, google will not get you a decent picture of a real nice, natural, bright red mustache.  Perhaps they don't exist?

food for thought.

afterthought peace/piece/p.s./peas

I'm out.

Island of Misfit Toys

Just watched "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"  with my brother.  The whole time he just kept saying, "I thought this movie was about fistfighting? When are they gonna fistfight??"  And then he got bored and skipped the last half hour.

what I've been trying to say is I hate teenage romantic comedies.  They give me bitter nostalgia for something I've never had.

I really don't like movies in general. I only watch them if I'm with a man, because my brain is unoriginal and I can't think of other things to do.

also! poetry.  I was sitting in church feeling uncomfortable because all the women my age are so ridiculously polished.  They are very un-messy.  You get the feeling they have never laughed uncontrollably to the point of falling, or stuck their entire upper body out of a car doing 80 and screamed at the stars.  I guess exteriors don't tell you that much, and I can act charm-schooled as well. I did used to be in a sorority after all.  anyways, I wrote this in church. 

Uniform
 
the people I like are the ones
not well put together

wild-haired mannequins
in strange colors
with screws loose and
backward feet

the ones rocking enthusiasm when
calm and cool is the Cosmo-worshippers
first commandment

people who sit on staircases during
ragers, doing math problems by
strobe-light

people who see no difference between study sessions and
musicals

the ones who are so down with
looking like fools
the standard for commonplace
eats it's own
smothered-in-steak-sauce cliches
for breakfast

you make me forget how good
I am at blending in

you turn “normal”  into
a breathalyzer test
I can't wait to fail
----
These are fortune cookies I got.  If you know my history at all, then you should be able to see why they freaked me out so bad.  Also, what the heck King House, my best friend gets "What do you call a sheep with no legs?  A cloud".  

If Rap Gets Jealous

Excerpt from K'naans piece in the NY Times, find the whole thing here :  NY Times article by K'naan

"So some songs became far more Top 40 friendly, but infinitely cheaper. 

On my second album, I had sung about my mother’s having to leave my cousin behind in Somalia’s war — “How bitter when she had to choose who to take with her...” Now I was left, in “Is Anybody Out There?” — a very American song about the evils of drugs — with only “His name was Adam, when his mom had ’im.” 

The first felt to me like a soul with a paintbrush; the other a body with no soul at all.

SO I had not made my Marley or my Dylan, or even my K’naan; I had made an album in which a few genuine songs are all but drowned out by the loud siren of ambition. Fatima had become Mary, and Mohamed, Adam. 

I now suspect that packaging me as an idolized star to the pop market in America cannot work; while one can dumb down his lyrics, what one cannot do without being found out is hide his historical baggage. His sense of self. His walk. I imagine the 15-year-old girls can understand that. If not intellectually, perhaps spiritually. 

I come with all the baggage of Somalia — of my grandfather’s poetry, of pounding rhythms, of the war, of being an immigrant, of being an artist, of needing to explain a few things. Even in the friendliest of melodies, something in my voice stirs up a well of history — of dark history, of loss’s victory."

Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animal

I know it's

*sigh*
(we never talk)

-------
areglsdajgaldg my playlist pulled it up and I can't hear it without thinking of you and come ON amy don't make this more melodramatic than it actually is, but dang kid we used to be

I don't know.  I don't know what we were.

on a happier note:  I wrote this while watching Handel's Messiah (I PAID FIVE DOLLARS, yeh, big spender)
maybe I should have been paying more attention to the music, but what can you do when your Blood Ink Content is .89?  I had to purge.   Also I am trying to think of a better title for it.

Delight
 

Reason to love life number

three hundred forty-seven

spectacular beards

the kind of foliage that would be

at home on a machete-wielding

safari guide beast of a man

the kind of scruffy fur

that gets up and

drunkenly starts a bar fight

your face is a scenario of

sage meets

bowtied hobo meets

wild jungle vine-swinger

I would dedicate my life to

protecting your jawline from scissors

from sharp edges of any sort

you are lumberjack

magnificence in the key of

something low

more than worthy of the next great

cinematic close-up

let's stay on script people

ughhh just reread this poem I had on here, and it was crap. complete crap.  deleted!

---

When's the last time you were full-on shocked?  Out-of-your-skin surprised?  I feel like I should keep a list.  Of every thing and person that surprises me.  I don't know why I feel that way, maybe just because there should be a record somewhere that proves that life isn't just dull and bland.  

this is not representative

shower, dress, eat, work, sleep  
by: http://brightlightsloudnoises.tumblr.com/

some days
were built to
rip you apart

sometimes
if your lifestyle
lets you
you can sleep
through them

like bowling pins

as the ball rolls
towards you
----

For every fear that can't be named
To calm you down

Your heart starts skipping steps
So you're farther gone
Than you might expect
If your thoughts should turn to death
Gotta stomp them out
Like a cigarette

Down in a Rabbit Hole - Bright Eyes
-------------------------------------------------------

You think you can leave the past behind?
You must be out of your mind.

best if used by

I wish I was capable of being in

love

veins tangled into

blindness,

one of those

bicycle built for two

scenarios,

circus-like tendencies

suddenly acceptable

the truth:

I spent years wearing a particularly

unflattering shade of vulnerability, 

tripping over every tenth step I took or

gave

now it's all inside-voices, walk-not-

run

“don't cry over spilled

milk” becomes meaningless if you

never drop the glass and

those who don't fall don't break either

but I can't help but think that

perhaps I've been so worried about the crash that I

clipped my wings myself

and maybe the expiration date will get me

after all

-----

truth be told:  I could probably still manage reckless... Reckless enough to spill the milk instead of waiting for it to rot.  (but I doubt I could possibly be sentimental enough to cry over the mess)

So how 'bout it homeboy?

Care to be my gallon of 2 percent?

-----

“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”

-Ernest Hemingway
---

p.s. The bicycle for two thing is a reference to my parents, because when they ask if I want to come with them, I always say, "and what ride my unicycle?"  because I think like they look like a circus on that thing.

LoveLife

And If she has the nerve to let me
dump a couple last words
I'ma turn to the earth and scream,
"Love Your Life"

Love your life, quite cliche, but I guess that's me
a ball of pop culture with some arms and feet

-Slug

I want a lovelife tattoo.  More than that, I want a tattoo of my Korean name, 별(it means star), really REALLY tiny, not sure where yet.  I should probably get it done in Korea this summer. 

-----
So a while ago, I was at a party and I was feeling kinda down, and I turned to this random stranger and I said, "I'm sad".

This is what he told me,

"I think you'll find that the world is a beautiful place"

I've never seen him again, I don't even remember what he looks like, except that I'm pretty sure he was from India.

So, whoever you are this is a thank you.  In case we never run into each other again, I figured it should be on record somewhere.  That was exactly what I needed.  Thanks for not hitting on me, flattering me, or using fakery of any sort.  The world needs more of you.

All systems go, sun hasn't died
Deep in my bones, straight from inside

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my systems blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Whoa, whoa, I'm radioactive, radioactive
Whoa, whoa, I'm radioactive, radioactive 

-Imagine Dragons, Radioactive

acrylics

I had visions of finishing this before fall was over....

:(   didn't.  but here it is!   this was done with acrylics.  I'm gonna do a huge tree painting next but not sure of the colors yet.  and I have a reallllly good idea of what I'm gonna do after that. or maybe before that.. we'll see.

Persian Rap

I am so in love with Zedbazi

dunno what they're saying, hopefully it's not too offensive.  

Relaxation Techniques

These always make me happy

hemlock

You are a sentence with no punctuation, a kaleidoscope full of colors that I don’t remember learning in elementary school. Your voice is a sound that I’ve been looking for my entire life. Your smile is the only sunrise worth setting my alarm clock early enough to see. If I could, I would shape shift into the first thing you think about in the morning just so I can be reminded of what it’s like to wake up next to you.

I love you in a language I don’t fully understand; in words I haven’t found enough courage to forklift out of my chest. I heard that karma is a vengeful and also a light sleeper so I’ve chosen to love you like this. Quietly.

So I’ll call your phone and hang up before it actually rings. I’ll write you letters that you will never read and when I see you in public I’ll stick my hand inside of a bag full of things I haven’t done since you left me and pull out a smile. I’ll say something like, “Hello, it’s nice to see you.” And I’ll keep walking.

-Rudy Francisco


SO. freaking. magic. I post a lot of his stuff, but everything he writes is so marvelous, I can't help myself.



here is more
-------
there will be days when you will feel like peacock with no feathers, you will feel flightless and undeserving of attention. 

But listen, listen to me listen, you have to stop getting out of bed like you were an oil spill. You’re not a flat tire at 2 am, so stop acting like an accident. You are an apple on a pine tree in a room full of lemons. And you come from a long line of swiss army pocket knives: men who are small, sharp, and dangerous when not handled carefully.

-Seventeen, Rudy Francisco