Currently listening to Taylor Swift’s
Reputation album & plotting
your death, baby.

{oops}

Maybe he didn’t burn you
in the literal sense;
but gaslighting is its own
misogynistic brand of conflagration.

TW: Self-harm, suicide, drowning
-
Poor ophelia.

Silly ophelia.

Mad ophelia.

Too-Sensitive ophelia.

Crazy ophelia.

Curses-Too-Much ophelia.

Sad ophelia.

Mentally ill ophelia.

Naive ophelia.

Attention-Seeking ophelia.

Slit-Her-Wrists-In-The-Bathtub ophelia.

Melodramatic ophelia.

Bat-**** ophelia.

Baby-Girl ophelia.

Clingy ophelia.

Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl ophelia.

Extreme ophelia.

Drunk ophelia.

Alcoholic ophelia.

Sloppy ophelia.

Bleeding ophelia.

Unrequited-Love ophelia.

Furious ophelia.

Warped ophelia.

Disobedient ophelia.

Fragile ophelia.

Unwilling-To-Get-Help ophelia.

***** ophelia.

Borderline ophelia.

Took-Too-Many-Benzos ophelia

****** ophelia.

Clumsy ophelia.

Severe ophelia.

**** ophelia.

Burden ophelia.

Obstinant 0phelia.

Selfish ophelia.

Hormonal ophelia.

Obsessive-Compulsive ophelia.

Bruised ophelia.

******* ophelia.

Horrid ophelia.

Useless ophelia.

Delusional ophelia.

Made it up ophelia

Cuckoo-For-Cuckoo-Puffs ophelia.

Broken ophelia.

Tempest ophelia.

Cringey ophelia.

Terrified ophelia.

******-***** ophelia.

No-One-Feels-Sorry-For-You ophelia.

Suicidal ophelia.

Traumatized ophelia.

Stop-Your-Crying ophelia.

CPTSD ophelia.

Suicidal ophelia.

Water-Logged ophelia.



Dead! Ophelia?

-

We never saw the signs, Ophelia.

-

Forgotten: Ophelia.


-

Semantic satiation
[Ophelia].

-

Your name has begun to sound like nonsense, Ophelia.

***** stheno.
Bossy stheno.
Too loud stheno.
Confrontational stheno.
No wonder she can’t hold down a relationship stheno.
Hormonal stheno.
Did you know Medusa had a sister—stheno?

-
Forgot her name immediately after writing this poem.

(stheno)

-
Thought her name was spelled stethno.

Men love a good Femme Fatale.

But they do not love an ugly Femme Fatale—

So they plucked her naked,
gave her a nose job, and called her
a “mermaid” instead

{Siren}

My nightmares are filled
with all the words I should have said.

You know what’s worse than the actual nightmares?

Becoming so used to the nightmares,
they don’t even faze you anymore.

My ****** writes a poem:

.

Sometimes,
I get so angry, I want
to tear open my skin.

Who needs anger management
when you can give yourself
a bloodletting instead?

I want to annotate my wrists
with the names of every person
who ever hurt me--
part the Red Sea with steel.

And I'm pretty sure a phlebotomy
is the closest I'll ever get to a lobotomy
(or an exorcism).

My trauma (my fury) is a toddler
throwing a tantrum in the middle
of the dairy aisle in the supermarket.

I pluck this child--
feral and snivelling--
from my veins and throw
her over my shoulder.

I don't know where her screaming ends
and where mine begins.

Sometimes, I think all she really wants
is a hug.

Boy math
is when men on Instagram claim women
who solve boy math equations are bigots.

Boy math is men who benefit from patriarchy
misplacing the meaning of the word “bigotry”
within their male privilege.

We are wo
morpheme for
man.

But I see your pain, sisters.

I acknowledge it.

I validate it;

I gift us the vowel
e

w o e

for we will not stay broken
while men claim the throne to

whole

I think perhaps I will write
a poem once the pain has subsided.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is
crying when the shelf your father
has just ******* into your bedroom wall is

c r
o
o
k   e
         d.

Fool me once--
shame on you.

Fool me twice--
shame on you.

Fool me three times--
STILL shame on you.

{gaslight}

You say my tears
are a sign of
weakness

even though
they are of
the same composition
as the tidal waves

tell me—

will you call the ocean
weak?

this is why you can't have nice things--
you end up breaking them

{my heart was a nice thing}

Hi, Atus

I am a pretzel

knotted hunch in my back

one salty *******

If you didn’t want me to write poetry about
you,
then perhaps you shouldn’t have ****** me off

January 1st, 2022,
12:23 AM:

empty

I’ll be your pin up girl
just so you can
pin me down,
Baby.

“Take me down.”

—your pin up girl

If you think about ***
while getting your eyebrows threaded,
it doesn’t hurt nearly as much.

I’m too sad
to make my bed today

Dear arch nemesis:
I have a a bearded dragon
and you don’t.

I win;
you ****.

I’m not done hating you yet,
Darling.

I possess a
vile & extraordinary
mind

Not even

all the king’s horses

and all the king’s men

were enough

to mend her broken heart.

Little Bo Peep,

ya careless thing–

first you lost your sheep

and then your lover.

Come hither, Dear Hallows Eve
and covet these sickly sweets  
till porcelain heaves
poor uvula cleaved,
by Sir Grim Reaper’s teeth—

till eyes do burst
like pop rocks cursed
upon the ghost’s white sheets.


Come hither, Dear Hallows Eve.


Come forth, This Villain’s Night,
fair ghouls, you need not hide
and spectres: don’t be shy!
deliver your joyous frights
the witches do abide—

unearth your tombs;
prepare the brooms

and sweep across the sky


on this Villain’s Night.


Come now, Halloween!
hear October’s screams;
the heart’s curdled beat
against my haunted dreams
from which the darkness seeps.

You call me sick
you cry out “trick”

but still I stick to treat—

Yes!

Come now, Halloween!

You’ve been

hoodwinked,

*****.



{Little Red’s Revenge}

Careful,

Little Red.



Don’t let those

puppy-dog eyes

fool ya.



{If you lie down with dogs, you’ll get flees}

I dunno how to forgive you

(and I dunno if I want to)

TW: Abortion

If you are anti-abortion,
then you are a misogynist.

It’s quite simple,
really.

I’ve tried to bury my friends
the way you‘ve buried yours.

But their skeleton limbs
unearth my amygdala

shoot through my catacomb skull
in a morbid hail of
bone and grey matter.

Beneath this demented firework display,
the ghouls jitterbug in their demon florals--

if only their hauntings
were as beautiful as their gowns.


Billie Eilish,
I’ve tried to bury my friends

but their remains
could not remain
buried.

My brain
bubbles and blisters
like witch’s brew

as I succumb to the hellfire
of regurgitated memory.


Billie Eilish,
I’ve tried to bury my friends

but they’ve stolen away my oxygen
to resurrect themselves.

I guess I am only what they
feed to me—
dirt.

Billie Eilish,
this trauma is a tomb
I cannot worm my way out of.

Billie Eilish,
my head has turned to stone.

Billie Eilish,
I’ve tried to bury my friends
but

they ended up
burying me instead.

Break me

and

walk barefoot through the
shards.

And the matriarch
jumped
over his tomb

You are dreadful,
Darling

And the patriarch
jumped
over the womb

I don’t wanna be your friend anymore

Blood clots avalanche
into the toilet bowl--

I read them like they
are tea leaves.

A confirmation
of what I have always
know:

my womxnhood

a testimony

of bad fortune.

Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Sane anymore.

~
⚠️Trigger Warning: the following poem contains subject matter pertaining to self-harm and involuntary psychiatric hospitalization
⚠️
~
An emulation of the song Drunken Sailor by The Irish Rovers
~
what will they do with a maddened writer?
what will they do with a maddened writer?
what will they do with a maddened writer?

early in the morning

way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises

early in the morning

cuts her wrists with a rusty razor
cuts her wrists with a rusty razor
cuts her wrists with a rusty razor

early in the morning

way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises

early in the morning

put her in the 'sylum till she's sober
put her in the 'sylum till she's sober
put her in the 'sylum till she's sober

early in the morning

way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises

early in the morning

stick her in the room with the padded walls
stick her in the room with the padded walls
stick her in the room with the padded walls

early in the morning

way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises

early in the morning

put her in a bed with her limbs strapped down
put her  in a bed with her limbs strapped down
put her in a bed with her limbs strapped down

early in the morning

way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises
way hay and up she rises

early in the morning

that's what they do with  the maddened writer
that's what they do with the maddened writer
that's what they do with the maddened writer

early in the morning!

⚠️Trigger Warning: the following poem contains subject matter pertaining to suicide and death⚠️

When a person dies
of a physical illness,
you mourn them.

When a person commits suicide,
you assassinate their character
and call them
selfish

because their death is a result
of a self-inflicted action.

Because they chose to die,
right?

Because they not only chose  
to destroy themselves,
but the lives of their family and friends,
right?

But
just as a physical illness
turns the cells against the body,

a mental illness
turns the mind against
itself,
convinces it that
death
is the only option.

What you don't understand
is that the person isn't our
killer--

depression is.

It’s tough “love”
not
tough love

written across my anatomy,
a brilliant Poetica:

lips part/
line breaks

the dimple in my jaw

an

a
c
r
o
s
t
i
c

clavicles
mere sisters of verse

fingerprints are but
whirlpools
of apostrophe and quotation

the trellis of my ribs
composed of
stanza

behind

my papyrus heart
dwells

every beat
a turning page--

and this is my story

The ****
is mightier than the
sword

⚠Trigger Warning:
The following poem contains subject matter pertaining to ****** assault and misogyny. ⚠
~
you call the ******

*****:

because the hair between my legs reminds you of a cat's fur? reminds you of an animal that is frightened by the simplest of matters--yes, you call me weak.

but that is just the way you prefer us, isn't it?

with our backs arched (but not too high).

forbidden to leave room for a man to crawl under our bodies.

a man is not meant to lie beneath a womxn, no;  

for, a womxn's place is between the man and the mattress.
___________________
***­:

is that all we are good for?
__________________­
box:

many things can be put inside a womxn, an empty vessel that you believe it is your role to make full again.

storage locker where you keep your **** rent-free.

slab of cardboard collecting filth in the attic.
__________________
bea­ver:

another animal analogy.
_________________­_
cookie. cupcake. ****(in). bean:

to butter up. to Flick.

inhaled, not savoured;

nothing more than a midnight fast-food run.
___________________
min­k:

skinned and sold and worn-- a notch in your belt (and your bedpost).
_________________­
cherry:

popped(!)
____________­_____
clam:

stolen treasure.
_________________­
kipper:

in the staff room, someone has left an unopened bag of shrimp crisps. A man I work with walks in and says it smells “like bad ***** in here.”


i laughed.


why the **** did I laugh?
__________________
flo­wer:

plucked from the garden of eden.
__________________­
*******:

blackout.
_____________­____
hoo-ha:

a battle cry.
___________________­
****:

a word i was taught never to say aloud

(i do it anyways.)
_________________­
***:

you abbreviate our bodies.

our voices, too.

will we never make it to four letters?

(love)
__________________­
whispering eye:

a whisper is but a gateway to silence.
__________________­_
You call the ******

*****.
***.
box.
******.
cookie.
cupcake.
****(in).
bean.
mink.
cherry.
clam.
kipper.
flower.
*******.
hoo-ha.
****.
***.
whispering eye.

but never what it truly is:

Beautiful.
____________________

There is a fine line
between
selflessness and self-deprecation

(and I have crossed it)

The fire in my soul
has started to die.

It shrinks down
the trellis of my ribs
like sun-burned flower petals;

wanes itself
to but a simmer

until it is
blue in the flames

Fire needs oxygen
to burn

but

My lungs thin
into icicles

frost congeals
around my chapped
lips

veins freeze over

(and so does this inferno)