olivia-mercado
If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts...) - as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us... / / Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. ... It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map.... The desert of the real itself. / / Jean Baudrillard
This is the time of the year where
seniors in purple fly through the halls
riding on scooters
as per school tradition.
Where I play "Pomp and Circumstance"
twenty-eight times in a row
while they tromp sloooooowly down the aisle.
The days are scalding
and the nights are balmy
the sky is too blue,
the earth burned slowly brown
the trees green
the grass gold
and the air still.
These are the days when phone book bags
saw at my fingers while I trudge from house to house
raising money for next year.
Next year will be my turn.
The nights will be alive with the music
of my prom
and my graduation;
the halls will be aflame
with the purple of my spreading robes.
Next year I will leave, turn away to the river-blue mountains
the icing-white crests and go.
To Canada, to New York, to Seattle or Portland --
the throbbing quiver of life
of people experiencing one another --
where I go doesn't matter. Next year,
this time,
I will be gone.
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 1:00 PM UTC
I stare at the ceiling and
love myself
for a change
It feels incredible
to be loved by someone
who knows me as I know
myself
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 12:15 AM UTC
Poems on
graph paper
crumpled
in the bottom of my
backpack.
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 9:50 PM UTC
Broken as a
stubbed
toe
Lines broken off
in the
wrong
place
Falling
into
what would
be
love
if
anything
existed
at
all.
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 9:49 PM UTC
swallowing
everything.
existence is merely the illusion of light inside a void
a narrative projected onyo the screen of darkness without
restraint
dreams are swallowed by the void and
make love to it
the children of souls and minds and nothing
********
of hate
non-euclidean
stairsteps
breaking the sky
too strange to be horrible
yet too horrible to be
real
and so it falls apart
our projection shown for what it is
threadbare and disintegrating
revealed physically in our bodies
like everything we believe.
the desert of the real is upon us
and we are drowning in thirst.
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 9:43 PM UTC
You're looking down
please don't look down again.
We live in a culture of self-deprecation
and self-loathing
but we are not slaves to it.
Just because you feel like curling up like a hedgehog
doesn't mean you have to --
It's easy, and you're tired,
but you don't have to.
You are better than this.
You are better than whatever version of yourself
you see in the mirror on those mornings you don't want to leave the house
better than your father was
better than I am, honestly.
There is so much goodness in you --
stop pulling back
there is nothing to be afraid of.
Trust me.
It took me years to find that out for myself.
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 2:12 AM UTC
My words feel broken
because I stopped using them for poetry
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 1:53 AM UTC
I'm not in love with anyone right now
and to be honest
it's pretty boring
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 1:46 AM UTC
Hands on the wheel
window half open
I stare down the road into the perfect golden sunset
toward the city and the sea
the verdant spring forcefully blooming me into mania
the radio singing me onward
All I want, all I ever wanted
to leave
I have my debit card and a full tank of gas
I can go anywhere.
I sigh
pull onto the exit
and drive slowly home.
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 10:13 PM UTC
I am in a desert town
Standing on the mountaintop
alone
Lonely growing up in a too-big house
seeing the world from behind the smeared glass of a
tour bus
while an automated voice drills in
objective truths
about culture
about what the Other's color of skin makes
them.
Being told to give money because God said so
Being told my daddy up in heaven loved me
whether he showed up or not
and I had to just
believe
and obey
Him.
I'd rather turn away
from that sunny desert sky, because it
burns
I'd rather jump off the bus
so I could stop feeling so ****
sick
and forget about what the color of my skin
makes me.
I'd rather not live to serve a god I don't
know
and never met
and a family who has never met me.
To be called a fellow person
rather than a tourist or
patron.
Because I know what it is to be patronized.
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 9:58 PM UTC