There's always been something
so Hollywood about her--
and I don't mean
21st Century *******.

I'm talkin'
Judy Garland,
you're the bee's knees
type of Hollywood.

Now, listen'--
this girl--
I'm talkin'
Bombshell-Cutie
(she'll blow your
******'socks off).

I'm talkin'
Cinematic Beauty Queen;
skin freckled with film grain
the same way the night sky
is freckled with constellation,
mouth parted like velvet curtains,
only to reveal the sweetest prose.

She is Mystique-Fatale,
blazon in colour
among dull, sepia tones--
an Oz among all
the dreary Kansases.

She is allure and poeticism,
hair curled grand,
dressed to the nines
in lace and satin
(they wonder
what lies beyond the
half moons of her *******
and the slit in her gown,
if the butterflies
run rampant
between her knees
like everyone says).

Do not underestimate her--
she is both
Shirley-Temple-Sweetheart
(her kindness
does not falter)
and Pinup-Girl-Honey
(one would not think
to challenge--
to break--
a woman
so prolifically brazen,
but they try anyway).

In a world filled
with actresses--
please, darlings,
save the acting for
the stage,
******* it--
she is so ineffably herself.

She does not reserve
her emotion for
the theatre alone;
she is not afraid
to cry, and--
Jesus--
when she cries
the earth shakes
with the very profusions
of an opera singer's vibrato.

And, God,
you should hear
her poetry,
brimmed with images
picturesque and tragic,
straight outta the movies
it would seem.
Yet, her words
ring with something
so inconceivably real.

And that's what
you've always loved
best about her--
she is the truest person
you've ever met.

It's a shame, then,
that you wouldn't stay
for the grand finale.

But,
with or without you,
this show must go on.

(and it has).

⚠Trigger Warning; the following poem contains subject matter pertaining to suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders⚠
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how do u know if ur having a nervous breakdown
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signs of a nervous breakdown
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can u be hospitalized for having a nervous breakdown
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thirteen reasons why hannah baker suicide scene
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whats the difference between a panic attack and an anxiety attack
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thirteen reasons why hannah baker suicide scene
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eating disorder symptoms
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binge eating disorder symptoms
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insomnia
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IS PATH WARM
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tortured artist
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why do I feel so empty
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thirteen reasons why hannah baker slitting her wrists
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empty
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thirteen reasons why hannah baker slitting her wrists
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i wish i was dead

"No more tears now; I will think about revenge."

-- Mary, Queen of Scots
------------------------------------------------

Someone once told me that
I have the eyes of a Queen,
that they have known sorrow
in this life and in the last.

I think I must have shared
a heart with
Mary, Queen of Scots,
for I too have experienced
profound betrayal,
one that has shackled itself
to my being so violently,
that my soul has turned
purple with contusion.

Tell me--have you no shame?

Will you betray your Queen?

Will you exclude her
from your most sacred gatherings
of friendship and empathy?

Will you speak of her
most intimate secrets?

Will you befriend her foes?

Will you defile her name
in your own frivolous writings?

Will you accuse her of treason
so as to distract from
your own mutinous crimes?

My beloved companions,
my brothers and sisters--
will you attempt to commit
this heinous sin of sororicide
against the woman
who loved you so generously
(so poetically)?

I entreat--
will you?

(yet, I know you already have).

But though my Queendom
may be small,
it is not insignificant,
for it is vast in ways
incomprehensible to your
selfish minds--
its kindness and poetry
are infinite,
both of which you
have taken gross advantage of.

And though my Queendom
may crumble at your hands,
it shall never fall;
with stanzas
mighty and passionate
I will rebuild without you.

You have overstayed
your welcome here.
(perhaps you never belonged
in the first place).

There was once a time
when you vowed to protect
your Queen
and, now, all I've got
to show for it
is a broken pinkie
and the scuff of footprints
across my spine.

What shall it be next?

My head upon a silver platter?

No.

I was not reborn
only so my reign should
be sullied by these
treacherous sadists
I once called "friends".

It is my head
you want,
but this time,
it is yours I shall have.

Inspired by Judy Blume,  inside Jokes with Liz and the poetry of Alissa Grams (https://alissagrams.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/an-open-letter-to-god-from-an-eighteen-year-old-girl/)

~

God,
it's me--
jade.

I must admit,
I've never read
Judy Blume
or the Bible,
for that matter
(I could never make it
past Genesis).

I am not well-versed
when it comes to scripture--
I am fluent in tragedy
and tragedy alone;
then again,
is there really any difference
between scripture and tragedy?

I was never one
to pay attention in church,
unless the hymns
were of a minor key,
the sermons imbued
with woe and melancholia.

Coincidentally,
as I write this,
it has only just occurred to me
that Lot's Wife
was never given a name
of her own--
it was destroyed with *****,
forgotten amongst the
flames and the ash.


God,
you were wrong
to punish her
the way you did.

Have you never felt the
sting of salt
against an open wound?

Have you never watched
as all the familiar intimacies
you once knew
dissolved to cinder?

(I know you have).

Do you not see that,
if home is where the heart is,
then the heart
must surely perish with it?

God,
has anyone ever broken your heart?

(I think you know heartbreak
as well as I do;
it is the very matter
of our existence).

So I guess my real question is
why?
(and, no, this time, it is not rhetorical).

Truly,
I'd like to know why
you would ever think
to hurt your people
the same way
the archangel hurt you.

You say I sin
against you,
but did you not
create me in your image?

(Like father,
like daughter,
I suppose).

god,
I do not think
I believe in you.

At least,
I do not believe in you
like I believe in other things.

I do not
believe in you
the way I believe in
the beauty of
Van Gogh's sunflowers
(his starry nights, too);
or in dog-earing the pages
of my favourite books.

I do not believe in you
the way I believe in magic;
or in the integrity of
polaroids photographs
and listening to vinyl.

I do not believe in you
the way I believed in my love
during the final moments
before his betrayal;
or in the lingering sensation
of my past lives--
Ophelia.
Mary Queen of Scots.
Frida Kahlo.
Sylvia Plath--
and now,
dare I feel it,
dare I say it--
Lot's Wife.

(With her,
I shall share a name).

I do not believe
you are my saviour
because I do not
believe in you
the way I believe
in Poetry.

god,
it's me--
Jade;
this poem is
my hallelujah,
but it does not
belong to you
(not anymore).

Among the wreckage
of her soul,
lie shards of ribcage
(splintered like
the stern of a ship
that has weathered
many a beastly storm)
and fragments of heart
(veins as thin and lifeless
as the gossamers
of waterlogged spider webs).

Sunken treasures
you could call these things,
waiting in this perpetual limbo,
this Bermuda of Lovers Lost.

"Girl, overboard!"
he'd cried
(even though he
had been the one
to push her over the edge
in the first place).

Imagine that:

wrists tied behind her--
what hurts more?
The rope burns
or the cuts?--
feet sweeping despondently
across that doomed plank;
she can feel her love's breath--
frigid as Neptune's sea-bound winds--
undulating against the back of her neck.

She turns around slowly,
and he shoots her that
pathological
barracuda grin,
promises her that he cares--
truly, he cares--
that she means something to him.

But many a thing
a pirate does thief,
the truth
being one of them.

The next thing she knows,
she is plummeting
(watch how she does fall for him)
towards the convulsing
stretch of grey beneath her,
and as she whips about
through the bluster and the rain,
she stares up at him
with wild, pleading eyes.

She wants to scream out,
"Why?"
but there is no room
for words (or poetry)
upon the lips of the drowned--
after all,
dead girls tell no tales

From the moment
the tale of her ruin
made itself known,
mankind has
coveted proof
of her existence.

Many a curious hand
has stalked across
the glossy veins of maps
and the cracked vertebrae of books
enclosing information
most pivotal to
her secret whereabouts
and the tragic evanescence
that initiated her exile.

Many a
sailor
explorer
scientist
poet
have perished among
the gnashing jaws of the sea
in their pursuit of
the glory
her exploitation
would surely bring.  

In response to such
grievances--
the reality
of losing oneself
in the midst of
searching for what
has already been lost--
imagination--
the belief in magic,
in the seemingly
unbelievable--
was outlawed
within the
human psyche;

now,
they say she is merely
a madman's legend,
a myth concocted by Plato
so as to warn against
the perils of greed.

But never did they consider
that perhaps she did not
want to be found to begin with,
that her seclusion
has always been a necessity
so as not to repeat
the monstrosities of the past--
so she should not resurface
to satiate their earthly desires
only so she can be drowned anew.

{Atlantic}

I always look
my most beautiful
when I cry;

the bags under my eyes
burn as poignantly
as waning crescents,
lips plump as they quiver
with the same multitudes
of Artemis' bowstring,
chest heave-hoeing
against the tempered
vessel of my soul.

I wear sadness
remarkably well,
you know.

Like black lipstick.
or short hair.
or poetry.

(Cleopatra's got nothing on me, baby)

My reflection tessellates
against the swell of my tears,
evolves into
kaleidoscopic fractals
of smouldering thrones
and howling queens--
into images most
strange and terrible.

(But, oh, how I welcome them.)

A delicate curtsy of words
respires from my mouth,
forms upon my tongue
its homage--
hail thy shattered kingdom
hail thy shattered kingdom
hail thy shattered kingdom.