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14.4k · May 2017
waist-deep
n stiles carmona May 2017
would you listen or laugh at me
           for claiming love's an ocean?
neither a knife, nor a blindfold
                                                      .­..but a sea.
there's a human-borne catastrophe.
                       cast your eye upon those with no share.
          the contents of their buckets
are polluted and impure
                                yet all but 5%
                                goes unexplored.
do you find yourself choking in your sleep?
  why watch the waves from safe dry ground
                                                  when you could delve in deep?
do you live in fear of unchartered seas
                                                   and life still left unfound?
are you overheating if only not to drown?
we 'love addicts' are water children.
i run outside and taste the rain.
  let's go! let's drink! let's swim! let's bathe
                   and watch it seep into our pores
                         -- it escapes me how you stay indoors!
a little something optimistic
4.5k · Mar 2018
At The Stake
n stiles carmona Mar 2018
I envy her, the ashen girl
submerged within her flames -
with burning lobes and burning robes
but smiling all the same.
i hope she'll soon be me
n stiles carmona Dec 2018
Momentary
mourning peace.
Mama pours a glass of mulled wine,
lights a scented candle
                               (- "cherries on snow" -)
and drinks to ol' Joan.

Passed down with the jewellery box,
somewhere in the will, the daughters
receive the annual chore of roasting
the turkey (delicious!) and the veggies
(good job!) and (could you pass the?) breadsauce
for their brothers and husbands huddled
            on a threadbare sofa -- and a younger girl,
            barely there, staring at a laptop screen.

Mama's not festive - always too tired -
barely celebrates, but orchestrates.
Years barely there 'cause she's needed in their kitchen
and someone's gotta cook can she please get a hand? and
one chivalrous male puffs out his chest, takes one for the team, gestures to the girl with no discernible attention span and
half-laughs an "ay, one day this'll be you!
Best get in there while you're young!"

                                                       ­   ((A baritone chorus of laughter.))

"You outdid yourself on the turkey."
"S'great, ain't it? Pass the potatoes."

Sometimes here, sometimes Spain.
We stay over. It's tradition: we're
scattered across the country,
maid duties are the least she can do.
Never our kitchen or living room.
Tiny. Messy. Unwelcoming.
Come Boxing Day, Mama gives
a bear hug goodbye and an
"it's good to see you";
Because it is, she thinks.
Thank you for inviting me
to carry out your labour.
I'm just grateful to be needed.

A month of red 'SALE' tapes
scouring the clearance shelves;
overtime for extra cash
scraped to afford the food she cooks you;
paying half for gifts she'd brainstormed
while Dad buys partial credit on the gift tag.
We vanish from your house
- like elves -
by morning.
happy holidays! if you rub your eyes, it semi-looks like a christmas tree.
n stiles carmona Nov 2018
see, atlas nearly dropped the world at the first sign of tremors
and gaia would've blown her top with wrath
and it nearly toppled sisyphus' boulder til it crushed him
but the 'nearly' doesn't matter 'cause the world's still in his grasp

and if paris picked selene, we might've had a heart-shaped moon
but we got the trojan shitshow, millions died
and we nearly went extinct just 'cause some ******* greek was *****
but the 'nearly' doesn't matter since we just about survived
eso sí que es
2.3k · Oct 2017
maggot
n stiles carmona Oct 2017
you wish to buy my meat.
the butcher's cut is ripe and cheap;
a fresh-faced lamb of london streets
and everybody craves a piece.

*******. ribs. thighs.
money is no issue and they'll all see you gloat:
"my spread-eagled angel will be gnawed down to bone."
(god knows there's no heart in the matter.)

you wish to play the maggot.
you want your prey half-dead.
my flesh rots and decays on your tongue,
bloodied on the slab of your mattress.
n stiles carmona Apr 2018
it's funny the things you forget
when asked for an 'interesting fact' --

you sleep on them for days
and exhume them from the ground
because they matter! so deeply!!
there's no metaphor that does them justice!!
it's poetry because it isn't!!!

i don't know my siblings.
my parents sleep in my dead grandad's bed
and i received his cupboards:
yeah, we're pretty much begging to be haunted.
let's be positive, it'd be nice to see him again.

thanks to reinforced childhood superstition,
i still pick up pennies from the ground
(yup, even with my germ phobia).

i used to write to the tooth fairy!
she warned me about gum disease.
her name was tiffy, but it turned out to
just be mum writing with her left hand.

as an internet-addicted hermit,
little me hated going abroad
since the only friends i felt i had were online.
there's thus a list of places to someday re-visit -
rotterdam is one.

i'd like to be somebody's muse.
if my life plan fails,
i want to work in a funeral parlour:
it feels as though i'd do it justice.

watching the same film more than once
just isn't something i do -- except grease --
exceptions can be made when it's on TV.

i mean, c'mon, it's grease.
(feel free to leave some interesting tidbits of your own life in the comments. you all seem fun enough.)
you can't make metaphors out of this stuff if you bother to write about it: they're just facts that are true. so let's chuck them all into a draft and call it a list poem. or free verse. or an experiment. hey, if 'anything can be poetry', so can this!
1.9k · Apr 2019
Tributo A La Mitad Faltante
n stiles carmona Apr 2019
(No puedo hablar la lengua.)
I cannot speak my father's native tongue.
(No puedo hablar suficiente...)
At least, not enough of it to get by.
(...no entiendo, lo siento.)
The body I inhabit feels like foreign territory.
(No lo se.)
My grasp of it ends here.

I. OTRA VIDA

Dia de san valentin, 2000: mi padre aprendió inglés por amor; voló a través del mar Mediterráneo. Él tiene miedo de los sonidos cuando trata de hablar. Pero él lo intenta. Él habla casi perfectamente -- mientras, estoy teniendo una conversación uno-a-uno con Google. Es vergonzoso.

I recall two or three trips, max. There's a blend of urban and natural that's a haven for the eye -- the buildings themselves are seduced by the sun; divine blends of amber, tawny, white. Classically Romantic. That nighttime humidity fogs up your lungs and makes it feel like a hug. There was a time when we were poised to move back there - and in Dad's case, another, nearly leaving without any desire to take me with him.

My makeshift home is built upon stereotypes: orange trees, olive oil, generous glasses of vino. Pienso qué un otra vida where I'm stood on the beach at dusk, with heavy-lidded eyes and ears attuned to cicadas and rolling waves. This is narcissistic lust for the woman I could've been - she is all smiles, bilingual, peace embodied. Those are the nights when I'm not careful: she leaves my bed by morning.

II. ESTA VIDA

To mourn the "what ifs" shows a lack of gratitude for what is, and god, what luck! For inglés to be the second most-spoken language, de-facto "centre of the universe"! To migrate most anywhere and get by; for the Western world to be coerced into Anglophonic bliss since tourism makes their ends meet!

On a holiday, I clam up ordering "una batista fresa" and get a taste of how my father feels. José Francisco: his colleagues call him Frank, in the same way I shun my legal surname because a Spanish 'LL' is too hard for others to grasp. I reek of privilege - post-post-Franco, white European, playing with my non-language behind closed doors. There's private delight in a rolled 'r': momentarily, I'm local, not a mere faux-foreigner appropriating my own heritage. Ironic - he tries to be "less immigrant" whilst I've got the fortune of trying to be more.

I was born into a universe of possibilities. A million options feel like fate -- screenwriter, Oxford grad, Spanish barmaid-or-waitress-or-I'll-take-whatever -- each unchased path is a reminder that, somehow, I'm choosing wrong. I've never perceived myself as small (ex-tall child, "ex"-chubby kid with a head outstretching the clouds, first of the eleven-year-olds to grow **** and got gawped at like I'd grown an extra nostril). Outside this hall of mirrors, I am tiny -- too small to have this many dreams -- manifesting as terror-borne paralysis because I want to do more than I'm built for. Solution: aim smaller or grow up.
half-whiny, half-dreaming. i don't normally rely on google translate - i'm trying to self-teach with duolingo (occasionally enlisting grammatical help via dad).
1.9k · Sep 2018
I, Blanche
n stiles carmona Sep 2018
Fifty-percent illusion at any given time.
Your unintended muse will plead 'not guilty' to the crime
Of snatching back the quill and reshaping every line
into the role she wished to play
-- it seems the choice was never mine --

but the boy with the weighted wedding ring,
the self-appointed jury of the south;
him sheepish at the door with roses,
and the brute who owns this house.

Was it feminine mystique or was I crystal clear
while you blocked your ears and pretended not to hear?

A three-act structured tragedy.
All archetypes assigned.
"We've had this date since the beginning" --
if the part must be mine to play,
it is in my hands to manipulate.
Direct your blame to those who cast the roles.

Torn petticoat, blue piano;
flattered by the dimming glow --
oh, to be glossy pink and gold!
A trophy bride. A victor's prize.
(I snap awake and still see his eyes --
that ego swells him thrice my size --
with bruising force, he parts my thighs.)

Was it hysteria - madness? - or was I crystal clear
while you blocked your ears and pretended not to hear?

My fate was written for me,
in the frontal lobes of those who came before me:
down that narrative route, all bumps and troughs -- desire!
Fragments of an old Rossetti poem... o, vanity of vanities... the streetcar rattles and groans.
self-indulgent b-side to the prior poem 'i, ophelia'; honing in on blanche dubois (a streetcar named desire). excuse the rhymes, it's been a while.
1.4k · Mar 2018
Springtime!
n stiles carmona Mar 2018
Spring, cherished maiden ambivalent:
three parts rain, one part intemp'rate sun.
Show sympathy for clouded, rueful weather -
and let her weep 'til she, at last, is done

for there is no permanence in her grief.
She's winter's lover, moreso summer's child:
clutching daisy chains like bespoke rosaries,
new petalled life retrieves her golden smile.
caught myself relating to the seasons. spring's emotionally dysregulated. leave her alone. :(
1.4k · Aug 2019
Solitaire
n stiles carmona Aug 2019
I daren't (rather, shouldn't) breathe:
I'd built a tower of hearts from cards.
The gaps and breaks are real estate --
I'm nestled in the in-betweens.

                                              (Sapp­**'s spirit sighs.
                                              How human to not move quickly enough,
                                              or to yearn for whatever's inches from reach
                                              - blissfully unhinged by "almost".)

She's marble-carved and still as stone:
if I kissed her, would she spring to life?
I'd offer nought but foolish flesh,
this trembling frame, and bone.

                                                          ­  ("Tell me yes, tell me no;
                                                             either way, you're in the right,
                                                          ­   but for the love of Venus -- speak.")
1.2k · May 2019
class of 2019
n stiles carmona May 2019
rows of two!-three!-four!-boys-bloc-king-the-cor-rid-or
will soon be gone
and the RHYTH-mic-tick-tock-of-my-leg-BOUN-cing-on-the-floor
will be no more
it's fresh cadavers wrapped in string
it is a joyful gospel hymn
mourning the best and worst of youth
(those shiny kids who'd first walked in
with all the grace and all the poise
of hatched arachnids missing limbs)

but what of "her" – you know her name –
that overfed, reptilian thing
who shed her hair and scratched her skin,
cursing the odds at Him upstairs, demanding He re-shape her?

some say she cried herself into extinction
– sailed away on a crimson tide –
balking at the trauma of being seen
(enforced, cursed vulnerability
in being known to man).

the rest knew better;
they were voyeurs in this
fruit-carving tutorial
on 'how to grow up':

STEP 1) consider all other alternatives
2) take the scalpel and initiative
3) before adrenaline gives way to doubt,
turn the flesh-vessel inside out in a cocoon of your own creation!
while organs may rupture and it aches like you've skinned yourself alive (good for her, setting herself free!) you'll look cuter in the class photos and has you-know-who... finally... shifted the weight?
4) breathe through the blood loss and searing pain
5) notice
           you
                can
                     breathe again.
                     at this point, does it matter that it aches?
tribute to the worst years of my life so far. may it only get better from here.
1.1k · Dec 2017
Martyr of the Morgue
n stiles carmona Dec 2017
This diet of dirt erodes my teeth.
Perhaps I'm rotting for shock value
-- flashes of cameras --
a bloodborne shortcut to heaven.

I succumb to death a patriot:
red and white and asphyxia blue.
(We can't all drown like maidens.)

You smile and loosen your grip on my throat
to gnaw at and pick the flesh clean off my bones.
n stiles carmona May 2018
i.
you wonder if somewhere there's a voodoo doll with your face stitched on
(and if it's covered in pins since god knows that would be the logical explanation)
who goes away in winter? he'd laughed and laughed
-- and in spite of yourself, you let him

you very patiently explain that with european winters
'the sun's still out but it's no cancer risk
and the air's still hot at night but it doesn't try to choke you
and what's more cathartic than a spanish caravan park where you're serenaded by crickets?'

playing it off as a quirk, not an excuse to be anywhere else

he'll never know the comfort in being
little more than a passing stranger
a face on a street or in a window or a car
transient, fleeting; the short-term memory lasts roughly thirty seconds
so you're a stranger in a yellow polo and then you're nobody:
it's the circle of life, but compact and mildly less terrifying

ii.
unexplored streets and brains are bigger than home:
you can only be your true self when you are not at home
eyerolling, rotting from air pollution and complaining about first-world problems
you're hardly ill at mind but you're jaded and sad and sufficiently middle-class
so when in doubt, you pack a bag and think nothing else of it

you buy the guardian and a kitkat from a sullen newsagent
whose hands look like your grandmother's
(why do you notice this stuff?)
the poor guy's only middle-aged surely - he can keep the change
counting coins is weird and confusing anyway

happy flying says the hostess with a ribbon around her neck
she means it and you know exactly why she'd taken the job on:
fixed addresses are awfully limiting
and the swarms of crying babies are probably worth it
to get to go everywhere EVERYWHERE

iii.
package holiday dj digs out his usual and plays 'come on eileen' for an aging crowd
your eyes are upturned to a foreign sky and you breathe warmth
the stars are out and you are floating quite carelessly at the top of a swimming pool

happy birthday
a narrative poem, i think? not sure where it sprang from. i just like trying to access inner monologues that aren't my own, because the ***** never shuts up
943 · Jan 2021
On Bolt-Cutters & Shame
n stiles carmona Jan 2021
Hindsight, hallowed be thy name.

All I've got is luggage... luggage!
My God! Turn around; find my comrades slumped under the weights strapped to their spine!
Limping, bearing, burdened by non-negotiables while the High Court of Good Karma takes collective sabbatical —
and this knapsack of shame, I've partial credit in filling.

Grey handkerchief, original sin:
one. single. suckerpunch. and my fists are raised forever,
begging for the chance to swing and prove my own strength
— supposing the opportunity never fell into my lap — I'd said "**** it," packed a

hundred grams of bushy brushed-out curls, stop-sign red
fifty grams of lips to match (uniform too, now I think about it)
fifty grams of raccoon eyelids and coloured-in brows
hundred grams of halls of mirrors, circus-attraction Alice
lose a hundred/gain a hundred/repeat til dizzy
hundred grams of ******-in stomach, eyes averted in changing rooms
wigs by the armful — that's three — nom-de-plumes thrown in gratis
(it's only a journey to the rest of my life anyway, I'll need them,
alternative being cinematic debut as Myself)
hundred performances to imaginary audiences, less-than-stellar reviews
hundred grams of overwhelming then underwhelming "on purpose"
hundred grams of laughing off any belief in potential
hundred grams of scratch-marks and verbal fountains of venom
hundred grams of giving almostneverquite as good as I got
hundred grams of group-work alone thank ****(?)
hundred biro-holes stabbed in martyred pencil cases
feral in broad daylight spoiling for a fight
kilo of aiming for 'scary' and landing on 'strange'
kilo of being third to make good company a crowd
kilo of taking sixteen years to find Her
— Shadowboxer Fiona, rhythms invisible, catharsis in art —
hundred doodled superstitious evil-eyes in the ruled margins
hundred laments over the inability to provide a better future

(removed one by one whenever I think the future's mutable)

that one glimpse of white lightning in a violet storm
one single minute's pause to look over my shoulder
scarce-to-zero progress made
endless miles to go
breathless body soaked to the bone
and this useless! *******! bag! of Everything and nothing of value!!
mansions worth of loathing yet there's nothing to lose
did I decide that because I can't change the world, I can change nothing at all
(instead throwing darts at reflections/emotional *****/kicking stray dogs as a full-time hobby)?

O clarity so saccharine that I cannot be angered by the wasted years
only because THERE ARE MORE TO COME
I take it
   off my shoulder,
the first kind action I have spared myself in time unguessable
empty
     the
        contents...
   really
    air it out...
and trudge on
    unaccompanied.
The world's enough of an uphill climb.
written after too much time poring over allen ginsberg. ambivalent about this but the alternative is endless writers' block so this way i've at least got something to show for myself
931 · Mar 2018
fiona apple playlist
n stiles carmona Mar 2018
she'd the option to skin you alive
- hack the flesh off with the band-aid -
but she dared to do it softly
in this deliberate slaughter of dignity.
she wrapped her arms around you
and then prised your persona away.
still, she slips into language you taught her
and perceives it as her own.
in part, you're a souvenir:
the crisp packets on her bedroom floor.
the toiletries on her bathroom shelf.
the scent on her pillow.
the look in her eyes.
the rest of you is tucked away -
your laughter lies with her high school photos
and the clothes in her closet aged with moth-eaten decay.
you'd take less offence if she'd buried you under the floorboards.
now read it back. who hurt who? am i her or is she you?
i am the compost laid below your buds
and narcissus' wobbling reflection.
i project what you want to see:
(spoiler: it isn't me.)
let's split the blame
725 · Mar 2018
i, ophelia
n stiles carmona Mar 2018
lillies and nettles! red roses and white!
i'm fresh as a daisy and rotten from spite!
you see, my lord, i've half a mind--
but it won't let me speak my mind --
my molars grind
and tense and bleed
- that's why my hands are red, you see! -
i tried to tear my tongue from my mouth
and found i'd ruined all my teeth.

few cared for my coherent word,
yet now that i can not be heard
there is a window in my door
they lean in close and wait for sure
signs of undisputed sanity
since my vital signs of life are not what they would like to be.
do you hear how they speak of me?

"hark! reapers sing in rapture, composing 'Ode To Void':
gaze upon the patron saint of self-obliteration.
this roadkill incarnate with inferno-coloured hair:
neck-deep in bloodied rivers of throttling despair."
re-write of an old poem
715 · Dec 2017
Time's Soliloquy
n stiles carmona Dec 2017
A town whose people shapeshift everyday
keeps only worn-down roads and festive lights;

the shops, almost enchanted, switching names --
to change at will is to be true to type.

But though it's bittersweet, I must not dwell,
for dwelling simply makes me wish to die:

there cannot be a more merciless hell
than to be self-aware of time gone by -

so I face the days head-on, one by one,
thanking whatever deity's up there

for clockwork rising-falling of the sun;
a beauteous sight we're allowed to share.

Singing 'nostalgia' on our aged guitars
just picks at scabs that are to become scars.
baby's first sonnet. watching the future unfold in front of you is terrifying, but i'm attempting to convince myself that it's wonderful.
568 · Apr 2022
A Bus Stop Named Friendship
n stiles carmona Apr 2022
SCENE I: A CHIAROSCURO OF IDYLLS AND TAINTED ZONES. Curse the newsagents and bless the chain-store coffee shops; forgo zero-cal drinks for chai lattes. Time might heal the hospital's harm, but the sand in the hourglass promises nothing. Back from Uncanny Valley, she's here for one day only: please welcome...

UNDERSTUDY
[warming up for the performance of her second-rate lifetime; faults and failings all dolled up in costume jewellery, consoled by every artifice except the Self:]
They brought me back button-eyed.
I'm by the bus shelter in last Body's clothes,
recalling our trips here one Body ago:

[an ILOVEYOU loiters on the corner of this street —
it tips its chin and stares a greeting.]

UNDERSTUDY
I lower my gaze
in routine
fashion.

SCENE II: A GUIDED TOUR.
ILOVEYOU stalks a metre behind.

ILOVEYOU
[bellowing intermittently:]
Charity-shop libraries (plural) wherein mundane spectacles
were made of ourselves; hushed confrontations cause
scenes behind stage curtains. Shopfronts that site
your effigy in my mother's eyes. Kisses, tears, the
tying of scarves, Starbucks, ducks, parks, book-cover
inscriptions, living a love story while not lucid
enough to document it—

UNDERSTUDY
[syncopated; mumbled into crescendo:]
—five-lap treks, pyjama-clad, year-round shivers through phantom autumn gales. Empty quests amid off-licence shelves; chip-shop smells, taunting; slo-mo supermarket crawls, clearance sections, the listless skimming of labels; sleepy insomniac; brick walls upon which I sat hunched and feasting like some rabid feral dog, 'consumed' in passive voice and 'wasting away' in active, walk it off WALK IT OFF—

ILOVEYOU/UNDERSTUDY
One meeting without warrant for apology. No words to shepherd back into the ribcage they'd tunnelled out of.

ILOVEYOU
I swore no-one would touch me and then melted in your palms—dread being seen at all, but devour your "you look good". No personal growth, but raised by stilts; no less virulent, but restrained behind masks. The sickness takes a different shape. I fear you'll discern the difference. I also fear that you won't.

UNDERSTUDY
A half-finished narrative or a blackout poem? You've gone from 'knowing too much' to having only the chapters we co-write: "Better this way," I say, and stand by it. I can starve and starve and still never master how not to Want; how to tell my heart these Wants aren't Needs; how to stop them escaping through the craters between bones.

ILOVEYOU
I feel larger than life but I'd cast off my limbs to fit inside your pocket. My friendship must taste like eagerness to please; still, you'll eat from my spoon and I'll open wider than required for yours...

ILOVEYOU/UNDERSTUDY
...yes, we'll name it 'nourishment'.
guess who's back with their old gimmicks!!! so, uh... '21/early '22 sure did occur. i dare myself to let streetcar die and not reach for a reference at the first opportunity. if this *****, it's a warmup exercise; if not, it's a poem :)
n stiles carmona Aug 2019
"THE BREAKDOWN COMES WHEN YOU STOP CONTROLLING YOURSELF / AND WANT THE RELEASE OF A BLOODBATH" - JENNY HOLZER

I. Vanitas Vanitatum
[The stage is set: a paper moon against a starless, greyscale sky. GINSBERG howls. He's nostalgic for all he'd assumed was forgotten; desperate to never recall it again. His numbered days are manufactured: ELIOT reclines, watching the world end.]

CHORUS OF PROPHETS:
In our own sins we trusted,
both in essence and in nature.
Hell was never an inferno:
it is an echo chamber.

We have nothing (-- we have nothing --)
but maxims and jumbled alphabets
and lightly-sparkling bitterness
when the cork pops feebly from the bottle;
(-- nothing! --) dripping saltine hate.

We've lived large and small, been tiny and tall;
always filling too much space in a too-big room
where our presence is ironically scarce.
There is nothing for you here,
bar vacant lungs and river water --
take a breath and join us
                               in sinking to
                                            (sinking!) the
                                               (sinking!) bottom
                                                  (sinking­,) of
                                                        (sinki­ng...) the
                                                             ­              Styx.

II. Et Omnia Vanitas
[Enter PLATH, SEXTON, WOOLF, BYRON, DICKINSON and VARIOUS PHARMACEUTICAL BRAND REPRESENTATIVES.]

You know not what you could be
but merely what you are
and that alone is traumatic enough.
Taste it, a slice at a time:

the disillusionment from having raised your hopes beyond rotting in the soil,
the anger upon realising this was your own fault and all you want to do is scream,
the bargaining, the denial, the scream (you were not born to live). The gradual processing. The scream!
Scream at the moon and scream at the walls and scream into pillows and howl and wail and hack away at the flesh and screech until plastic surroundings melt and it is only you and the void you willed upon yourself.

III. Epitaph (What Now?)
[A white-fur baby seal is camouflaged upon the ice
and, eyes closed, fools itself into thinking it survived.]

What happens next is no act of evil:
this is survival of the fittest.
We are bottom-rung of the food chain
and starving predators need to eat.

[We lick the ground and taste defeat.]

Ruby poppies reach heavenward --
small birds take their maiden flights.
I shrivel, putrid in the soil,
in the winter of my life.
pretentious *******, slash wallowing in my losses. sometimes feeling things is nice. for the most part, it's ******* ugly
533 · Jan 2019
intimidate (verb)
n stiles carmona Jan 2019
lady of steel gaze:
let me learn your native tongue,
iron-clad and cold
i have literally never written a haiku
508 · Nov 2017
Paranoia
n stiles carmona Nov 2017
Remember:
be sure your sin will find you out.
Place your ear to the ground.
Listen out for shrieking sounds.

                          Remember.
                    ­       Mould a tinfoil helmet
                             and a bomb shelter made from leaves.
                                   Watch the sky for stars with teeth.
n stiles carmona Jan 2021
Where'd you wander off to? I was one lonesome night-shift from writing another piece entirely – Allen y Federico, chasing Whitman as he climbs the paywall guarding Bohemia, ashen fog of beard left trailing in his wake. Ah, but here you are, my High Court of Muses! Lavender castoffs of two mechanical empires, camped outside on the supermarket pavement: awaiting a dawn delayed by the skyscrapers it hides behind. The Best Minds Left Standing... Lorca’s feet beating faraway Gitano rhythms; Ginsberg spouting love-letters re: the weeds’ anarchic growth from the concrete cracks... and one smaller sycophant.

I’ve offerings of oranges – Spanish nostalgia reduced to contraband – ‘stolen’, bruised, saved from dumpster fates. Wouldn't you have done the same? Isn’t food waste just state-sanctioned sacrilege? Naranjas, clementinas, full miniature moons split into crescents: I figured (halved) you'd (quartered) be starved (eighths). You savour each sacred drop of juice in ways I've yet to master. I’d always been preoccupied with expiry dates... Moloch who sets up shop inside my brain... yet time melts between my lips and I am with You under UV floodlights. I am with You where the overhead glow may not be starlight but it’s not the worst alternative. I am with You – until the checkout boy steps out for a cigarette and when Allen’s eyes follow in pursuit, I’ve lost him again. Holy, he mutters into his final segment of fruit; holy, I repeat, imagining Eve’s overeager sprint into the wide-open prisons of thought.
    I am a woman cloved in two, better half wrapped in citrus peel and tied with string – para tí, maestro Lorca. Does it bother you that these buildings stand closer to the Sun than you could have ever reached? Yet you were nothing short of an Icarus, and how close you came! Abstract wings borne from words and notoriety! Your mythology was written to fit a flamenco guitar – if they don’t know that, they don’t know you – through musical folklore, Franco tried to **** that which was immortal. His legacy is a nation of graves and a granddaughter in the gutter press.
    I begin to feel that history is a ripple-effect of looking over one’s shoulder and deciding “you’d hate it here.” There’s always the dawn. You wait for it with practised patience – pervasive optimism – the ability not to end an “always was” with “and always will be”. Is it all you’d waited for? Has time diminished its novelty? Will you write it down and tell me what I’d slept through?
    Out cold, you turn me onto my side so I don’t choke when Moloch finds his way out.
just a writing exercise rly lol. direct response to ginsberg's 'a supermarket in california' about his literary hero, walt whitman (i feel like it'd make even less sense without having read that beforehand). one day i'll write something that isn't too long for folks to bother reading - until then...
n stiles carmona Jul 2020
Ingredients:
    • 1 springtime
    • 1 brain, bruised and ripe for the picking
    • As many hours as can be held in your arms
    • A handful of mantras that got you precisely nowhere, e.g. "this too shall pass"

1) Before declaring yourself insane, remember you are not immune to your own humanity and every emotion seems as though you were the first to discover it. There is, ironically, a word for this - qualia - meaning however elaborate the description, words alone cannot replicate an experience (a yellow sky; a minor key). You are as much an explorer as every other living being, and these are communal journeys taken in solitude.

2) Acknowledge that when you feel blue, it is the colour of forget-me-nots. Unbolt your door, against your better judgement. Spend time among the flowers, knowing this is what the earth is capable of. This is what it creates of its own volition. Wander until no longer threatened, but comforted in the presence of beauty. It is their cycle of blooming and wilting that makes you kindred spirits and—at least this season—you're in friendly company.

3) Notice your conscious hunt for reasons to feel alienated, undecided on whether you are possessed or defective. Recall that for all the nights spent on self-interrogation, indulging in sweeping guesses and bolting your door shut as a service to humanity, you've found nothing of significance. Consider what this may mean. (For best results, do this under the sun. You will sit beside a shadow that has seen enough to understand, and wordlessly pledged its lifetime to you. Do not take its loyalty for granted.)

3) Try to reconcile your hatred of being looked at with your burning, inescapable need to be acknowledged. You will fail. Repeatedly. Keep trying, keep failing, and treat it as a success you've yet to fully comprehend.

4) When it seems as though self-acceptance means turning a blind eye to every wrong you've ever committed, or waving a dismissive hand to all the methods in which you can wound people, re-write a definition that makes sense to you. So long as your hands can wield a knife, they can hold a plant stem or a human cheek, and that is your permission to exist.

5) Repeat until the word 't-m-rr-w' doesn't desperately warrant censorship and you can look into an hourglass without the need to smash it open.
386 · Apr 2020
i, echo
n stiles carmona Apr 2020
the gods debate and then concede:
"His punishment is empathy!"

they could have excused the self-assurance,
the love of an entity built in their holy image;
the conclusion that You are the only one good enough for You.
they could not condone Your vicious deeds --
they would not condone the blood.

the gods debate and then concede
Your punishment is empathy
(though never enough to spare a thought
for my voice within the cavern walls
or the spattered blood of Ameinias
or the righteousness of Nemesis)

**** You, bless You, Your Holy Reflection
condemning the flowers and mountains to dirt;
the suitors (silent in Your wake) reduced to peripheral blurs,
forgoing all the world for the sake of Your one true love --
still steadfastly playing martyr,
not the fool with His fingertips hovering inches from the water,
doting on His Image! loving like gods love irony and a brute-force punchline!

the gods' one choice was to concede
Your punishment was empathy
while the verbal paradise in my mind smoulders into ash.

if You spared just a thought for me (love was never a necessity)
Your words would then be mine:
instead i speak through nobody with thoughts that barely rhyme.
i am small, a silent letter in an 'echo';
arms linked, moving in rhythm, with my siblings --
Your story rhymes, each chapter weaving into a chorus

the gods reprise when they concede:
"His punishment is empathy!"

[NOTHING]: seven letters long, pronounced like [SILENCE]:
not a nuance to unravel, nor utterance un/spoken to linger in the air.
these rewards i reap for loving too loudly:
blooming, bountiful  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ;
self-flagellating  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
i choke upon this  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ,
still clinging to Your _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .

the water's silent ennui:
Your punishment, Your empathy.

in a nicer world, my fury burns the love away
-- but still, it simmers. still, it stays.
You wilt like heaven's roses, exquisite in (and after) death
whilst i spoil into _ _ _ _ _ _ _  and watch the world forget.
based on the greek myth of echo and narcissus. playing fast and loose with the whole 'rhyming' thing so uh... brief word of warning if that sets you on edge.
339 · Feb 2020
Duality of Man
n stiles carmona Feb 2020
'YOU'RE NO PROPHET (YOU'RE BARELY A POET)', BY PERSON I
"O woe, O why--" --O what a way to live!
Never finding what you hunt, scarcely saying what you mean,
with the audacity to worship those who can;
adoring all that's good, or brave, or noble; learning nothing.
Shameless indignity is the boldest you get:
compare them speaking their hearts against
the postmodern cowardice in all that you are.

Language is a gift you abuse:
you may as well have abandoned your voice;
paragraphs wasted on your camouflage of choice.
Half-built cities on foundations of beige-coloured water --
you keep the imagery pretty and the metaphor alluding to just about anything.

You're scared to speak if it's not been said before.
You're ashamed to speak if it's all been said before.
Reluctant to be original! Embarrassed to be derivative!
The shame is in the fact you don't bother!!
Would you say it matters if it's all been thought before?
Voiced before? Done before? Does it wound your pride
to know that your actions are barely yours?
Does it shatter your resolve, seeing your face in my words?

Omit the omnipresent and stay oblivious to obvious.
Can we call it thorough? -- this solitary hunt for truth?
-- almost commendable, almost fruitful,
had you only checked the blind-spot under your nostrils.

'MEANWHILE, IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD...', BY PERSON II
So... 'just shut up and say it'? Wow, noted. Thanks.
Tonight's been a blast.
You'd hate it.
based on a largely self-deprecating hypothesis that you can either be either emotionally available or actually fun to be around (i.e. what do you hold in higher regard, your compassion or your company?) - i'd love to be wrong on this one. i'd like to actually be both. churned this out in half an hour and yiiiikes it shows. remember, kids, to make fun of yourself at least a little bit BEFORE aiming your rage @ anyone who doesn't live the way you do (or, uh, do it afterwards. tomato/tomato.) mighty easy to get angry at your polar opposite but life's infinitely duller without them.
300 · Jul 2020
Late Bloomer
n stiles carmona Jul 2020
It's a birthright, not a dream:
the rising sun is mine to chase.
I grow upwards, each newborn cell rejoicing,
petals outstretched to scale the clouds
and I do not know where I'll go afterwards --
only that it'll sink into my touch
like an animal seeking affection
and I will say THANK GOD
I didn't shrink like a violet at the burn of judging eyes
when my soil-buried roots hadn't yet much to offer
or deem myself good as wilted and cut my growth off at the stem
(the call is not mine to make)
or declare the fruits of my labour would be poisonous
so time, effort, water are wasted acts of love;
how easy it is to give up
so as not to face the prospect of a hungry autumn
or feel my promises break in my clumsy grip.

We owe it to ourselves to wait and grow
for we may never reap what we don't sow.
experimenting with viewpoints that aren't mine and people i can't be yet. also maybe listen to 'roses/lotus/violet/iris' by hayley williams if you're a huge fan of plant metaphors. also shoutout to @whyhan for the prompt and breaking my writers' block i owe u one
287 · Apr 2019
preconception (noun)
n stiles carmona Apr 2019
unknown entities
snatched from their liminal space
into binary
brain ****
n stiles carmona Jan 2021
Just once,
I should like to see
a pretty truth.

I am too used to self-curating
— slipping into silken words —
shimmering golds that complement
my skin just right
(not wash it out
upon the threat
of natural light).

Confessions speed to
halts,
flushed-faced;
pause,
dismayed
they cannot catch the sun
from a gentler angle,
to soften, to lovingly blur
and still pass for the same entity.

From the cradle, I've been
my own ******: half-enthusiasm
borne from rubbernecking thrills
— real-time collisions
at the mirror's appraising edge.
FIRST WRITTEN WORK OF 2021 WADDUP (and first written piece in  six months but we'll gloss over that okay)
209 · Aug 2020
These Temporary Tides
n stiles carmona Aug 2020
Every
"fresh start" I
seize. I paint myself a
different colour every time, only for the
tide to drag me in
and soak it
all
away, and it'll
dampen my spirit and flood
my lungs with seawater but it will
never submerge me no matter
how much I
beg
it to -- or
maybe it's because I beg
it to, and there's more joy to
be reaped in wounding me
with its grinning
denial.
1-3-5-7-5-3-1
144 · May 2020
But I'm Trying To Be Good
n stiles carmona May 2020
Schadenfreude reigns:
******* spawn of Lust and Wrath
bites at trying hearts.
n stiles carmona Feb 2020
??? lights a candle by herself, for novelty's sake. She stares into the flame and contemplates her past lives.
??? sends an apology to someone she'd wronged after a dream about giant cobwebs and the sinister absence of a spider. Nothing in this life is meaningless, she mumbles.
??? becomes convinced she's on the verge of a positive breakthrough while her skin is still bleeding and the last time she left the house was for a haircut. Character development's a piece of cake when you never have to place it into practise.
??? is soothed by the bedroom 'epiphanies' about all she's doing wrong, treating the smaller discovered flaws like struck gold; still blocking out the eight-foot fanged thing that's lived in her peripheral vision since youth. It sharpens its teeth on a stone and waves with its free limbs.
???, after one cup of coffee, assesses the employment risks of a potential stalking charge. She interprets Storm Ciara as God grounding her for a week and doesn't move.
??? reasons with herself that - being self-aware enough to know she's not acting reasonably - the likelihood is that something hungry and evil has made its bed in her heart. No doubt she's sound of mind.
??? shoots the messenger. The mantelpiece mirror is moved into the back of her wardrobe, imprisoned "...until [it learns] to be nicer".
(??? blames everything on her Sagittarius moon.)
brief respite. brief illusions of progress.

— The End —