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Bryce Perry Mar 2018
you want heaps of Wisdom
pouring out your
lonely head BUT you're
not worth
your own time!
    
     Tell me that one.

you're sittin ******
stationary in that good-of-everything
          spinny chair that
makes an axious grate against
the rubbing of
enamel
and shining of wonderful wonderous bone
c Mar 2018
The only other girl at the party
is ranting about feminism.
The audience: a sea of **** jokes and snapbacks
and styrofoam cups and me.
They gawk at her mouth like it is a drain
clogged with too many opinions.
I shoot her an empathetic glance
and say nothing. This house is for
wallpaper women. What good
is wallpaper that speaks?
I want to stand up, but if I do,
whose coffee table silence
will these boys rest their feet on?

These boys…
I want to stand up, but if I do,
what if someone takes my spot?
I want to stand up, but if I do,
what if everyone notices I’ve been
sitting this whole time? I am ashamed
of keeping my feminism in my pocket
until it is convenient not to, like at poetry
slams or woman studies classes.
There are days I want people to like me
more than I want to change the world.
Once I forgave a predator because
I was afraid to start drama in our friend group
two weeks later he assaulted someone else.
I’m still carrying the guilt in my purse.

There are days I forget we had to invent
nail polish to change color in drugged
drinks and apps to virtually walk us home
and lipstick shaped mace and underwear designed to prevent ****.

Once a man behind me at an escalator
shoved his hand up my skirt
from behind and no one around me
said anything,
so I didn’t say anything.
Because I didn’t wanna make a scene.

Once an adult man made a necklace
out of his hands for me and
I still wake up in hot sweats
haunted with images of the hurt
of girls he assaulted after I didn’t report,
all younger than me.

How am I to forgive myself for doing
nothing in the mouth of trauma?
Is silence not an active violence too?

Once, I told a boy I was powerful
and he told me to mind my own business.

Once, a boy accused me of practicing
misandry. “You think you can take
over the world?” And I said “No,
I just want to see it. I just need
to know it is there for someone.”

Once, my dad informed me sexism
is dead and reminded me to always
carry pepper spray in the same breath.
We accept this state of constant fear
as just another component of being a girl.
We text each other when we get home
safe and it does not occur to us that
not all of our guy friends have to do the same.
You could literally saw a woman in half
and it would still be called a magic trick.
Wouldn’t it?
That’s why you invited us here,
isn’t it? Because there is no show
without a beautiful assistant?
We are surrounded by boys who hang up
our naked posters and fantasize
about choking us and watch movies that
we get murdered in. We are the daughters
of men who warned us about the news
and the missing girls on the milk carton
and the sharp edge of the world.
They begged us to be careful. To be safe.
Then told our brothers to go out and play.
Credits to Blythe Baird.

Blythe Baird is an affluent, rising young slam/spoken word poet from Minnesota. She has a book out already, "Give Me A God I Can Relate To" and is making gains in the world of poetry. Regularly performs with Button Poetry. You can find the performance of "Pocket-Sized Feminism" on Youtube. Inspiring and firey on the mic! Check this one out.
skyler Dec 2017
Childhood is supposed to be blissful. Kids are supposed to be innocent. Children are supposed to be learning how to face the world, not fighting it head on. I look left and right and see kids with as much pain and fear in their eyes as soldiers coming home from war with half of their limbs blown off. These children have been fighting since day one; some of them thrown to the curb before their eyes even open. They're supposed to have a family they can go home to, but instead they're getting shoved into homes with strangers or family members trying to pick up the slack because mommy and daddy are falling apart and their broken pieces are laying all over the house waiting to cut you open and drain your insides. There are kids who know more about drug abuse than the average adult because they've grown up watching their family stick needles in their arms. There are little girls and boys who flinch at any sudden movement or sound because the only thing they can picture is fists flying at them and pinning them to the ground. There are children who look at trauma and pain as if it's just another day because they've been dealing with drama since the day they left their momma or maybe their momma left them. There are kids you can't touch without them weeping because they've had hands on them creeping to places they scream you can not go but some people just don't understand the word no. There are adolescents that don't flinch at gunfire because they heard the same sound in the bedroom next to theirs before their sibling’s funeral. There are babies with bruises and kids with cuts just because mommy and daddy don't seem to love them enough. Childhood is supposed to be blissful, but instead there's kids taking fistfuls of pills to wash away the pain that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Kids are supposed to be innocent, but instead their lives don't make sense and they grow up to be numb like fog covers their brains all because their upbringing was outright insane.

s.s
Chloe Dec 2017
They say that suicide survivors are usually relieved when they don't succeed their attempt.
Some are even happy.
I am not one of those survivors.
I don't like having to explain why I have such deep scars on my wrist;
Or apologize when I slur and stumble over my words when I'm sober because all of the pills that I overdosed on effected my brain.
I don't like having to live with the realization that I'm even a failure at killing myself.
I have to live not seeing a future.
When people ask me where I see myself in ten years, I have to lie.
I make up some stupid, cliché response like "married with kids." or "super rich with my **** together."
When really I'm actually thinking to myself, "I don't see myself anywhere in ten years because I plan to be dead before then."
I may of made it 18, and to 21, and to 23 but I will be ****** if I make it 30.
There is no future for me.
Some slam poetry that might be triggering for some.
Having Depression is like finding out that mermaids are real
It doesn’t make sense to you until you’re getting dragged to the bottom of the ocean
And then you think
Oh
That’s what this is
And I’m drowning now,
That’s just……… great
And eventually, with your last vestiges of breath left
You float back to the surface
And you’re fine.
And that’s it.
Mermaids stop existing again.
Because you never actually saw what grabbed you
You only felt the claws around your leg
The cold, clammy hands tugging
With a force that you could never fight against
But you never saw her
So it was all a dream
Right?
And it happens again and again
You are drowning again and again
Until the water begins to feel like home
And the only thing reminding you that you are alive
Is the burning in your lungs
And when everything you had balanced so very carefully starts falling
Off the shelves of your life
When your “mild” depression starts deciding it wants to be more
When being alone makes you feel dead inside
And when losing your cool for one ******* second makes you contemplate your own demise
When do you admit to yourself that you are slipping
You are sinking and just because you can slow your descent
Does not mean that you’re not still drowning
And at the end of the day just because it took you longer to get there this time
Doesn’t mean you aren’t still lying on the ocean floor
Devoid of light and sound
And if you had just climbed onto that now distant boat and sailed away
You’d be fine.
But climbing was too hard
And sinking is so much easier
And you’re scared that if you reach out
Your hands will feel clammy and cold
As they wrap around your friends throats
And drag them down with you
And you would rather rot at the bottom of an endless sea
Than let that happen
So you lie in darkness and wait
For a sound
The singular resounding sound
Of failure
And you slowly float back to the surface
Take a deep breath
And you’re fine.
Because mermaids aren’t real
It’s all in your head
This is normally performed aloud, but I wanted to share it with you all, as well
sadgirl Jul 2017
am i too much for you?
is it that fact i have a loose *****, or two, or three
did i really need to see you through for every day you
touched me, looked me in the eye, said the fire will never die
but it did

and that hoodie fills a space between two legs,
square pegs into round holes, binge eating until you
hurt your throat
but you still devote yourself to being
skinny

and that word has plagued me for so long, like a song, like a call, and now i need to know, before i fall, am i skinny enough to be loved? is my collarbone every going to be a wishing well, will i burn in hell for the simple sin of being fat?

but in reality, the only real causality was myself
i force fed myself discipline, hoped someone
would listen, but they never did

even the shrinks said i was crazy
and that i was lazy for not going out, excising until
my skin split and a beautiful butterfly emerged
then i'd surge into battle like a goddess

but when your thighs are thick and you aren't modest,
and when you wear lipstick too thick like a woman
with double Ds and an ache between her knees
you know that if you were skinny, you'd never have
these problems, and if you did
you'd know how to solve them
to be skinny
is to be graceful

even in suicidal rages
that flip through pages and pages of stories before they rip my own
from existence
need to be kept under control and kept at a distance like
a tiger that has the taste for human flesh

but now i know i'm the best, because i have a good ****,
long legs and a pretty face
but i'm too hard to replace in this overpriced world
where girls are told to starve themselves

to a neutral, non-pear shape
until their ******* are the tip of an hourglass
their waists are too thin to last
and their eyes are longing for even the tiniest indulgence
avoiding food and any substance
that would jeopardize
skinny

but then i realized
if skinny was so important
then why did all those who were it
probably also were just a little bit away from going insane
and we were in the same boat, staying afloat together
on the ocean of
skinny

so i wrote this poem
for every single girl or woman
who needed a book or a booking
to make them feel beautiful, and by beautiful i mean
skinny

but beautiful can be skinny,
but it can also be thighs like tree trunks,
arms like rivers
and a body that delivers nothing but happiness to that of it's owner

and my body is not some loaner car you
can trash and get away with
there will be fines,
for i am fine,

but in those times, where
nothing was ever promised to me
i started to see

beautiful could mean
staying up to take care of your kids,
single-mothering and being glad your husband
got rid of himself before you could, because
you can do a much better job without the chain-smoke
and you stay woke
forever
because skinny is a construct

or it could mean
studying in waters of student loans,
feeling alone as the only ******* campus
but working hard to become a lawyer or a doctor,
she will always be her mother's daughter

i'd say words stronger than this,
but there are children here,
but ***** skinny!
i am beautiful,
you are beautiful
and by beautiful
i mean anything you want it to mean.
This is not my story, but it could've been. This is the story for every girl who gained a few extra pounds, looked at herself in the mirror and said "I need to fix this". But there's nothing you need to fix. You are beautiful.
sadgirl Jun 2017
your new york street cat-calls
will never touch me

because i am woman,
and you will ******* hear me

roar, loud enough
to shake the earth

and sky

people always said to me
"you're too young to be a feminist"

but what does that even mean?
are you ever to young to fight?

i swear on the bible

girls with dreams and big ideas
are scarier than monsters

and her eyes are not oceans,
she is not a tsunami

she is beautiful
she is god
she is woke
she is queen

the black girl, the white girl
the brown girl all make

a rainbow
and I want

to savor every ******* moment
Lost Jun 2017
When I was little,
I used to hate having my door closed,
I would scream and cry
In fear of what the shadows could hold.
I was afraid of a box
Where I’d be held hostage
Caged with a lock
And no key
Back then
That pain was like the sting of a bee.
Now at 17 I realize that I wasn’t afraid of the dark
I was afraid of depression
Making its mark.
I was afraid of the endless battle of trying to fall asleep
Not wanting to wake up
But not wanting to dream.
I was afraid of the hope I would lose in that battle
Afraid of the chains
That made my hollow bones rattle,
Because in the light of a new day
I’d stay inside
“I’m tired” I’d say,
But the truth was much simpler
Than a cheap fix
I am afraid of myself
And I can’t change it.
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