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My mother’s white, quiet patience sways,
tantalizing before me like a well-lit crystal chandelier in my grandmother’s house.
I never take a bite of it,
an ever so-careful child, my grandmother used to fondly describe me,
a picky eater;
I never grew bigger than I used to be — still so small and scrawny,
a shivering child left crying in our bahay kubo, awaiting my mother’s return.
She comes home and laughs at my innocent anxiety.

It is a promised heirloom, it seems,
my mother’s white, quiet patience — well-kept in my late grandmother’s bedroom
where my father can never find
for his hands to choke and tear like an old 90s letter —
I was in her womb and he was in Egypt
down with the mummified pharaohs; she sent him poems
and I got a tiny glass pyramid, a snow of gold dust
I spun it — turned it upside down
until it broke, bathing me golden like a tiny sun.
I hid in my late aunt’s room, next to my mother’s mute patience,
it spills like milk, drenches like tears, blinds like a ray of light.

I can never inherit my mother’s patience but I wear her skin now;
twenty years, I have grown bigger, taller
and her sorrows and regrets fit me well like a brown, fur coat,
a pocket full of resentment, of repressed aching, of fingers numb from writing poems;
my mother was a poet, I know this now;
my father — an ordinary man,
his chest is a hollow chamber in a pyramid far, far away in Giza.
Sometimes, I think he’s still there, lying next to pharaohs
for all of perpetuity.
Sometimes, I think I have inherited his mystery
his tendency to perplex the eye, like a pyramid of secrets and secrets,
the archaeologists have given up after unearthing empty chambers after empty chambers,
Maybe there is nothing here to see
but dead, young, unloving bones
next to earthworms burrowing on my mother’s poems.

I can never inherit my mother’s patience; sometimes I think
she has left her aching somewhere in our bahay kubo,
in my dollhouse, perhaps, and I have picked it up
like a spiral seashell,
like Barbie’s tiny suitcase looking pretty in glitter,
swallowed in a single gulp, it’s still here inside me,
growing and poking and tearing and disfiguring,
I refuse to spit it out.
How do I carry it when she herself has not?
I scratch my limbs at the injustice.

My mother’s white, quiet patience sits in Lola Glo’s room,
like a ghost that never haunts but I wish it did —
sometimes, I still wait for damning screams, for broken windows,
for love poems burning in hell for its sins,
taking me down with them.
Sometimes, I still wait for her to leave
like a Macedonian queen fleeing Egypt and never coming back.

Then, I would have nothing to carry, nothing to wear,
nothing to ache for at starless nights —
no poems to open and seal like a stone entrance to a pharaoh’s chamber.
My mother’s white, quiet patience is an unlit crystal chandelier,
a few feet on top of my head. I laugh and spin like a tornado,
like a mad girl, swinging and raising my arms like I was five —
I hit and shatter everything in sight
then blame it on the fairies.
I eat the fine, hand-cut, polished crystals, I bleed poison on my tongue,
and my mother is Cleopatra nowhere to be found.

Everything is an accident, even my intentional carelessness,
now paper-white and porcelain-clean.
Everything is forgiven, even my father’s loud, beer-laced cruelty,
even my hands, closed in a fist.
My mother’s smile was bright and comforting,
but everything is an earthworm feeding on her poems.
And every poem is a poem till it rots

beneath a far-off, sun-swept Egypt.
Published in Issue Six: Daughterhood of Astraea Zine
Link: https://www.astraeazine.com/issue-six
Aaron Beedle Mar 18
Folding thoughts like origami
fortress of the hectic army
a sea of fans cheering wildly
and nothing certain waning mildly.

A pile of notes and bloated files of writings,
the little terrors these forgotten worlds invite in.
A choir of friendly voices turning choices into stressful hourly junctions degrading your peace and eroding your mental function.

I write in lines the complex as the simple but between them find a blurred reflection, a swirling mirror in which I seek answers but find only an ever increasing number of questions.
About: I write my thoughts in my notes to try and clarify them, but don't perceive any increase in clarity.
Aaron Beedle Mar 17
A poem a day keeps the doctor away.
Get flowing and pay tribute in text
don't get vexed that you're now in a challenging place
just relax and give it your best.

The turbulent scene is a flurry of fiends
but you're fine if you write the lines
you'll be safe from the clutter and strife of things
as long as you put in the time.

Do I rhyme, do I rhyme, do I redefine?
With the keys that I clatter
do I shape black matter
do I channel the ink, do you think?

Well I try, I permit
for a time I will sit
and get to the bit
where I rhyme on the slither
of white placed before me
the colour that bores me
until the words hit.
About: Entering poetry competitions and trying to write more consistently.
Aaron Beedle Mar 17
I'm cursed with a terrible mindset
I forget all the good of this world
There's evil afoot, and I know of such
but of love am I rarely reminded.

I long for the abstracted season,
when the world's undone at the seams.
When wild gods come knocking, the cradle stops rocking
and insolence bows down to reason.

I yearn for the coming of laughter.
For the chill wind to tell me the tune.
The song still resounding thereafter,
as we walk past the relics and runes.

I'd show you the gift of the rainstorm.
But few would sit and see.
The Otherland is all around.
But no one's got the key.
Aaron Beedle Mar 17
A mind, I'm trying to find a mind
to read to help me get refined,
so that my guise may come to hide
behind my shallowness of mind.

But friends are few, and far between
a while it's been since I have looked upon them,
so I'll love the world
a little less while I'm without them.

Still I'll push on, borrow a breath
to test the mind out of context
to get to know someone I've made
but I will slow with each delay.

And now I write in Jic and Saw
my people are in pieces
I might just try to talk about
completely different species.

For those you know cannot be faked
but you can take a part and break
the pieces off until you have
a species for the minds you make.
About: Trying to create authentic fictional characters.
On a cold and lonely day
I sit, with pen in hand.

Blank pages lie before me,
begging for truths,
or even lies
A prize of ink,
to satiate the soul.

I fumble with a line in my mind.

Not yet have I put my pen to task.
I fumble and I start,
then recoil.

The ink still abstains from the page.

For when the ink begins to flow
it will spout truths
I didn't even know.

And in a rage, it will ravage the page.
Ravage my mind, ravage my soul.

Depleting me completely,
Until,
A calm falls upon me
like snow.
So I thought I had posted a long time ago.
Only to realize when I was making the you tube video that I
hadn't.
So I'm posting now the video is already up please give it a look
if you have time.
Thanks.
https://youtu.be/NZdSwo2UKLY?feature=shared
or
www.youtube.com/@tsummerspoetry
I guess you can't really have a haven anymore,
These days everyone is angry,
They want to rip it up into internet war.

Can we lay down arms?
Can we still find peace in places like these,
I don't remember this much random slander in 2024,
But I guess things can change fast in three months.

Hold your fire!
Stop the rounds,
Artist are dropping dead all around,
Rodger is an Echo, silent in the wind.
Someone dropped by,
Just to attack Hall and Truth.
When did the keyboard war reach these recesses?

You can't have jack anymore!
Not true, you could have it,
Had you not thrown it at the wall.
I never thought I'd be the one begging for calm,
Critique turned from a reward,
To an assault on anything on a page.

Paying an arm and a leg,
To get a political letter to the front page,
Just to ridicule any feedback you receive.
This went from an escape,
To a constant shock and turn around.
So can we just drop weapons please,
And focus on every ounce of love we pour into hp.
This will not be relevant to certain writers, but to the ones it is I beg of you, leave it alone. All the instigators, they're scared people looking to scare you for a release. If you stoop to there level you just empower them. Poetry is a tool, not a weapon and there is no place for random rumors, ****** comments, aggressors that don't write, and anybody who believes they can say exactly how somebody should and shall use art. I am tired of reading my favorite authors just to see random people lying in the comments trying to defame them. And I am ashamed to even share a generation with these kind of people, to all young poets here and that are to come, be the best you can so we can prove some of us are mature enough to not go right to cyber slap boxing anyone we disagree with. Peace for writers on HP.

Apologies to anyone mortified/angered/saddened/scared/disgusted by this, it's just on my mind and I am tired of it.
Thomas Castle Feb 27
still the same songbird i ever was,
i hum our songs in hope of your return
the duets are now solos
i still hum in one singular melody though
i couldn’t recall your high notes
pretty much like how
i couldn’t recall the strokes of your flying movement






maybe it was the distance
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