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Anais Vionet May 2023
I refuse to write anything brilliant today,
in support of the writers’ strike.
Anais Vionet May 2023
There’s a writers’ strike. Should you be writing today?
Sleep - Oh my dear friend why do you hide
midst the turbulent brooding that twist
and tumble within my fatigued mind?.
Come, let slumber kiss my heavy eyes,
whilst Luna roves the scene Nox has spread,
waken for me Somnus from his bed
to still thoughts and words erratic chase,
till Morpheus dreams then takes their place:
thence to grant me slumbers precious peace,
Come - settle my mind: Please - let me sleep.

3.30AM ©Michael C Crowder @scorsby
15th February 2021
Unpolished Ink Mar 2023
When the mind lies fallow
do not weep
or think all birds have flown
from bitter dying earth
where nothing grows or ever shall
calm yourself
your barren land is merely sleeping
thoughts like seeds must wait
and feel the warmth of spring before they flower
they will come again
to drink the light and taste the air
green shoots
from roots you never knew were there
Unpolished Ink Feb 2023
Open a book
discover a landscape
waiting for you explore
your map is made from footsteps
where the writer walked before
Anais Vionet Feb 2023
There are opportunities, from time to time, to see and meet influential people here at Yale - leaders in their fields. I write a little, so I started going to see the writers when they did readings and interviews. The writers I’ve seen so far are Ada Limón, Vijay Seshadri, Terrance Hayes, Alison Bechdel, Roxanne Gaye, Sheila Heady, Natasha Trethewey, Dasha Nekrasova and more.

Before I kick this rat's nest let me say that I’m not an English Literature major. I haven’t done “close readings” of these authors' works or performed any literary analysis. What follows are just my opinions or what I’ve overheard (and much of that I disagree with).

After the readings and greetings, I hang back in the crowd to hear reactions. Many of the Yale students attending these events want to seem intellectual and subversive - at the same time, they don’t want to be polarizing or say things that their peers will disagree with. I’m appalled at how little credit is given to writers for their earlier, groundbreaking work.

Some crowd reactions included: Roxanne Gaye “is so 2016,” Ada Limón’s presentation seemed “sanitized and censored.” Jia Tolentino, “no longer staking out controversial spaces.” Much of the criticism was that these authors were freer, as nobodies in their basements, to rage against the system but they’ve since been corrupted, tamed and rendered vapid, as it were, by the financial ties of fame.

At a reading by Terrance Hayes, he discussed the criticism that the “classics” represent the “white cannon” and don’t include alternative perspectives. Terrance Hayes argued that the “classics” are such because they present universal truths and that, like science, you don’t have to erase things to include new things.

I’ll cut to the chase - here are the three authors whose events impressed me the most:

Sheila Heady
Sheila Heady did a talk on her creative process. Which normally I’m pretty skeptical of because I’ve seen some vague, wishy-washy answers - but Sheila shared it all. She had spreadsheets detailing the time she spent writing, graphs on time spent researching, and even pictures of her desktop arrangement (which says a lot about someone). She was so open and vulnerable - almost indifferent to judgment - it was refreshing, honest and endearing.

Some days she would write for 2 minutes and on others for 10 hours. I think it showed that the creative process can be messy and we’re not failures if we don’t set out writing time every day.

Natasha Trethewey
I have a complicated response when listening to people read aloud about terrible things that happened to them - I question their motives, purposes and intentions. Natasha Trethewey however, used it as background for a discussion of her relationship to poetry and writing. It was beautiful to be in that room, it was inspiring rather than being provocative.

Dasha Nekrasova
On the flipside I absolutely loved Dasha Nekrasova who’s all about being a provocateur. Her event was chaotic and crazy. It was a Yale Political Union (YPU) event, and I don’t know what those people are on, but there was yelling, objections, people getting up, she was skipping around the stage. At first, I didn’t realize it was a debate because it had a freeform look and I came in a minute late, from chemistry class - but I liked her a lot in the debate format. I plan to attend more YPU events in the future.
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Vapid: dull or boring.
Unpolished Ink Jan 2023
Rest in peace you gentle soul
your eyes which saw only truth
gave us the spirit of those who worked the land
a portrait penned with honest colour
painted as it was
and not how we would have it be
fray narte Dec 2022
My love is the shape of canine teeth and claw marks
I leave around your neck,
the way I leave poems decaying in an unforgiving landfill —
the gods have turned away in disgust
as I sit and lick, like a rabid dog,
the maggots chipping away from the inside —
the entrails of my grief, all pulled out without mercy,
without a deathbed confession,
without a god to listen.
I long for something else to unfold;
something sacred and beautiful
when you turn my body inside out, but lo.
This is as deep and far as we go.
Tell me, I beseech, does my filth look better inside out,
uncovered, on display,
penetrating your very skin?
Take what you need, love, they are all yours —
my sins, my wounds, my impiety
in exchange for your darkened heart — I’ll spit it out
and swallow it back
down to my underbelly where no one can ever take it —
not you, not the gods, not their fallen, forsaken angels.

Forgive me — forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.
Forgive my unforgiving hands, forgive my unforgiving poems
if our sick, twisted, defilement is all they ever know.
written December 14, 2022, 9:31 a.m.
fray narte Dec 2022
Such a classic mortal blunder to lay
my spine as it erodes, graceless, inelegant
on Galatea’s cold, ivory arms;
such delicate carvings can never be human, look human,
feel human under my lonesome bones.

I long to see you flinch and break
into fine, liquid, rain of dust blinding me,
covering the walls of this room
in a blameless shade of white: a new asylum ward
for my kind of insanity,
you say.
It envelopes like light around my awe
and my forlorn limbs,
tangled with Galatea’s unmoving ones.
I look for comfort within brittle carcasses
scraped of everything they could ever give.

The quiet persists eerily.
But here, Pygmalion’s gifts remain untainted:
the apex of auger shells, the beak of a songbird
the blunted ceriths, the rusty chisels
all impaling my spinal bones.
Yet the sculptor’s kisses, long erased,
the careful carvings, long defaced,
long reduced into a Grecian ruin.
I bury my body on your arms yet they find no rest
against the ghostly pleas of mammalian tusks.

How many for your fingers?
How many for your hair?


Tell me, Galatea, were you carved to bear the weight of
all the sea salt I swallowed as I drowned?
Soften under my meandering thoughts; I long
to see you flinch and break — like all the dead elephants —
any reminder that you yield pliantly to the voice
of the love goddess, that you were once turned human.
Break now, your solid arms, under my own collapse
over the sea foam caught on fire.

I am no longer bending and weeping to pick myself up.
Here it all goes down and ends:
my bones,
and yours,
burning,
snapping.
Nothing —
nothing less glorious will last after us.

— Fray Narte
written October 18, 2022, 1:35 pm
Mystic Ink Plus Aug 2022
I can’t word it right
I’m afraid to word it wrong
And all I have are these words....

To feel anything that comes across your way is the greatest gift, you need to appreciate as being human. Time humbles everyone.
Stay human.
Or at least try to be.
Just because someone has 2 hands, 2 legs, a head and knows your language, still that doesn't make one mankind.
Honestly it's like that.

With deep intuition, writers are the sensitive being, highly mentally stimulated. Passionate when inspired with calligraphy of thoughts.
They simply can't resist the allure, and the temptation. They are fond of dancing. They dance relentless inside their cerebellum, between fantasy and reality keeping balance, showing their soft edge and the hard edge, saying more with less, weaving words with a hypnotic spell.
Deep inside, they alluringly longs for understanding human emotions, ****** expressions, perceive more from less. All the time they immerse themselves in a moment, with the ink they feel free, and finds pleasure even in pain, making utterly breathless.
In their verses they tend to get lost and caught, yet somehow still manage to be hidden. However the avid seeker who can read their mind can finds them, naturally they hide in all those places where only soul can reach with pulsating heart, consumed in enchanted dream until the end of time.
Always they try to grasp reality still enjoy solace in the silence, often insomniac which can burn out extensive for the honest salvation. If restricted, they redirect themselves breaking the pattern and find a way to validate their journey.

If you get closer to them, and say one reason of being worthless for a while, they give 100 good reasons what makes you so special.
Pointing to a drop of water, they may glorify as an ocean, and showing the ocean, they can compel you to believe it’s just a drop. Whatsoever they write for a purpose, not for a praise.
You are welcomed to get life in between the lines, beautiful in your own way.
Thank you for your vibes.

Sincerely yours
Appreciator
Genre: Experimental
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