"specifies" poems
In the Webster dictionary beauty is defined as:
"The quality of being physically attractive"
And it never specifies what attractive is...who gets to decide it
but...
The screens, the magazines, they all scream
In high definition their definition of "beauty"
Beauty is itty bitty waists and walking twigs
negative spaces between legs that subtract another's value
if the gap is not there
It is lipstick and pale pink blush on rearranged faces
like children playing dress up
or a giant game of make-believe we are made to believe
that something is wrong with the way we look
And we have been directed well
the cruel criticism oozing out of over-injected lips
typed out with freshly manicured tips
"she has weird ***** "you have a weird nose" "lay off the cookies"
we read off the scripts, taking turns playing the villain and the victim
and there are no heroes here
There are no standing ovations, no thunderous claps await
Is anyone really watching?
Does anyone really see?
With pain hardened eyes we glare
we compare compare compare
ourselves to the models, the barbie dolls, the flawless magazines
our friends, our sisters, strangers on the street
and in our rooms before the mirror
our reflection the bearer of bad news
"you are not the fairest of them all"
will we ever be?
So much trial for so much error
we are worn thin and even so
even so we are told to lose a few
And we run, endlessly
in the hopes that we may be worth something
If only we would realize that beauty is a noun, a word created by man
between beaten and become
If we win this race we will have beaten the monster society has become
and see
that we are all worth more than words
we are flying off the page
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 4:59 PM UTC
suicidal thoughts are kind of like
having a really deep cough.
they’re the tingling sensation on
the bottom of your lungs each time you
start to inhale and if you try to breathe too deeply
they take over, they double you over,
filling up your lungs like water, sloshing,
and suddenly you’re drowning
as you fix your red lipstick.
you’re dressed for the **** and your
hit list stares you down through the mirror every day.
waste of space waste of time waste of money waste of good lines,
a ‘wanted’ ad that specifies ‘rather dead than alive’
because it’s less personal for it to be ****** than to call it suicide.
how sad is it that you peaked in middle school?
that the height of your social and emotional career was
the seventh grade, before all your friends
skipped town in eighth and then
freshman year you weren’t even an ex-friend but
manipulative and they labelled you
‘abusive.’ you find yourself having a
coughing fit every time you remember it,
watery lungs patted dry with paper towels
because yeah maybe you’re all friends again and
maybe they’ve apologized but do they really mean it,
or are you being a victim blamer,
you emotional abuser?
when you wake up at three in the morning
because the creatures in your nightmares are just barely
scarier than the skeletons in your closet,
think about everything you’ve ever done
in the past three years and manipulate it.
give yourself panic attacks over conversations
that have never happened,
riddle yourself with anxiety over what never was,
overexpose the photographs of your darkest memories
until they’re nothing but another lead weight in your stomach.
make yourself sick.
wake up with a throat sore from your
swallowed down screams
wake up with a tingle underneath your lungs
because you know that you’ll never be able to properly breathe,
that you’ll never get a full breath of air without that cough
swelling up and leaving you gasping
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 8:17 PM UTC
He specifies.
You know?
Like the feeling when you wake up to a rainy morning on your day off. How your neck curls into the pillow as you pull up your fluffy duvet and you feel a special safety, certain comfort.
His words are as exact.
Choosing every syllable carefully as if laying mosaic. I'm not always good at understanding the picture. I obsess about one tile that feels out of place until he asks me to step back, the precision allows a specific illusion, but it's so easy to get lost in the cannery yellow and aqua marine.
Out of context these variants of primary colors can lead me to so many different places and I often find myself in an entirely different scene, drifting down a stream of consciousness made of letters.
Sometimes he'll come with me on this journey, indulging my imagination. But these scenes of mine are more like water color, each brush stroke bleeding into the next.
And he is different.
He is pedantic.
He can obsess over finding just the right way to say something even when I understand, even when I'm there. And while I take an anxious breath allowing us both space to grow and stretch, I take comfort in the universe he creates.
I take comfort in the exactness of the words he strings together.
I take comfort in his pedantic way because he specifically says, "I love you."
Dec 15, 2017
Dec 15, 2017 at 2:35 AM UTC
everyone has "those days".
nobody specifies exactly what they mean when they say it, but everyone always seems to know.
it is April third, there is nothing important to me about this particular day, except for the fact that it has been a bad one.
i feel as if everyone and everything i have ever held onto is slipping away, and as much as i try to tell myself to not loosen my grip, my fingers keep coming undone.
i am aware of all these things going on around me but i cant wrap my mind around any of it, i cant make myself care.
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 11:32 PM UTC
I prefer my sisters' children to call me Maasi,
Rather than aunt.
Aunty can be anybody,
Maasi specifies me,
As mother's sister,
And only a maasi can love like a mother.
28/2/2020
Feb 28, 2020
Feb 28, 2020 at 2:31 PM UTC
When alone, I thought
the crowd is wearing my face.
Silently judging,
safe in the knowledge of the tribe.
Transfixed by the multitude,
the lights flash on.
And as the daylight falls
the world is silent,
but for the sound of a singing bird
that comes from you.
The light that specifies the
face and the music,
swings as the deep abyss.
Oct 13, 2018
Oct 13, 2018 at 9:53 AM UTC