"substantiated" poems
Yes, I'm a girl and I'm not trying to justify my body language nor am I positioning the rights of a feminist on the top, but
Yes, I was questioned always, even when I was right.
Subservience was legitimized as my trait ever since I felt this world.
Every time when I was buckled under by his lecherous eyes, I was asked to adjust my dupatta well.
Every action of mine substantiated the height to which I'll hold the name of my family.
I was asked to cross legs while sitting, speak amicably, yet not solitously.
Every time I'd to hide my period stain like a ****** blot.
I was asked to gallop my cramps because letting it out is a bitter sin.
Yes, I get my body scanned by their lewd gaze day in and out even when I put my baggiest of clothes on.
Yes, I'm a girl, and I have beautiful synonyms, call me maal, patola, bomb, ***** *** or a girl? May be, let yourself decide.
Yes, I'm questioned on the extension of the Roti's that I make and the smiles that I couldn't fake.
Yes, I'm a girl and I'll stand, and question your authority if it calls for, call me stubborn. Okay!
Remember, I'm a girl, and if you accuse me of being a feminist if I know, and can raise my tone up and against your authority, humanism needs to be checked then.
-APARAJITA TRIPATHI
Jul 24, 2018
Jul 24, 2018 at 10:13 PM UTC
breathing down my neck
smelling like axe and testosterone
a mixture of callouses on my
baby doll hands
and the sun's reflections through dusty windows
on a winter day
I know that my actions are erroneous
stained with reluctance
the windows in my old church
scream at me for the reluctance
I stopped believing in god when I realized it spells dog backwards. or was it when I was 13 and realized I would make 75 cents to every dollar.
my unfounded reasoning for running
substantiated only by my astrological sign which I reluctantly believe on days where I need a hiatus from the dirt in between my toes
SCORPIO
it plays hard to get
but astrology spells dog backwards too
I should've said yes to the axe smelling boy
Jun 17, 2015
Jun 17, 2015 at 11:58 PM UTC
Exchanging
recommendations under flickering lights ! we transpose the nature
? of our insect-like movements
$
with the slick of our collars,
our dull-shine badges.
Eye
makeup
arrayed in sheens
to blow your eye's burn
away
back into
the cold of space,
where you belong
the skirt of the star's burn,
to sear you (un)clean
without alarm.
with a certain sweltering silent charm
Somewhere, saturations swell
in non-
casual ******** singsong.
Klarity is substantiated.
Forgive a whiff into cigarette dust.
Into reticulated (t)rust.
✙
How many leaves
connect
to form the tree's glow?
I'm sorry for asking
now
*I must go*
...
Forbidding madness
with a
keen
brow-
bent
glare
ballroom harpies
chase you backwards
down
a
flight
of
stairs
.
.
.
*what is this caution
here cushioning me
porous like bed foam
harm eating me slowly*
?
smirking consistent smart
a loneliness for hatred
.
.
.
Tear me up for what is holy in me
crumpled 'piss-poor' regard, it's a satin-shure smile
I am churning and I know (not the exit)
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 4:23 PM UTC
and love of winter,
found absent though
i do not lament it –
i lament the loss of my ****
lament as the sun rises.
and acts of valor,
acts of ********** or –suasion,
trail’d off as words
spew forth in riptide.
forth to recreate, to wipe clean.
and censured nods exchange,
we met not eyes, you were
only in my vision’s drift. in my
field of autonomous response.
and in repose at end of day,
all my colors in restful
form. harmonious form.
substantiated form.
and discernable of madness,
reparable non-sense to draw
some drifting vision.
to draw upon jaded gaze
cloak’d defensive.
and i wander the thoughts,
i wander the right
emptiness in your eyes.
and i wander on.
Dec 31, 2012
Dec 31, 2012 at 3:26 AM UTC
“**Hineni, Hineni; I’m ready, my lord.”
(For Evangeline Ruth Hope**)
<>
*”Hineni is Hebrew for “here I am,” and is the response
Abraham gives when God calls on him
to sacrifice his son Isaac. It is also the name of a
prayer of preparation and humility, addressed to God”*
<>
*what you do not know
is that this word,
was spoken with a fist beating
a pin into the praying man’s chest
recited daily,
shades of hopeful, reverent resonance,
a shaded resolution, disguised as a quavering variable,
a statement, a questioning, an unsteady surety,
all of the above
this word, rooted in my genetic consciousness,
been ready repeated since my first whispering
was I ten years aged?
first time, full on bowing
on the synagogue floor, not fully understanding or
ready to confess my selfish need for forgiveness,
my forehead resting on my stubbed fingers resting on carpet,
worn thin by my predecessors ancestors,
who now comprehend more, but then, never enough
these same fingers, that write this collective,
Hineni,
a word repeated oft, flavoring of the who
of who I am, a training in soul fracking from
early childhood, its import, powerful beyond
today’s identity revisionist empowering
let me plainly speak, in the original language
taught to me with that other tag along, English,
a lingua franca, a dialect that can never capture
a soul presenting himself in substantiated readiness
for the whatever exists in between
hallelujah and hineni, where the rubber soul
hits the road, stumbling on hands and knees
on a forest path of roots and soil, where sunlight breaks tween
branches, are road signs to look up, look down, look within
I know your name,
Evangeline Ruth Hope
analyzed its components,
cleverly constructed Greek and Hebrew rooted,
bearer of good tidings, following Ruth in, to hope,
you a Moabite in Mormon Utah, preparing
yourself for exposure, practicing humility
unceasingly seeking
good
that is how it should be
cannot translate well enough
what was this gift given to me
learning as a youth, a wanderer, tribal member
where beseeching is second nature,
and accepting personal responsibility fully cardinal,
fiddling prayers while standing unsteady on
the roofs of extreme shakiness
hineni is then but this:
a prideful admission of strength
ready ready ready, here I am,
completely unready for the unknown future foretold,
hineni I know
here I am,
ready or not,
find me so I can be found,
cease, help me cease, my foundering,
confident in my willingness to
find a way*
netanel
9/12/19
Sep 12, 2019
Sep 12, 2019 at 8:27 AM UTC
Help. If that is a question,
and quests are journeys from here to there and back,
again.
If and. A state of hesi oddness,
yes,
we exist in spite or spirit of
our creator, eh?
The craftsman's due.
Muzzle not the ox that treads the corn.
Pay the piper, if ye dance, ye know ye did.
No need to lie and say you know better,
you became more like yourself as you aged,
who made you be you?
Who do you think you are?
Aha, Pinocchio, Punch 'n' Judy… no, no Stepford
wife, but a reason for the wish, clown collector meet my
Curio store clown,
Kohari,
Can we handle a different true?
Kohari, looks you in the eye, a god message,
come up the ladder,
tell me no lie, or I
shall laugh out loud in your face, you don't know
squat, dung, **** brings stars to your ai
respectible eyes,
but this is the medium, the way, so to say, we came to
help
get past actual standing under knowns,
and begin walking into the rest
that remains to be known,
by those who see by faith invisible things form
into substantiated realms of sensation,
sense, common,
is felt known
--- safe here, asif
no miles to go,
this were home, and sleeping, now,
is safe.
Dec 16, 2019
Dec 16, 2019 at 6:12 PM UTC
"The world is flat!"
the dog chokes while
hitting his head against the concrete wall in the stairwell.
"You'll never understand me,
and neither will my parents."
Head in my lap, he coughs.
My hands and gaze are coated in saliva
and something I don't recognize.
The air weighs a ton and shrieks like
'the lasting impact of neglect'
the dog is deaf.
I drop him,
a deliberate show of apathy and
the only tool that remains to me
to stifle my selfish and substantiated rage.
I know the bond is broken,
but I have borrowed myself a razor shell
and I will not emerge again.
Oct 23, 2016
Oct 23, 2016 at 6:24 AM UTC