Tag

writing

Browsing
Letters From The Editor

2020 Mood Board: Stay Strong, Be Soft

Welcome to a new decade- the Roaring Twenties reborn for a new age of revelers. This is my New Year’s post. We made it, folks!

In the past, I’ve been known to make long, overwrought lists of resolutions I never stick to, so this year I felt like keeping it simple by making myself a mood board to envision the vibe I want to carry with me this year: Staying strong while being soft.

While traversing life’s winding road, obstacles are an inevitability. It’s easy to let them erode us, steal our hope and make us cynical, so it’s imperative that we put things into perspective. Difficulty is what makes us strong. Pressure creates crystals, gleaming bits of beauty that can become sharp and dangerous over time. That’s why we need to remind ourselves to stay soft.

I fully admit to being a pessimist who has a problem opening up to people. I expect the worst. I’ve always told myself that if I have no expectations, or even low expectations, than I can never be let down. And it’s true that I don’t often get let down by other people, but I’m constantly letting myself down by not opening up to all of the possibilities on my path. I need to be soft, forgiving, understanding, empathetic, open and willing to let life take me where it wants me to go, without letting myself become a victim.

2020 is the year we hold each other up and turn our faces toward the future without fear. Just a resolve to make it better, and hope. That’s the most important part.

by
Keep Reading
bee pollen flower nature photography love poem poetry
Poem Of The Week

What I Could Have Said

we were there at the end of the light,
watching the stars blink open wide like sleep-eyes.
the dark a cloak of protection against the ugly world.
ma il mondo è un bel posto

nobody feels the way i feel in this moment
I find it pleasant to forget the feeling of a man,
a touch on my dry skin-
skin hanging from bone loose like silk pajamas.
io sono io sono io sono

i milk each moment like bees on pollen in ruined orchards
the honey isn’t sweet anymore.
is is black tar that smells like nostalgia and the dust of abandonment,
like summertime sex, sex and sadness and sun.
non ho un cuore è vuoto  è molto vuoto

if i can’t feel then i can’t love you anymore
maybe if I amputate my heart the world will fall away.
like the stars, I blink and blink until empty-
the light is artificial and unmoving.
non mi piace me stessa. non  è importa.

if they find it, let them keep it
there is no race, no ending, the beginning itself is unspecified.
it’s not wrong to wish for something better
and your hands aren’t warm anymore.
per favore, vai.

Submit your original poetry to anna@theyoungeclectic.com to be featured! Poetry is very important to me, so I would love to take any chance I can get to share the work of other poets and creators!

by
Keep Reading
ocean pearls poetry poem writing
Poem Of The Week

Life Labors

it is my hunger, my way
if i could shed every inch of dirty skin, I would
be a small pink pearl of new, baby flesh
ready, ready to be eaten alive and flayed
by the dark world surrounding

this clam snaps shut in the cold waters, tide rising
i am a molecule, i shiver
it isn’t that i wish to be alone,
i just wish not to be invaded

keep my face alive in you,
make a necklace of my life labors,
my pearls adorning your sallow skin
like bones, a violent trophy

Submit your original poetry to anna@theyoungeclectic.com to be featured! Poetry is very important to me, so I would love to take any chance I can get to share the work of other poets and creators!

by
Keep Reading
poetry reader writer poem sad
Poem Of The Week

Dear Reader,

I am peeling myself open for you
my bones are sun-bleached and even stained
with bootblack blood and all my own heart’s illness

I don’t think it’s possible for you to inhabit this space
any more than I have ached to find the way out of it
and my voice echoes, long and empty there

you all have found it with your spotlight fingers
touched every inch of my quivering red
broken every single cell down into meaty chunks for snacking

you think I belong there, between lines and stanzas
but I free myself with them

there is never more truth than when I have
finished here

there is nothing more to it than
that consumption
-is all I’ve ever wanted

please, we’ll find it together
we’ll rebuild my body
we’ll move forward into dawn

Submit your original poetry to anna@theyoungeclectic.com to be featured! Poetry is very important to me, so I would love to take any chance I can get to share the work of other poets and creators!

by
Keep Reading
convertible love poem
Poem Of The Week

In Love With You(th)

sending love through the airwaves
in a mustang convertible 
blue as an eye
as an ocean as a 
dream.
Delilah’s voice rocks us to sleeping-
here it is, a song 
for the ages
of 18-21,
young bloods looking at a starred
sky in their hearts.
a thousand light years away-
something explodes.
the salty air bleeds
into our kiss,
the music glistening
against pink
affections slipping on
cherry-flavored tongues.
we’re a whim,
the dust of a million
years of moonlight.

Submit your original poetry to anna@theyoungeclectic.com to be featured! Poetry is very important to me, so I would love to take any chance I can get to share the work of other poets and creators!

by
Keep Reading
love kiss underwater poem poetry
Poem Of The Week

in my marrow

I feel like 1000 people have been here already
said the words I have to say in 1000 shades of white
a winter storm of loving affections I can’t get out of,
can’t even see the horizon, ground or sky- just this
so I’ll say it anyways

your hair, your smile, those perfect teeth lined up
like all of the people waiting for a slice of you
oh, love, why do you give it all away?
I wish to hoard you in my heart,
lock you away and burn the key 
in the acid of my oceanic stomach.
I have swallowed worlds for you, for you
I gobbled up every bad taste. Every day that I wasted
swells within my bowel, sour.

Love love (see this)
maybe my hands have forgotten sadness, forgotten want.
Maybe I’ve become spoiled with gold and milk toast,
warmed and caramelized under the heat of your loving gaze
and I, have eaten of it, become fat with happy joy,
each breath now alive in me,
in you.

Sometimes I swear I can’t sleep because you have burrowed into my bones
so deep, I thought I could feel you manufacturing my blood cells
one by one, each bearing your fingerprints, 
your gentle touch.
Sleep evades me, I curl away, a caterpillar unwilling
to give up eating such ripe, honeyed sweetness.

I love I love I love
and everything else falls away, falls away
into night, into day, into endless years and manufactured forevers.
We stand and receive, weep and celebrate, never letting go
or even wanting to.

Submit your original poetry to anna@theyoungeclectic.com to be featured! Poetry is very important to me, so I would love to take any chance I can get to share the work of other poets and creators!

by
Keep Reading
sandro boticelli the birth of venus art painting hair
Poem Of The Week

Grasping the Scissors

i want to cut it off
this angelic golden down that adorns my head
and cascades down my back 
in classic, virginal ringlets.
cut it off and then maybe the weight off my head
will ease the weight on my chest too…

it’s always been here, it’s always been this 
great blonde curtain to hide my shame and sorrow
and i have always loved it..
brushing it in slow, long strokes,
watching it fall between my fingers in the mirror.
i have always loved it more than i have loved myself..
lovingly combing in luxurious oils,
letting it fall how it wanted,
letting it dry for hours and hours as it curled itself 
under the influence of only the wind and sun.

yes this great adornment of gold and luster,
i have loved it like it possesses its own soul.

but why is it that i cannot love myself if 
this wispy beauty is a part of me?
(the only defining feature upon
my bland genetic makeup.)

if i cut it off maybe it will cease breathing
and i can begin again.
maybe if i can nurture and love new growth
then i can let myself grow too,
from root to tip in the way my body manufactures
it’s many many many cells

Submit your original poetry to anna@theyoungeclectic.com to be featured! Poetry is very important to me, so I would love to take any chance I can get to share the work of other poets and creators!

by
Keep Reading
Poem Of The Week

Waning Moon

I see less of you every day
and your face asks quiet questions

if it’s broken, can it be fixed? 
if not, where can I throw it away?

the way we see the road is our heart
and in the end, we are only the dust on our boots
and the sound of a closed door

we can’t have broken glass all the time
we can’t have the wind
and all of that golden grass
that looks like hair and heaven

pull it out
by the roots
and chuck it

I can’t answer for you
your silence, agony and heat
we have broken back to the surface
a sweet-sour wavering slump
and suck the sugar from each other’s lips
and fingers
but find nothing
but the salt of an ocean

Submit your original poetry to anna@theyoungeclectic.com to be featured! Poetry is very important to me, so I would love to take any chance I can get to share the work of other poets and creators!

by
Keep Reading
poetry ocean waves seafoam green
Poem Of The Week

nausea or nostalgia

where is all of the seafoam green
inside of me, i know it used to be there
all built up like muck, brick-a-brack
teenage brat pack, angst is not black
it is the seafoam green of the old prom dress
crumpled in the closet, closed
shut tight like a virgin’s lips
and pink like her treacherous tongue.
the heat is a gun
is a bullet
is a hand that stroked my downy halo 
blonde with thick eyelashes
rouged cheeks, or roughed?
milked flat and blue,
that seafoam is my dream
and my dream is the birth
of venus, of pearls, 
you lick me clean and dry
and my baby skin grows over
ripe flesh and taught scars
a billion stars, a navy, navel orange.
hey that tan was a bad idea
and the acrylic nails, those too.

Submit your original poetry to anna@theyoungeclectic.com to be featured! Poetry is very important to me, so I would love to take any chance I can get to share the work of other poets and creators!

by
Keep Reading
Poem Of The Week

girl looking for man seeking muse:

You should know I stare long

And let my hair grow out all year

Before cutting it, almost ceremoniously.

Sometimes I wonder if smoking tastes romantic

Or just like death actually.

I use words as weapons and wishes.

I won’t suck the poison from your wound,

But I will run my fingers through your hair before you close your eyes.

I like to smell like flowers to simulate some kind of chemical reaction akin to lust.

Nobody misses me.

In the evening, when the lights are out

And the sound of traffic outside my shitty apartment window seems to slow to nothing

I look at my fingers in the dim

And think

Yes, this is me. Yes, I am alive

Before plunging into a sleep from which I wish

I would never wake.

Serious inquiries only.

unsplash-logoYuri Bodrikhin
by
Keep Reading