Life Finds A Way, Even In The Cracks Of Concrete.

Don't forget about the Palestinians.

Don't forget about them now.

Don't forget about them tomorrow.

Don't forget about them in a week from now.

Don't forget about them in a month.

Don't forget them next year.

Don't forget them in 5 years.

When the history books start to update, don't let them put lies in there.

When documentaries come out, boycott the ones who call this a victory for Israel.

When books release talking about soldier's personal experiences with Palestine, remember the victims. Remember the truth.

Don't forget about what we've seen.

Don't forget about what we've heard.

Don't let them tell lies about Palestine.

Don't forget about the Palestinians when the world tries to make this go away.

if you can’t get love from yourself, of course you’d beg other people for it

yes & no by natalie wee

From Backwater Sermons by Jay Hulme

made a poem i wrote into a comic. anyone else angry that you have to yearn

pure love

#80 I wish poetry came easily. 

Bright words that could naturally sweep through me. 

Like intoxicating and wonder filled seas.

Of lavender, teal and parsnip creme

Trickle from page from pen, from pen to me.

I wish the dam was never closed.

Inspiration endless but an eb and flow,  

Not brilliant wet flashes then dry lonely stones. 

Then the dam’s tight as a dish and I am alone. 

Left to smack at cement and wait in the cold 

For the stones to split apart and invite me to explore the sea. 

But I fumble and stumble, push pen forward on. 

I keep writing haiku, couplet or song,

With remaining words, mediocre and oblong as can be. 

And I feel new stream beds forming beneath me. 

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.