so maybe there will be no coming of age.
maybe there will be no moment, signifying glory;
hell, maybe there will be no glory.
maybe we'll simply be two people who were here and then weren't.
the gods will not line up moments for us to scavenger hunt our purpose;
maybe we will not have a purpose.
or a god for that matter.
in one moment you're driving home and you're singing loud with your best friend;
in another you get mistaken for a man with your helmet on, the bulky death bike and then you get out of a ticket when the policeman sees your face and you come home in giggles.
in another moment you've decided to live through another day.
so maybe we will not be anything that aches when it is gone.
maybe we'll be mundane and chaotic indecision floating in an abyss of our own selves
and maybe you never get to meet that famous 2010 singer you liked as a teenager,
and you never get to learn the fourth language,
or go to that remote country
or kiss the love.
maybe there is no love here.
maybe we will go quietly, with naive hope that is false but you hold on to anyways
because if you do not have this hope to hold on to, there is nothing else.
to hope is to have the courage to pray, against all odds,
to pray that there is someone out there lining up things for you,
lining up lives and people for you to become.
to have hope is to be terrified of all the realities.
we'll go quietly, unnoticed;
and yes this does not match what we wanted to be,
but there are happy endings in all those poems and stories to make up for all the ones you never get to have in your reality.
A.G.
Are you scared to death to live
Or are you scared to live
Because you know you will die?
If there was no one to observe the universe
Would it cease to exist as we know it?
If a tree falls in a forest but
No one is around to hear it scream,
It still thuds and the ground still rumbles,
It's just that no one feels it.
So perhaps you are so obsessed with
Letting people know you are here
Because you know you could die
And no one would see the stars of your life collapse,
Feel the rumble of your loss of life.
It is possible to go away, quietly,
Unnoticed, leave things unchanged-
No one to mourn your loss
or to question higher powers
Over the lack of your presence
Or to tell your stories.
How terrifying it is to think
The universe in my mind could go away with me.
I think we're terrified of being forgotten. I think that as soon as an ounce of intelligence entered our being, our first instinct was to scratch walls and make art out of sharp sticks and stones; We wanted it to be known that we were here.
Perhaps when Adam ate the Apple he was more relieved at being able to die than he was afraid of God's anger, perhaps even the Gods hate all this immortality business.
We are here to die. And perhaps the only reason we aren't relieved at that is because we might just forget to do anything but continue dying, we might just forget to live.
So here we are: scratching walls or ourselves, trying to make it become something other than our own coffins at the end of this journey.
Red is angry and loud,
Red is a rebel teenager
Who wears eyeliner
On the wrong lid
And has too many piercings.
Occam’s Razor:
Suggests that the simplest explanation,
Is the most plausible one.
Which means, to put it simply, I love you.
But how do I contain the multitude of all that I feel
Within so little?
How do I tell you,
I see the stars in you;
All my poems from here on until eternity
Will be about you;
“I love you” doesn’t do justice to the fact that
I swear I was a Universe unlike any other,
But I found you and we were always whole;
But somehow, with you next to me, we feel complete.
In my next life time, I swear I will find Occam; tell him
That there are some entities which need to be multiplied;
Not out of necessity,
But out of love.
by Anika
Fell in love with a stranger for a few moments today.
The Gods, they envy us.
We get to live and be done with it:
We get to die and leave.
There is no eternity hanging over our heads,
No forevers to roll the dice over.
We will not become Fallen Angels
Even if we forget our own morality.
We get to leave into the nothingness,
Become one with the Earth,
Get trodden in the very soil
We claimed as Ours once before and then
Turned to dust in.
We become the dust;
The dust that is to us
The same as we are to the cosmos;
We are the nothing.
Galaxies erupt and entire worlds are created,
Stars explode and black holes collide,
So why does it matter that I fell from the stairs today;
Why does it matter that I stuttered in a conversation
Or that I yelled out the wrong answer in class?
The cosmos are to us
As the Earth is to the dust specs on it;
We will be blown away and it will all still be here:
The Galaxies; the Earth within one such,
Packed with an entire Solar System,
Turning around one Sun,
They will still continue being//
In one form or another.
So why does it matter
That I will not be here
When all has been said and done,
I’d still have existed.
Our love was wine drunk
At 3 am on the kitchen floor,
We made space for each other.
We were giggles illuminated
By the fairy lights in my room.
We were lights turned off
And windows pushed wide open;
We were a clear night sky,
We were so beautiful, so pure;
Two stars besides one another,
We were bright and free.
Do not let flowers bloom in place of your words. Speak Up. No more shrinking yourself, staying quiet, being worried if you'll step on someone else's toes. They will shred you and they will like it, enjoy it even. Speak Up. Scream. Let it be known that you are here, you are here and alive and you sure as fuck will ensure that they know it. Speak the fuck up. No more hiding.
There are things we do not talk about here.
Do not mention the lines that once
Ran along the length of your left hand,
Carved by you trying to play God
When you were barely a person//
Perhaps that was the point.
Half a year trying to make the scars disappear,
The other half spent convincing your own damn self not to.
Listen.
There are places in your head
You could disappear off to,
The ones which will make you so, so happy
And perhaps even a maniac,
But aren't maniacs just people
With enough conviction
To want to live in a world
That was their own mind's doing?
I am proud.
When the Earth tumulted and collapsed on me,
Trying to throw me off itself,
I held on with bare hands.
I dug my claws into the brown soil,
Trying to become one with the Mother,
Trying to grow myself some roots to stay.
I have already been here longer than I had imagined,
To have a place at all is magic in itself.
I have so much life left to grow roots out of.