hello arts ink. I have taken over…this is my first post ever….watch out….
my comic is about things i find on the ground on campus bc i always feel sad bc they’re left behind.
pic of smashed ted the bear below…
Tag: poem
Capturing Campus: Hummingbird
Hummingbird
what must it be like to know someone?
not their favorite color or where they went to high school or where they want to retire or how they like their scrambled eggs on any given Sunday
but the texture of their skin
the patterns on their fingertips
born in the womb of their mother
the webbing and weaving
are they high-strung or laid back?
with skin that sags around soft eyes
and peach fuzz
molded lips that taste of
dark-roasted coffee
and the beating in their chest like a hummingbird
when I press my ribs against, hip bone against theirs
we make a sculpture that breathes and pours
with sweat and some saccharine
pleasure in the moment
a pulsing and pressure
the roughness of legs
shaved two days ago
the bowing of their side and the curve of their arms
bracing and borrowing glances
eyes closed, mouth wide
taking honeysuckle and morning dew
speaking only of cardamom and chamomile
whispering of rapture
to be enchanted in a body
to feel, to know
Crooked Fool: Are you angry yet?
Witness.
I was young, crooked femme, buzzing with energy, a nova of anger that was pathologized, bad-ified, otherized, punished…
A performer adapting to the endless energy and life force late-stage capitalist performing arts charge as the price of admission to a club that will blacklist without hesitation. I was easy to work with. Disciplined. Energized regardless of fatigue, a vessel down to my fingertips, twisted body best when unnoticed and unclaimed.
I am a rebel in circus garb, prepared for the tower to fall, knowing my role when it happens.
A clown questioning the colonized, controlling, punishing logics of the state, somehow more threatening in a red nose, but not always thought of as such.
Arlecchino, Brighella, Colombina, Pierrot surviving, working, playing my way through a system designed to keep me wanting, needing.
The crooked, hunchbacked witch who served literal communion to an actual demon in the scariest place there was. The gods rewarded me with a red nose and a spine full of titanium so that eyes, breath, spine will forever be grounded and protected in the act of cursing systems that need to crack, crumble, re-puzzle.
But remember, it’s just a show…
I am the deformed artist who was told by a psychic that I mastered dark magick in a past life and by a spiritualist reverend that even the darkest creature goes to the light.
I am the one who spent years seeing THIS quilted together in dreams, and now feeling the living, pounding, vital force in those hazy green, buzzing and burning images come to life.
I dance in darkness, a ghost in the making, a demon falling madly in love with my mangled form, the footsteps in the night, screaming the angry children out of sleep because they are the ones who know that something is not right, and that something is not them.
I am, apparently, The Bad, so why not play games with the worst of the worst, week after week?
And why not argue where I can? When nice accomplishes nothing, I can at least still play the game – wrong if I choose.
As an annoying clown once said to me, and as I once said to someone who talked down to me like I was a noisy 27-year-old child, cheating is a mode of play.
Apparently, there are those who genuinely hate crooked, hunchbacked witch clowns. And they’ll dress up their deep, burning hate like light, saying I’m sick, unfriendly, whatever, because they know they can’t say Bad.
Except now they probably can.
I will play the game with all the Bad ones, overdressing, playing ferociously, cheating if I have to. If they want a demon, I know a few. If they try to cut off my rough edges, I’ll crack their rigid walls and dance on the rubble, and everyone loves to dance. Eventually they’ll join.
Slainte to the Bad ones. When this ending happens and this tower crumbles, we will dance in the flames and build with our disfigured, tired bodies in our own image. The vengeful gods will die. And there will the demons be, in the light, turning to ghost with Mad, irrational love and screaming into the dark in joy and rage as our dance party goes on atop the elements that once made us. Who’s the demon now?
Are you angry yet?
You should be.
Capturing Campus: The Archway
The Archway
my great-grandmother had a house
she’s gone
but the house breathes
its strange breaths
strange faces
strange furniture
strange footsteps
imprinted by foreign feet
I remember the house
and it’s frightening to think that someday I won’t
that nobody will
that the memory will die with me
you’re getting so tall
she said before we left
beneath the archway in her living room
neither she nor I will ever stand beneath it
again, I am frightened that the memories
won’t be memories anymore
not that they will be conflagration-charred
cataclysmically-consumed
made holed and holy by a marksman’s arsenal
but that they will dry up and fade
wet footprints on concrete
during the fourth of July
when the weather was warm as the parade marched by
I sat inside a home I might never see
again, I am frightened
that anyone and everything is only mine
for a little while
that life is only for a little while
Capturing Campus: Ruler
Ruler
your posture needs
bone cracking
joint yanking
vertebrate tugging
fixing
nobody will take you
your words
seriously
without a ruler
against your spine
become a tower
burn the bridge
extend your praise to the heavens
for height and highness
stretch past self-obsession
and paused glances
breathe
in the world you call yours
Capturing Campus: Dying Ritual
Content warning: Suicide
Dying Ritual
Put on shoes—your best ones–or regular ones; tie them tight for white toes and pink ankles; start walking; walk with purpose, on a time crunch to nowhere; cross the street; watch for cars; don’t trip; remember not to trip; not tripping is important; round the corner at the stop sign; there’s a bird on a wire; don’t stare because that would be rude; keep walking; another turn; do you remember where you’re going; reach the gate; bend your spine; duck beneath; don’t let a car snag your side; up the elevator; press down; top floor; wait a moment; think of nothing in particular; wait some more; the doors shutter open; step onto the roof; find the courage; take a step; remember your shoes are tied; take another step; look at a bird, which could be the old one but isn’t; take a large step; how would one know if it is the same bird; take a larger one; step step step onto the ledge; is anybody watching; watch the bird that hasn’t budged; move an inch, a couple more; how many centimeters is an inch; the wind is cold; breathe a breath; make it good; don’t go slowly; say a prayer; don’t go slowly; don’t look down; but do; should you look down; is that what people do; look down and fall—or don’t; you’ll see it through tomorrow.
