april 8
(prompt: chronic)
april 9
(prompt: it’s giving)
the phone in my hand is a battleground
i cannot sage away the faces of gaunt babies excavating raw material from rich earth, rows of the final children killed by colonizers as they hit a historic third rail
its giving nightmare
orphans in a world of trafficked children i know i am supposed to focus on everyone not just the children but i have never been disappointed by a child’s love and none of their lies hurt me and my moon in scorpio
its giving despair
the phone in my hand is full of delusional texts from politicians who don’t mention the genocide in the room but who crack jokes and ask me for money like i can’t see blood smeared across their palms
it’s giving poison
it’s giving how dare you
the phone in my hand is my tether to the words of the dead inked on the walls permanent, to the storytellers who are threading us back to the root beyond all evil in this sacred world, we, the survivors
it’s giving proof
the phone in my hand is a portal of testimony from people i learn to love because they are imperfect and emotive and honest and growing in public and escalating justice and paying attention
it’s giving heart medicine
the phone in my hand takes as much as it gives and i know i am scrolling too far but i still need to find one perfect meme that will break everyone free from the disaster we have made of this perfect earth
it’s giving truth and fantasy
it’s giving nudes and love and group chats
its giving go the fuck away
its giving come on home
april 10
(prompt: lifetime work)
when to speak the truth out loud
when to hold it, with love
when to let them hold my precious parts
when to carry my own precious weight
how to hold an intimate border
how to receive an ugly lesson
how to fill out into my sweet time
how to show up for existence
letting go of people who only see my love when they are being saved
letting go of the people who let go of me
letting go of everyone else’s plan
for the years i have left
letting go of any shame for my small joys
each of the portals back to earth
the songs of a justice siren
if we will ever stop apologizing for each miraculous difference between us
accepting that limitations make me human
i know none of these things
but i’m studying
april 11
(prompt: ice cream)
when i say i can’t get over the ice cream
what i mean is
i have seen things i can’t release
faces and missing faces that haunt me
skeletal hunger, people in scattered pieces
i know you have also seen these things
it is your job to look
i (sometimes) wish (sometimes) i knew how to turn away
ashamed to need a break from
finding myself inside a stranger’s ribcage
and then seeing your smiling face,
your cone
the transposition of guilt and innocence nauseates me
you know how lemon makes the cut burn?
you make each death sear into my memory
your nonchalance so violent
how will you ever atone for the ice cream
apologize? maybe soon?
not to me, not to us
to them
to all of them
april 12
(prompt: take a trip)
i want to pour golden light into your palms
whisper holy secrets against your neck
show you the star code to every realm
where you can take a deep breath
play for you the rhythm of your longing
did you know it pulses
a living system within you that
understands you really want (more)
you won’t shortchange your calling
god only gives you gifts meant to share
let everyone taste from my river
if you love me, let everyone else
let them feast on the ripe fruit of my thighs
let them hear the songs echoing eternal
through my cave system
your name, your chord
i was made to love you
i promise, take a trip in any direction and
i’ll be your welcome, respite, wonder
treat me like home, wear the key to my
door around your neck
and if your species doesn’t understand
how precious you are
if they come for your body, i will be the dirt
that keeps you warm
april 13
(prompt: friends forever)
- nations cannot be friends forever
- real friends don’t need walls or domes
- friendships rooted in spilling blood together never last
- you cannot be my friend and my oppressor
- friends don’t let friends bomb the earth, or the earthlings
- soulmates are first friends forever
- forever friends bend so they do not break
- friendships seeded in the study of love grow, widely rooted
- if you love the earth be my friend, let’s get free together
- sloth, heron, whale, human say revel together, wild beings of earth
april 15
(prompt: get free)
nobody told you the thing
about getting free?
they were supposed to tell you
hold that sticky joy like kid fingers
how precious it was
to have your hands free
but you’ve been accepting every gift
no matter the weight
nobody told you the truth
about staying free?
— not escaping the present
but finding that constant thread of light
how brief the tastes are
between cages of comfort or crisis
we cannot get free
holding tight to anything that isn’t love
nobody told you?
sometimes getting free
is taking flight with a broken wing
rejecting the insulting offer
calling out the polite lie
and accepting the inevitable
no one has to die this way
that binds us all together
nobody told you…sometimes
getting free is getting so quiet
and the rude interruption
and spilling the secret
and leaving it all there
and the soft no
and the collective scream
until the cycle. finally. breaks.
april 16
(prompt: expiration date)
every nation has an expiration date
every empire too
especially yours
sold out by sunrise
left to fester so long
caught up in curdled thinking
and poisonous behavior
even a child can smell it
the rot too heavy for any house
when all you produce is death
you become the earth
into which the next generation
plants their seeds
april 17
(prompt: steadfast)
steadfast as dandelions
knowing our truth is medicine
we grow where we aren’t wanted
our roots wider than your nightmares
we pitch our tents
in the heart of what you call mine/yours
it’s all ours-ours, all of it
so we practice sharing tomorrow
we soften into mass
every day love guides us
imperfect, terrified, overwhelmed
sure — but unflappable, we grow on
superheroic devotion
like parents, themselves in danger
holding buildings in the air as the babies run under
we feed the future under the fray
we don’t have to argue
you are not god, you cannot say otherwise
you are no more holy than the weeds
holding together the world
all prompts from the poet beau sia for national poetry writing month