Lacexleaves - New Beginnings

i’m thinking tonight about masterpieces. michelangelo looked at the sixtine chapel and saw; nothing to preserve. virgil wanted his aenid burned and forgotten; only to be saved at the behest of an emperor who thought it flattery. kafka instructed his friend to burn everything he’d ever written - too personal was it, too unfinished.

they were ignored.

instead, their work was taken and held and published and thrown to be gawked at. instead, an emperor, a pope, a friend, took from within the cavities of them their choices; their art.

tumblr rolls out post+. twitter rolls out tip jars. youtube takes half of what creators earn. on social media, there is a ko-fi or a patreon and a polished face in every bio. i show my poems to my mother and she asks if I will publish them before she says anything else. emily dickinson instructed her sister to burn her poetry.

her sister did not listen.

we are a community, says tumblr, we should give back to creators. my last poem had 50 notes. six of those were reblogs that weren’t mine. i lie in bed at 2am and stare at my bright phone screen and the way netflix’s library grows thinner and thinner. the first ad on tumblr that i can reblog is for amazon. amazon takes more than half of what authors earn.

kafka’s friend took barely finished work and hammered it into structure. he is the only reason we know of him.

my father wrote a book and a play when I was barely big enough to reach his knees. when i try to talk to him about writing, he shrugs.

no one wanted to publish it, he says. so i don’t write anymore.

i am filled with poems I have never published, books I haven’t written. There are little snippets of them scattered throughout my life. I link to my ko-fi on my tumblr.

-

asked capitalism of the artist: what is art, if not for consumption? who does art benefit, if it is not consumed? why create at all if you do not market it? who are you, frothing at the mouth about someone publishing someone else’s poems? who are you to hate your magnum opus? what is art, if not in relation to its reception? if no one sees it, how is it art?

said the artist, baring their teeth: it’s mine.

April 13,

Islets of grey amidst a sea of coral and azure. I could breathe in the beauty of the evening and spend a lifetime in its transitions from russet and gold to the dimness of twilight. Poetry, happiness and peace are in the air for those who care. Beautiful. Beautiful. I can’t repeat it enough times. I am lost and found again. Redemption is sweet.

I’ve been unnaturally happy all day and I am not sure if this is a good thing *throws phone up in the air and laughs idiotically while silly songs play really loudly in the background*

Evening at the Balcony

I smoke the night from my neighbour's pipe

When the smell of baking bread and piano pieces

Are gone down with the sun, and the cloud creases

Over the sea of mountains where lights rest dove-like

I rise from a wasted pile of blankets and books for a hike

To the balcony. I stop at the corolla vines and stand by,

And wait with the jackdaws until the smoke billows up to the sky.

One night, sharing unseen my neighbour's cigarette

And their voices that lend themselves to a radio babble

I watched a single star warmed by the clouds and space rubble

It fluttered, almost clattered so bright

Its fire spilled and burned the balmy night.

One by one shreds of clouds caught spark and rushed away

And believe me when I say the moon hid under the trees today.

Tonight again, I waited at the moon for the shared smoke

And tonight I found a friend in the fig tree, it spoke

To me as I would have thought it might

But at its wild branches rustling the jackdaws took to flight

Yet alone I wasn't, for the purple tree and I

Could speak as old friends, warming up by and by

It knows now all the stale words and song

That fumes in my head all evening long.

In turn I have mapped out its lost heart.

- pollosky-in-blue

Butterflies, spinning in celestial delight, over arches

Crumbling and old, divinity longs for the brush of a

Whispering wing. A Darkening sky looms over the cathedral

Of locked bolts, standing tall and stalwart.

Footfalls echo down the hallways of buried thought,

Love lies dreamlessly in a flower wreathed coffin.

A hand gently runs down the jar of forgotten myth,

“Elpis”, the walls softly echo, “You should have

left when you could Have”. The dead roses you

fear are tucked away in the spandrels of memory,

The night is dark and beautiful,

The butterflies linger, will you too?

When Mahmoud Darwish said, "A University degree, four books and hundereds of articles and I still make mistakes when reading. You wrote me 'good morning' and I read it as 'I love you'."

A shade of green, the colour of a mid-July swimming pool by the sea at sunset, the colour of lush forests, soothing, comforting, yet so intense a shadow just beneath the surface, lurking fleetingly by the corners, somehow synonymous with the gradual lavender that covers the sky at dawn.

The feeling of regained humanity pervades the maple grove,

As branches rustle in the evening light - glinting golden,

their music pleasing dissonance, a swift breeze blows

over the horizon, blotting out lurking shadows.

Knives of love cut wounds that bleed ambrosia,

for what is the taste of ambrosia but the derisive emptiness

of a secret forgotten?

Faded flowers lay waste, that once were wreaths of worship

on altars sacred. At sea one instant, fragmented and lost,

on an isle the waves break unforgiving, and by the shore,

Robed in the receding Mist of dawn, towering and dense stood

The Maple grove, an unremembered grave of forgotten secrets.

choral music is so beautiful