I'll start

I'll start.

Mira Gonzalez - This Friday I woke Up At 2pm

started drinking alcohol at 3pm

at 11pm i went to a party wearing the same clothes i wore on thursday
at 12:30am the guy i lost my virginity to told me he is having a baby

at 1:30am i ate drugs in the bathroom without telling anyone

i don't know how to maintain relationships

most of the people i've had sex with have negative feelings about me now

starving to death during sex is something i would like to do this week

every time i look at my computer

i fight the urge to open a word document and list everything i ate that day

here is what i ate today:

coffee, curry vegetable thing from whole foods, plum

i am most comfortable around people who criticize me because

i feel like anyone who isn't constantly criticizing me is lying

or expecting me to be something different

seems insane that you need money to do things like

develop a drug addiction, or move across the country

i don't identify as 'depressed' even though i feel depressed

seems unfair that i only get to feel a finite amount of things in my life

lately i have been assuming that dried fruit has more calories than regular fruit

i feel like 400 dead jellyfish in the middle of a freeway

Why do you not spend your time on poetry you actually enjoy?

What an odd threat, actively seeking things to get outraged about

welcome to internet.

Blogging is not poetry. This woman is a scam artist.

>1/2

Monica

Monica

Monica

Monica

Monica Geller off popular sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Is one of the worst characters in the history of television

She makes me want to wash my hands with hand sanitizer

She makes me want to stand in an abandoned Ukrainian parking lot

And scream her name at a bunch of dead crows

Nobody liked her, except for Chandler

He married her, and that brings me to my second point

What kind of a name for a show was F.R.I.E.N.D.S

When two of them were related

And the rest of them just fucked for ten seasons?

Maybe their fucking was secondary to their friendship

Or they all had enough emotional equilibrium

To be able to maintain a constant state of mutual-respect

Despite the fucking

Or conspicuous nonfucking

That was occurring in their lives

But I have to say

It just doesn’t seem emotionally realistic

Especially considering that

They were not the most self-aware of people

And to be able to maintain a friendship

Through the various complications of heterosexual monogamy

Is enormously difficult

Especially when you take into consideration

What cunts they all were
I fell in love with a friend once

And we liked to congratulate each other what good friends we were

And how it was great that we could be such good friends, and still fuck

Until we stopped fucking

And then we weren’t such good friends anymore
I had a dream the other night

About this friend, and how we were walking

Through sunlight, many years ago

Dragged up from the vaults, like

Old military propaganda

You know the kind; young women leaving a factory

Arm in arm, while their fiancées

Are being handsomely shot to death in Prague

And even though this friend doesn’t love me anymore

And I don’t love them

At least, not in a romantic sense

The memory of what it had been like not to want

>2/2

Particularly for her mother, who made her feel like her dreams were stupid

And a waste of time

And that kind of constant belittlement can do fucked up things to a person

So maybe, getting really upset when people don’t use coasters

Is an understandable, or at least comparatively sane response

To the psychic baggage

Of your parents never having believed in you

Often I look at the world

And I am dumbfounded that anyone can function at all

Given the kind of violence that

So many people have inherited from the past

But that’s still no excuse to throw

A dinner plate at your friends, during a quiet game of Pictionary

And even if that was an isolated incident

And she was able to move on from it

It still doesn’t make me want to watch her on TV

I am falling in love and I don’t know what to do about it

Throw me in a haunted wheelbarrow and set me on fire

And don’t even get me started on Ross
To strap concrete blocks to my head

And drown myself in a public fountain rather than spend another day

With them not talking to me

Came back, and I remembered the world

For a moment, as it had been

When we had just met, and love seemed possible

And neither of us resented the other one

And it made me sad

Not just because things ended badly

But more broadly

Because my sadness had less to do with the emotional specifics of that situation

And more to do with the transitory nature of romantic love

Which is becoming relevant to me once again

Because I just met someone new

And this dream reminded me

That, although I believe that there are ways that love can endure

It’s just that statistically, or

Based on personal experience

It’s unlikely that things are going to go well for long

There is such a narrow window

>3/2
>maybe a pastebin would have been better


For happiness in this life

And if the past is anything to go by

Everything is about to go slowly but inevitably wrong

In a non-confrontational, but ultimately disappointing way
Monica

Monica

Monica

Monica

Monica Geller from popular sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Was the favourite character of the Uber driver

Who drove me home the other day

And is the main reason for this poem

Because I remember thinking Monica???

Maybe he doesn’t remember who she is

Because when I asked him specifically

Which character he liked best off F.R.I.E.N.D.S

He said ‘the woman’

And when I listed their names for him

Phoebe, Rachel and Monica

He said Monica

But he said it with a kind of question mark at the end

Like……. Monica?

Which led me to believe

Either, he was ashamed of liking her

Or he didn’t know who he was talking about

And had got her confused with one of the other

Less objectively terrible characters.

I think the driver meant to say Phoebe

Because Phoebe is everyone’s favourite

She once stabbed a police officer

She once gave birth to her brother’s triplets

She doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks about her

Monica gives a shit what everyone thinks about her

Monica’s parents didn’t treat her very well

And that’s probably where a lot of her underlying insecurities come from

That have since manifested themselves in controlling

And manipulative behaviour

It’s not that I think Monica is unredeemable

I can recognize that her personality has been shaped

By a desire to succeed

And that even when she did succeed, it was never enough

A poem I can read, stand back from, understand, and nod at

I've started lying to editors of literary magazines
I tell them I'm in Taiwan or Nicaragua or something
So can I email my submission?
All lies

I don't feel sneaky and good about this
I don't pat myself on the back
And I don't brag to friends
I don't even smile
But I do save paper, ink, money, and time

>1/2

these are not monsters. there are no monsters here.
these feel like love, and when they creep inside you
it’s like something once missing is finally coming home.
how could a monster make such pretty girls?
pretty girls,
pretty skinny girls,
they look like everything
that is wonderful about being alive,
like vodka diet cokes
and pictures of hip bones at the beach
and all i’ve eaten for the past three days is my own fingernails
and these monsters (not monsters)
can make you pretty too.

you’ll learn to make jokes about why you’re slicing
the five strawberries you brought for lunch
(and breakfast, and dinner)
into twenty-five pieces.
lifting the morsels from perfectly
folded napkin with delicate crackling fingers
to hesitant tongue
and when the jokes get too cumbersome,
and taste too much like nourishment,
like letting go, like happiness,
learn to put an end to lunch,
forget what it means and
by the end of your last year of high school
you’ll know every spot in the building
where no one will ask where your friends are
and why you look so tired.

the monsters (not monsters)
will share their secrets.
you’ll learn that needle-thin bones, when crushed
into a fine paste and stirred into
the twenty glasses of water you were going to drink today
taste like lemonade
and you can have a sip
for only the cost of the rest of your life spent worshiping
the feeling of hollow
searching up number and number
and dead girl and number
you, too, can spend the rest
of the day smelling of what
you just had to scrub off the
bathroom floor.

go, they’ll say,
outstretching manicured hands, bottle cap wrists—
memorize menus and all the lies you could tell
spend hours at the grocery store counting
fifty
one hundred
two hundred
no more than three
or else suddenly your thighs begin to inflate like the balloons
from all the birthday parties you couldn’t go to
you will learn to avoid celebration
because celebration means food
you will spend christmas day
fanaticizing about burying
your dissolving teeth into your knuckles
until your heart stops.

the not-monsters
will feed you your first cigarette
and your second, and your tenth.
they will leave your once shiny hair
in a clump
on your pillowcase, just for you.

and when your body gets too weak,
it starts to crumble,
but where sick breaks skin
sunflowers will grow.
an entire garden will force
itself from your empty stomach
billowing out your mouth and you’ll choke
but you’ll be happy
because at least you’re not eating
you’ll decompose
until you cannot be differentiated
from all the skeletons that have been
living in your closet
don’t you wish you could shrink
don’t you wish you could have that control

>2/2

don’t you wish you could make your mom cry
because she just doesn’t get why you’d do this
you don’t get why you’d do this
you’re smart but you just googled
how many calories are in tooth paste
the pretty girls
pretty skinny girls
pretty skinny girls
pretty dying girls
pretty dead girls
the parasite can be restrained but not destroyed.
but no matter.
it’s a beautiful thing to be made of porcelain.
the picture of your hip bones at the beach was worth it.

I mean, it doesn't really feel like poetry but it does speak to me. Not like I got laid at all in college or even went to more than two parties, but it sort of hints at the millennial mindset which I'm a slave to regardless.

last night i got drunk and cleaned my room, it was okay

i don’t know why i just wrote ‘it was okay’

i think it was because it would make that line look complete

that line was a little too long

that one was a little too short

but since they were together it looked okay

that line just interrupted the ‘flow’ thing i had going on

so did that line

and this one

that one ‘brought it back’ okay

great

Man there's some awful poetry going on in this thread.

Keep it up.

Gilmore Girls describes
wit strolling through the comic relief-laden streets
lacking in sinus headaches and disgusting rainy days.
Oh, everything is pleasant in Stars Hollow
even when life sucks
for the cast.
It gets better and then a downwards swoop
as Lorelai switches boyfriend and Rory goes
to and fro
to school and back with boys
and newspapers
and theres always that witty banter
and her face is never tomato-red.
Rory basically always knows what to say and she never gets those wierd looks
or completely ignored
or that awkward silence
and those best friend relationships are always sustained

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

“Can’t you get a job using your degree”
“I’m sure you’ll get a job by the end
of next week”
“Have you tried Indeed.com”
“Have you tried convenience stores”
“Have you tried job fairs”
“Have you tried Facebook”
“Have you tried watching YouTube
tutorials on how to get a job”

Noah looks up and points at them—
pokes them in the chest—
God made me a poet—
God made Han Shan a poet,
He put Han Shan on Cold Mountain,
and he put me in this desert.

I’ve never asked any of you
to stop making money
to work less hard

For me to write
of Cold Mountain.
I must live there,
at all times.

On the summit, in the caves,
sleeping under the bristlecone pines,
because you can’t live
on Cold Mountain.
You have better things to do.

My job is to bring you water
from the melted snow
that makes its streams,
so when you need Cold Mountain
I’ll be there
to provide you with water.

But for right now,
leave me the fuck alone!
I’m on Cold Mountain
and I’ll come down
when the wind tells me to,
not because of
an ad on Craigslist!

I like to fail just to have something to look forward to, which is success.
my favorite relationships are ambiguous, unreciprocated or entirely fictional.
I love being retweeted by a stranger more than I love myself.
the trajectory of my life is a pendulum getting entangled in itself.
I regret every part of my body that's external.
my hobbies include dying alone.
I believe that if there is no hope then there is no disappointment.
I am immune to cereal.
I like to delay gratification until gratification is no longer possible.
my penis has unrealistic, utopian views of other people.
I seriously need someone to explain my hair to me.
I am a catalog of anxiety issues.
I experience anxiety in non-anxiety situations.
I read in a book that anxiety is the median between desire and jouissance.
I will tell you what I did with that knowledge.
I revisited the memory of my mom lying to me when I was eight.
she said, 'we can't have fondue like other families, because I am allergic to fire.'
she had anxiety issues and was afraid the flames would kill everyone.
I ate cereal and didn't call her on her bullshit.
when years later we finally had fondue it was jouissance.

This actually gave me goosebumps

I love this one, fuck off

...

gay

Fuck. I'm that one guy from that one TV show.
I spent two months brooding
About a 30-pack of Trojan condoms.
In your nightstand.
There were only two Trojans missing.
I thought about asking for them back a lot of times.
I drafted ~17 texts to you about them.
I even dialed your number once.
It wasn't about the twenty something dollars.
I wanted to ask you to throw them away.
I kept imagining other guys using them.
I told my roommate about this anxiety.
He asked if he could write a screenplay about me.
I guess it is kind of funny. :(