I wrote this poem in April of 2024.
mami dressed me up in ruffles and pastels whenever she could
I’d swirled and twirled in my dress until I got dizzy
loved when everyone told me, “ay que bonita te miras”
and I awkwardly bowed, smiled, and hid
sashayed to every single one of my relatives
and did the same thing
it’s one of the few times I remembered being vain as a child
one of the few times I didn’t feel weird and like an outcast
external validation learned at the tender age of 8
It’s April again and it’s not only spring that is in bloom but also the creativity that goes along with it. And of course, it’s national Poetry month and every year since 2022 I try to participate in NaPoWrimo which is an activity where I write a poem a day and post it on my blog. I use prompts from this website for inspiration: https://www.napowrimo.net/ and as always I’m excited to see what crazy poems I come up with. Last year my favorite poem was a spicy one I wrote about Yung Gravy that I ended up performing at open mic.
my forever muse
Also, this year, I decided to give y’all my own original prompts to inspire y’all. Feel free to send me your poem and I’ll post it on my blog or you can just keep it in between the pages of your journal. I had a goal last year that I would post my own prompts for National Poetry Month and here we are. So here are prompts that I wrote sometime in early 2022. Here’s my contact info where you can email me or dm me your poem.
Hope y’all get inspired. And for my bilingual Spanish speaking baddies, I got another set of Spanish Prompts here:https://lifeonthebpd.com/?p=12443
An immigrant love song (swan song)
Privilege and luxury
A letter to my current muse
A letter to my future muse
What’s worth my time
Intergenerational trauma
Fairytale
The drug that is love
Writing is my lifeline
To my next victim
The work blues
The accident
My chosen family
Not enough time
Maybe I owe you an apology
The truth.com
Love looks like…
he killer of dreams
Exposure therapy
Destined for madness
Dancing
Don’t fall in love with me
Forgiving my younger self
My happiest moments
Searching for calm
I knew this was gonna hurt
Distorted reality
Death must feel better than this
I know how this story ends
Cover me with lies
What is the cure for a broken soul?
What’s something most people don’t understand?
this poem is inspired by the 2007 poem “small”
can’t blend in with this privileged world
wrong age, wrong last name, wrong ethnicity
I stand destined for failure
on this institutions steps
as the pressure to succeeds hang around me
like a noose around my neck
and yet I still keep going
and show up every day
if only to teach my kids a lesson
in how to keep going when you want to quit
I wrote this poem in March of 2024.
for almost three years I’ve been waiting for the next guy to appear
as some kind of hero, as some kind of reward for all of my effort
I’ve put into myself and the life I’ve built
Subconsciously I did this
Even as I publicly roared about being empowered on my own
I still wanted someone to be my sanctuary to lay my love in
And I wrote, manifested, schemed, flirted
got obsessed with men were just meant to be friends
Thinking, gosh, if I hang on long enough, he’ll come around
this might work out
but today I discovered the only hero for me
is the woman in the mirror
who still manages to get out of bed
even on the bad days when she’s too tired to function
when she’s exhausted by all of it
I wrote this poem in March of 2024.
last time I had my last first kiss
it was wasted on a middle age scorpio
I wore a cute summer dress with red lipstick
along with my feminine charm
I didn’t have to lay it on thick for him to desire me
for him to want to kiss me
he would’ve fuck me I hadn’t been on my period
his hands roamed almost every inch of my body
as if it belong to him for the 5 minutes we made out
while I dissociated and pretended I was somewhere else
I was numb and devoid of feeling anything
Am I even a person?
He said things about how I was so hot and sexy
and how sad it was that couldn’t screw me
And I laughed flirtatiously following the script
I’ve had since I could remember
and I felt no desire or any pleasure
if anything I was repulsed
by him, by myself
hating how even at 40,
I was still pulling the same bullshit since I was 16
making myself an object of desire for me to play with
and then something snapped in me that day
a couple of hours after that date
I sent him a snap along with all the other 7 dudes
I was entertaining and keeping as options
the same message,
“I’m sorry, I’m not in a place to date or even
to have men as friends, I wish you the best”
it was hard as I had always been addicted
to men’s attention and validation
but something told me it was time
to switch the narrative
even though I knew it would be lonely
Happy World Poetry day! Lately, I’ve been reflecting a lot about how my relationship with poetry has changed the past few years. I’ve always said poetry-reading and writing it has been a type of therapy for me. And while, this is still true, this relationship has evolved in me finding community with other poets online and in real life. I’m actually really lucky that I’m able to call a few of them my friends. This community has also helped me become a better poet in many ways. With all that being said, I wanted to share a few poems I’ve written about this community and how it’s impacted me.
tonight
we gather here tonight
to share the most vulnerable parts of ourselves
through poems written on a whim, in cars,
inspired by dreams and tragedies
and everything in between
some of it will be meaningful
some of it will be nonsense
most of the time, it will be someone
trying to make sense of the world
with a few phrases and sentences
clumsily strung together
and calling it poetry
1/2/24
finding community in athens
when I finally took myself seriously as a poet and writer, I was 40
before that I thought I was some cute and crazy girl
who used poetry and stories to express on paper
whatever she couldn’t burden loved ones with
but now at 40, between the july heat and mental health diagnosis
I had a nervous breakdown
and I used my creativity to get through it
so I started blogging and used my poetry as content
I had no idea anyone would like it, resonate with it
and subscribe to it
and after a year, I went back to open mic
and keep going and bared my most vulnerable
and intimate thoughts
this lead to me finding community with the local
poets of Athens
and it’s what I had always wanted but was always
too scared, too insecure to seek out
and also too busy with everything else in my life
but one day I got tired and finally embraced the fire
of my creativity
and decided to share the artist in me with the world
once I did that, I created a community
and eventually found a community of writers and poets
who accept me, encourage me, and inspire me
2/20/24
safe harbor
I landed in my safe harbor after I almost drowned
and I’m greeted by strangers who welcome
me with open arms
they don’t turn away or tell me I’m too much
when I tell them my lore of trauma through poetry
they applaud me, they accept me,
they encourage me
they’re the sanctuary I’ve been searching for
since I can remember
these strangers who call themselves poets
have now become my chosen family
I wrote this poem in the fall of 2007 when I was depressed.
Scattered dreams
in my past
become failures
of my present.
Will my soul
ever recuperate
from the cost?
Will I ever be that
hopeful again?
I wrote this poem in March of 2024.
I hate it when I catch myself being unintentionally sweet
It makes me feel vulnerable and weak
It’s almost as if my armor of empowered Queen
is breaking and I can’t allow that to happen
I’ve come too far in my heroine’s journey
to allow romantic daydreams
to disrupt it
And I’m tempted to erase his messages
And block him
It’s not his fault or mine
It’s the faulty wiring in my brain
it causes the logic in me to short circuit
every time I talk to him
I wrote this poem in March of 2024.
you were a dead end street
that I didn’t see until
it unraveled me
Until it was too late
and I didn’t want to turn around
and kept going
and eventually I crashed
in the most magnificent
and catastrophic of ways
and I burned and burned
until I was ashes
and rose up in the most
spectacular rebirth
anyone had witnessed
since Jesus
this poem was the inspired by the 2007 poem:
needles of agony stab my mind and body
I feel a new kind of weak
covered in a blanket of defeat
escribí este poema en marzo de 2024.
era tiempo de convertimos en extraños y esta vez para siempre
No había más vueltas que dar o mas capítulos de nuestra historia
que escribir
Aceptar que ya nunca más seremos fue el favor más grande que nos hicimos
Ojala que esta vez seamos extraños para siempre
porque siendo algo más siempre nos causa un daño y conflicto
interno
Ojala que esta vez seamos como el fin del cuento que mi papá me contaba
cuando era niña,
“Colorin colorado nuestro cuento se ha acabado”
I wrote this poem in March of 2024.
being with you was a form of self harm
it was another symptom of my mental illness
It was me living with my unhealed alcoholic daddy issues
it was the worst version of me
trying to find some kind of semblance of love
to fill the void with whatever, even if that love
looked toxic, brought out the worst in me,
berated and assaulted me
still stupidly I went back to you and accepted you
in my life over and over again
even with delusional daydreams in the back of my mind
that if I kept you in my life long enough
eventually you’d change and one day we’d get it right
but all you ever did was disappoint me over and over again
but this last undoing of us is the one
and good riddance for that
because at 43, i’m too fucking old to waste my time
on fuck bois who can’t show an ounce of respect
and dignity
this poem is inspired by the 2007 “veins”:
scared and desperate, I cling onto you
I learned early, solitude is a curse
and being alone is the worst thing
that can happen to a woman
I wrote this poem in March of 2024.
I pay tribute to the women who came before me
women who sacrificed so my parents could exist
my mami who had to leave behind her culture,
traditions, and language to give me a better life
to make sure I grow up safe and well educated
and taught me what strength and resilience means
as she worked long days to make ends meet
as she showed initiative to move our family forward
and with her example I was able to follow it
except I change it up some
to live a life full of love, community and creativity
