Perfect and Absolute Blank

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City Verse

By: Allie Keats | 30 December 2021

Free verse? Stream of consciousness? Garbage? Literal actual trash, 5+ years of writing-skills-stagnation? All of the above. Winter is hard and summer is worse.

I’M NOT SURE IF THESE HEADINGS ARE TITLES OR IF I JUST NEED TO TYPE IN CAPS

Long hair and pink sweaters, public transit, crowded

metro car, tunnels, tunnels, lines, lines, lines. vertical

towers, streetlights, windows. horizontal

trains, crosswalks,

she wants to run

she wants to see all of it

she they he who knows

she she SHE knows?

(she doesn’t. usually it feels like a lie or a joke.)

warm soft pink designer sweaters, only $18.99 EN SOLDE

TAKE CARE OF YOUR LUNGS

the beautiful girls in their coats on the trains bring it out

rip it out, through the chest through the heart through the throat

she wants to be them, all of them

she wants to curl up in their lives

ANTI-RAGE

There is a haunting laminate that coats city life. It is a nagging beauty and a pain that is always present. It is easiest to find in reflections and lights. Reflections in a city are unlike anywhere else. On a rainy night, the ground, the glass, the cars, the railings: sparkle. They dance. They sing. They taunt. They wink at you and whisper that you will never see everything they do.

Only a city could ever hope to satisfy a voyeur. Some comfort can be found in the buzzing life when it’s not overwhelming. But satisfaction is impossible. The city is an embrace but it hurts, indescribably, inexplicably. It aches. The soul bursts forth, it tries to rip out of the body. To leave it behind. It needs to fly up, it needs to look into every window, every cranny. It will not negotiate. The soul scratches at the cage like an anxious animal. It must see it all. It must look every face in the eye. The heart whimpers, unable to comply. It wants to surrender, but the body refuses to vaporize, to atomize, to aerosolize. The lungs are solid. The soul remains trapped in only one body. Trapped in only one life, only one option.

EIGHT-POINT-SEVEN BILLION TIGERS

emperor x gets it, gets the wonder and the scale and the absurdity

wish i could write like him

this part isn’t funny or deep, sorry

Q: which hand is it better to write with?

A: neither, it’s better to write with a pencil

Q: what is the difference between dysphoria and envy?

A: actually this isn’t a joke either but envy alone probably doesn’t make it uncomfortable to see yourself in the mirror

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