It’s here! Monthly poetry drops. You might be wondering why this is titled July when we’re in… *checks notes*… the middle of August. Well the reason is very simple: I forgot to release the free post this at the beginning of August.

The idea is that if you subscribe to my Patreon (shameless plug is shameless), you get a two week advance on the poetry drops that are *ahem* SUPPOSED to happen at the end of each month. That means the August poetry drop has already released on Patreon, with a free release coming at the end of this month!

As it stands, these particular poems were written over the last four months, but it was only just in July that I finally gave them some serious work in a four hour span. As they say, writing poetry is 90% staring at a page and 10% writing on it.

As always, thank you to my Patreon subscribers! You guys make this possible and I appreciate your support. I hope you enjoy the poems and the little comments for each.

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We have always been graduating
on a curvature, always going uphill
on an arc, always climbing a peak
as we orbit, we find no ascension
in space;

There is just more space

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I wrote this poem for a friend who had just finished their master’s program. I didn’t just want to write a poem that was boiled down to “congratulations.” I wanted to write something that would provoke some thought. There was a second verse, but on a look over, I decided that it works better when I cut it off at this singular line. It seems final, but I dunno, I think the lack of period does a lot to let it go off in the distance.

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Me after seeing friends
Is to see the ghost
They have met;

A specter sciss’ring twain
brief moments and text
messages

Asking “am I allowed this?”

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From this note to the next
only the sharp doubts
can sustain;

These ribbons hide second
guesses inside the
major lifts.

Do they gild sin or just a wish?

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A penstroke dives headlong
into prior words
and lyrics

Does this once exhaled line
trace taste, touch, scent of
me and mine

or just that which I reflect?

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These three poems actually come from one poem. However, on final lookover, I made an audible and cut it up into three separate parts. The thoughts were too disparate but the format was fun, very challenging. I like to constrict how many syllables I am allowed based off the first line. There’s not a constant meter to my mind, but sometimes you don’t need meter, you need feel and repetition and imagery. And I think they succeed in that. The poems were such a challenge, however, that I think I will be devoting time to studying meter and stressed/unstressed syllables.

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And I am crying in traffic again

And I am a puzzle all over again
With more pieces than places
I let them fall

Like a jig saw
Like street snow
Like cherry blossom petals

I am crying o’er dashboards forever and then.

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I wrote this poem literally in standstill traffic, as I was running late to go spend time with my dad and help him in the yard. I beat myself up a lot and this felt like a healthier way to describe how I was feeling without shaming myself for it. Once again, meter? Never met her.

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And the sky was just a teardrop blue
A bounce of sunbeams and surface tension
Holding the whole world by the horizon.

It hangs over the same road again,
A highway wind ripples a wheatfield wave,
And the songs sing what it always did.

One for the memory;
Two for the pain;
Three for the future;
And four for the fain.

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I think this was another poem written on the road; the first line was originally “a drop of condensation and surface tension” but it didn’t feel right to describe a sunny day. It actually came together quite quickly and I enjoy the triplet -> triplet -> quartet format. It reminds of an ode, sort of? Once again, I’m usually such a free verse, wildflower poet that staying within a traditionally established form feels like putting a sunflower in a prison cell.

Wait, I think that’s the start of another poem.

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