Submissions by Mars_August (Mars August)
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
Poet Introduction
Most of my inspiration comes from spoken word poets and storytelling. I like using surreal and whimsical elements to my poetry. It's been described as "sensitive and well-written" so that's something, I guess.
SELF POEM
Published
12th Jan 2025 1:39am
12th Jan 2025 1:39am
This Is A Sad Poem
The first time I tried to kill myself I had dumped half of the contents of a Mr.Bubbles bottle into the tub, making an iridescent and bubble gum scented grave for myself.
I dunked my head underwater for the next hour or so and continuously tried to drown to no avail.
I couldn’t get past the annoying survival instinct to come up for air when I started to panic.
I tell my therapist this as though I was telling her about dressing my dolls or playing a game with my cousins. She furrows her brow and frowns the way people do when they don’t get my dead parent jokes. I...
I dunked my head underwater for the next hour or so and continuously tried to drown to no avail.
I couldn’t get past the annoying survival instinct to come up for air when I started to panic.
I tell my therapist this as though I was telling her about dressing my dolls or playing a game with my cousins. She furrows her brow and frowns the way people do when they don’t get my dead parent jokes. I...
#death
#grief
#hope #sadness
#hope #sadness
107 reads
4 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
4th Jan 2025 8:15pm
4th Jan 2025 8:15pm
A Lullaby in January or A Portrait of Sisterhood
I’m in first grade and the bus drops me off at the bottom of our steep driveway. Jamie waits for me at the top. She has forgotten her house key in her locker at school.
There is ice and snow on the ground, and it will be dark soon. She holds my hand to walk through a patch of woods to the neighbor’s house to use their phone to call Papa.
III
It’s brown powder with tap water sitting in a plastic cap. I don’t know what I expected, but I guess not that. I thought poison would look more alchemic, like a simmering cauldron of black ink.
Jamie...
There is ice and snow on the ground, and it will be dark soon. She holds my hand to walk through a patch of woods to the neighbor’s house to use their phone to call Papa.
III
It’s brown powder with tap water sitting in a plastic cap. I don’t know what I expected, but I guess not that. I thought poison would look more alchemic, like a simmering cauldron of black ink.
Jamie...
#addiction
#DomesticViolence
#drugs
#family
#sister
118 reads
4 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
28th Dec 2024 10:56pm
28th Dec 2024 10:56pm
A Still Life, What Becomes of the Fruit
All anyone wants to do
is split me,
thumbs in middle to part
through skin tender
as a mandarin’s,
peel me back
to see my center,
drink from both halves,
leave the fruit exposed
to rot and then ask me
if I really expected
more
is split me,
thumbs in middle to part
through skin tender
as a mandarin’s,
peel me back
to see my center,
drink from both halves,
leave the fruit exposed
to rot and then ask me
if I really expected
more
#anger
#dating
#fear
#lust
#sex
207 reads
4 Comments
ANGER POEM
Published
22nd Dec 2024 1:37am
22nd Dec 2024 1:37am
Is This Thing On?
You have to be patient in love how about you just love yourself first new diets based on blood type death to the 1% there are drones no one cares rent is too high this is not sustainable the planet is going to boil us alive like frogs in a pot and we kind of deserve it there’s a convicted felon in the White House I guess it’s true that there are aliens but do they need work visas swipe left swipe right polyamorous still figuring things out intimacy with no commitment unicorn hunters getting paid biweekly is ass no one can see me why doesn’t anyone fucking see me there is metal in tampons we...
#anxiety
#bipolar
#corruption #fear
#corruption #fear
128 reads
5 Comments
NON-FICTION PROSE
Published
20th Dec 2024 11:16pm
20th Dec 2024 11:16pm
Lover Girl Syndrome
I can fall in love with anyone if you give me 3 days and a common thread. And I think that's my problem. I don't want or like cautiously climbing for the sake of saving face or being rational. I want to love them, and I want to do so now. This most recent boy? In 3 days, I imagined waking in his arms to snow outside my bedroom window. And he said he wanted casual. What the fuck is casual? I only know seeing someone and showing them a portrait of my perspective. That's how I love people. I want to show them magic and now I am terrified to be that. I have to DM someone and ask them "how...
#dating
#FallingInLove
#loneliness
#love
#lover
139 reads
4 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
8th Dec 2024 00:22am
8th Dec 2024 00:22am
Why Do Recovering Alcoholics Love Diet Coke?
Mariah brings me carrots, and pasta, and money for thirty diet cokes, if I want.
She hugs me in her orange puffer coat, because she knows I have been scream crying
and bargaining with the universe, again. She’s been doing the same.
She grips me tightly and I cling to her, and we cast a spell that makes the five pm winter darkness
feel less like a life sentence.
Boys said they loved us and left. And that is the familiar knife we keep turning inside ourselves.
We give every twist a new name, but the hole looks the same.
I tell her that I hope they can...
She hugs me in her orange puffer coat, because she knows I have been scream crying
and bargaining with the universe, again. She’s been doing the same.
She grips me tightly and I cling to her, and we cast a spell that makes the five pm winter darkness
feel less like a life sentence.
Boys said they loved us and left. And that is the familiar knife we keep turning inside ourselves.
We give every twist a new name, but the hole looks the same.
I tell her that I hope they can...
#BestFriend
#friendship
#healing
#heartbroken
#prose
128 reads
2 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
7th Dec 2024 4:57pm
7th Dec 2024 4:57pm
At the Peak
I sometimes get headaches and
they will last for days.
Marble solid fingers of angry statues
press downward and back on
my temple, rigid thumbs push against
the base of my skull,
the pads of them anchored
to the soft tissue.
I think it might be
a relief for the same hands
to split my head, let it succumb
to the twisting,
smattering its contents in every
direction.
Let it be Vesuvius at last
And leave an avant-garde
showcase in its wake.
they will last for days.
Marble solid fingers of angry statues
press downward and back on
my temple, rigid thumbs push against
the base of my skull,
the pads of them anchored
to the soft tissue.
I think it might be
a relief for the same hands
to split my head, let it succumb
to the twisting,
smattering its contents in every
direction.
Let it be Vesuvius at last
And leave an avant-garde
showcase in its wake.
#bipolar
#illness
#MentalHealth
111 reads
6 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
4th Dec 2024 2:15pm
4th Dec 2024 2:15pm
Ode to the Drunk Girl, Don't Text That Man
Babe, we’ve talked about this too many times to be sane.
Put your cell phone away, there’s nothing to be gained
from texting a man who knows you miss him.
You sent the long paragraph, he doesn’t care,
which is why you’re six shots in, and I’m holding your hair.
You can’t fix him, he’s not a flat tire.
His mama should have named him “Selfish Fucking Liar”.
In fact, we’re changing his contact name to that right now.
Give me your phone, your keys, and sit your ass back down.
He forgot your birthday and didn’t know your favorite song. ...
Put your cell phone away, there’s nothing to be gained
from texting a man who knows you miss him.
You sent the long paragraph, he doesn’t care,
which is why you’re six shots in, and I’m holding your hair.
You can’t fix him, he’s not a flat tire.
His mama should have named him “Selfish Fucking Liar”.
In fact, we’re changing his contact name to that right now.
Give me your phone, your keys, and sit your ass back down.
He forgot your birthday and didn’t know your favorite song. ...
#alcohol
#breakup
#friendship
#love
#motivational
231 reads
13 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
25th Nov 2024 3:27pm
25th Nov 2024 3:27pm
Between Points
I lived my whole life under a shroud of sickly clouds
mirroring the clogged earth
with no bearing to my place between them
Until I found the wilderness
and saw the stars for the first time
stood astonished, palms upright as if to say
“more”
you were written between points of the constellations
covering the distance of Ara the Altar
cosmic scripture that rained truths
and myths
and belief
on the crown of my hollow head
What would I have to do to make home here
I can't return to a place with no sky
mirroring the clogged earth
with no bearing to my place between them
Until I found the wilderness
and saw the stars for the first time
stood astonished, palms upright as if to say
“more”
you were written between points of the constellations
covering the distance of Ara the Altar
cosmic scripture that rained truths
and myths
and belief
on the crown of my hollow head
What would I have to do to make home here
I can't return to a place with no sky
#FallingInLove
#learning
#love
#memories
#spiritual
160 reads
5 Comments
DRUGS POEM
Published
23rd Nov 2024 2:32am
23rd Nov 2024 2:32am
I Still Don't Like Kerouac, Papa
When your father dies of an opioid overdose,
your stepmother will call
at 1:27pm on a gray and freezing January afternoon.
She can't articulate much of anything,
or you can't hear much of anything
or all words are caught and suffocated into a quantum vortex
because you can't remember being told
"your father is dead, and he died from an opiate overdose,"
you only remember suddenly knowing, as the truth
rises from its depression cave
stretches its long limbs,
complains about its back,
puts on thermal long johns, ...
your stepmother will call
at 1:27pm on a gray and freezing January afternoon.
She can't articulate much of anything,
or you can't hear much of anything
or all words are caught and suffocated into a quantum vortex
because you can't remember being told
"your father is dead, and he died from an opiate overdose,"
you only remember suddenly knowing, as the truth
rises from its depression cave
stretches its long limbs,
complains about its back,
puts on thermal long johns, ...
#death
#father
#grief
#heroin
#memorial
413 reads
7 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
22nd Nov 2024 00:38am
22nd Nov 2024 00:38am
In On It
Once I was thin, relatively, I think,
I don't know
but by comparison, not at all.
When they said I was "healthy"
it was a joke I wasn't in on,
a frog in my cereal,
maggots in my macaroni,
it was the taste of iron
in every bite
I wanted to be relative, I wanted to be thin
by comparison, thinner and shrink wrapped
so tight, so smooth, my bones were clutching
skin around them like a blanket
in a storm
And then I was thin, and the hollow mapped
out my sinew, and praise filled...
I don't know
but by comparison, not at all.
When they said I was "healthy"
it was a joke I wasn't in on,
a frog in my cereal,
maggots in my macaroni,
it was the taste of iron
in every bite
I wanted to be relative, I wanted to be thin
by comparison, thinner and shrink wrapped
so tight, so smooth, my bones were clutching
skin around them like a blanket
in a storm
And then I was thin, and the hollow mapped
out my sinew, and praise filled...
#bullying
#EatingDisorder
#MentalHealth
225 reads
6 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
21st Nov 2024 11:46pm
21st Nov 2024 11:46pm
Bio Section
Sometimes when the yolk of my grief spills from its shell
I write letters to my dead parents in my journal.
I also write strange and desperate poems for lovers,
and prayers to the universe,
to-do lists, and death wishes
which are all kind of the same thing.
My socks never match, and I hate folding laundry
so I typically don’t, and the clothes strewn about
only bother me enough to think about buying a closet.
I almost never have company but I wonder
what it would be like to show someone a room,
devoid of clutter and decorated like ...
I write letters to my dead parents in my journal.
I also write strange and desperate poems for lovers,
and prayers to the universe,
to-do lists, and death wishes
which are all kind of the same thing.
My socks never match, and I hate folding laundry
so I typically don’t, and the clothes strewn about
only bother me enough to think about buying a closet.
I almost never have company but I wonder
what it would be like to show someone a room,
devoid of clutter and decorated like ...
#death
#grief
#loneliness #MentalHealth
#loneliness #MentalHealth
139 reads
4 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Mars_August (Mars August)
