but I just reached 150 followers. The number was only in the double digits for the first few years, but I’ve noticed that there is a direct correlation between posting very personal poetry and an increase in followers. I’m okay with that.
oh, thank you! thank you! this will be put to music soon!
Forget second nature, this pain is clearly first.
I could drag my pen to suffer for days
and still my heart has felt much worse.
They told me to be strong, find strength in some way,
“Don’t show them that you’re weak,” they say,
“be careful of your raw skin, protect it
so they cannot inflict more pain.”
So I tried that.
I grabbed every bandage I could find,
purchased every sewing needle I could buy,
tried to stitch up these open wounds,
attempt to suck the poison from my mind.
I swallowed each pill, numbed myself for a while,
suppressed my fears, tranquilized worry;
took a vacation from insanity.
“Go to him,” they said,
“find peace and a seat on a pew,
he’ll heal your wounds and show you love
like you never knew.”
So I did just that.
I carried my heavy heart and my bloodshot eyes to a church.
As I opened the doors to the building,
my attention shot to the sanctuary.
With each step I took to the front of the room,
my world slowed to a crawl and suddenly,
each head in the crowd turned to stare.
I kept my feet moving, avoiding the eyes of scrutiny,
trying to keep face in a room full of “faith”.
I didn’t reach peace in the house of the Lord,
because as soon as I took a seat,
I was cast out by God’s army.
They said that the cuts on my wrists were
the work of the devil and the scars on my legs were
unholy at best.
They threw stones at my head and chased
me out of their place of worship,
screamed that one day the devil would
have his way with me.
Well, maybe this is what they meant.
Because none of those remedies
resuscitated my heart and my head.
The bandages fell into the sewers,
the stitching unraveled and the pills
came right back up to burn
my throat and my tongue,
but I’m still numb.
I’m still numb.
I’ve survived 26 years. I want to rage.
You keep an open flame
around chemicals to ignite
hostility of the ill-will
just to start a fight
You fill your bags and pockets
with fine knives and deadly weapons
so that maybe one day you
can teach your parents a lesson
Forget the repercussions
we’ve got better seeds to sow
set fire to Detroit tonight
lets give this hood a show
Empty buildings, rotting pipe dreams
we dance on sunken ground
cheers to The Motor City!
the same vehicle who took us down
Omit the rich, fuck the poor
we all battle in this poverty war
brace yourself and pray to your lord
here’s a gun, now find the door
to all my friends who’d rather get high
I’ll be at ground level watching you die
fuck drugs and fuck straight edge
those are both the things that got the best of my friends
and to all the girls that make it a trend
to fuck all of my friends
we’ll all die of the same disease
whether you got it in bed or you got it on your knees
can’t wait to say, ‘I told you so’
I told you so
the boulder on my back has been washed away
” —letlive “Day 54” (via mcurran)That’s what Chris Guillebeau says. Choose a side and know why you are choosing it. Also choose an audience. Decide who is a good fit and who is not.
Lady Gaga constantly talks about how she was bullied for being such an outcast; I understand that marketing now. With that, she’s gained millions of outcasted individuals as fans and they are loyal because they think they can relate. In reality, they can’t. She’s a million dollar pop star with a vast talent in music to boot. She’s extremely hard working, well traveled with superstar access to the world’s most longed after material items, but the most substantial reason she’s not like them is because she has power over them. She doesn’t just set the trends, she magically creates them. Yet these kids relate because she tells them to. She keeps their attention because she demands it. She doesn’t ask, she commands. She’s a strong leader but masks that fact by sharing with the world her insecurities.
So I asked myself, who is my target audience?
Teenagers.
I’ve always wanted to publish my journals, adopt a young teen and share with them my experiences so hopefully they can relate and find a way to better their lives. Connect through my music, my lyrics, my poetry…anything.
Dreamers. Visionaries.
Those who know they have something special but are too stifled by conservative mindsets in a corporate world to let themselves flourish.
The heartbroken.
Those who want so badly to overcome tragedies and monstrosities or just move on from the one who hurt them.
The hopeless.
But what can I do for them? What can my music possibly do for them?
Inspire. Influence them to find confidence. Motivate them to stay strong. Teach them that anger is okay, but there are ways to convert that negative energy into positive energy. Show them that our world is not perfect or ideal, nor will it ever be, but we are the arms that can make this world work for us.
At least entertain them. Help them to escape for just a brief moment in time.
i just took a gander at your blog. thank you for having some kind of idea of where to draw the line in your quest to be fit and healthy. i believe in personal goals. i believe in the desire to better yourself…i struggle with it everyday. however, i also believe that we must find that line between healthy and damaging before it’s too late. we must also know what we are trying to achieve and why. thank you for your follow and your response. good luck in your endeavors!
…because i didn’t agree that the thin girl in the photo was acceptable.
what a fucking shame! this is what we do. this is what the media does and this is what we support. IT’S NOT FUCKING RIGHT.
They told me to start an enterprise.
They told me i’d be nothing unless
I open my goddamn eyes
and finish college on time.
They told me to start an enterprise.
They told me to create a new world.
They said i’d never make it unless
I licked up this mess that i made.
My tongue is dry,
I’ve been licking for too many years to count.
Lapping up puddles of ill-faith,
wiping my hands of the doubt.
My arms are tired.
I’ve been bearing their expectations for too long.
Strapping to my back, their heart-attacks,
hoping that God would hold my spine strong.
They told me to face my fears.
Well, I’m facing them now, I’m facing you now!
It was never myself that I feared,
just the scorch of your frown.
This is my life, now.
This is my enterprise, this is my sound.
This is what you wanted, right?
For me to fight the good fight?
Or was this just a selfish ploy
to get me to battle your vacillation?
I FACED MY FEARS
I FACED MY FEARS
I FACED MY FEARS
I WILL FACE MY FEARS
I just want to be heard.
Exact wording and punctuation as the original exchanges. No Yoko.
Glassjaw: After a career of almost 20 years, an expanding repertoire in music and wit to knock you senseless that staunchly refuses to quit, I still have so much respect for. This is hilarious.
“STOP LISTENING TO MUSIC WITH YOUR EYES” - Jason Butler
This isn’t a motion picture, no.
This isn’t a gracefully written poem
meant to sweep you off your feet.
This is agonizing conflict between what our eyes can see and what our hearts make believe.
oh, thank you so much! that’s really sweet of you. most of my poems are written with intent of turning them into lyrics of my own at some point, but i would love to hear what someone else could do with them. do you have music up anywhere?
My nostalgia could turn my day into a week
when i’m thrown into memories of you and me.
As it turns out, I am proficient in leaving
but, somehow, I have yet to master healing.
Your promiscuity has made promises to my mental health.
My emotions grow more unsound with each notch added to your belt.
My head hopes that you will end this and finally level with me,
while my animal instincts need the scent of your sweat to breathe.
My heart like a child, yearning for your embrace
and your hands like a noose to my neck, recklessly cutting the
circulation to my face.
We bid on disconnection
We suffer in isolation
you have trumped my apprehension
and i’ve met my desperation.
Now, wait a minute,
give me a chance to speak
about how you made it impossible
for a girl to prove herself worthy.
Hold the fuck on,
give me a chance to bleed
because my blood is rushing
but you’ve cauterized my relevancy.
Your pornography has nothing to do
with my artistry.
I don’t need sexuality to penetrate
the music scene.
I’ll crush your expectations of what
a woman should be
because I know that you insist
that there is no room in this business
for a soldier like me.
Sail your skies and close your eyes but be
careful, it’s going to be one hell of a flight.
because while i sleep, resting peacefully,
your prejudice won’t keep you warm tonight.
Oh, what a surprise!
An attempt to fool them with your pride.
We can delete the printed line
and set fire to the archives
but we can’t force a stop on the mind
when it chooses denial every time.
And we’ll leave this earth,
bury with us the facts about love
and how we misused and abused
the truths about how we choose
to entomb love with our drugs.
Pass the time with building blocks,
building up courage to face the clock.
That watch is a ticking time bomb:
race it, wind it, wait for the prime of it
but dare to underestimate the power of a minute,
because time is a killer and that’s the
fucking fact of it.
The Mayans calculated the end of our existence
for a grave 2012 prediction.
So tell me when we’ll start owning up to our predispositions
and kicking to the curb the root of our discrimination.
because if those fine Mayans were correct
in their anticipations,
in one year’s time, we’ll be headed for rigid damnation.
So, go ahead, bear down for an apocalyptic nation.
You may receive what you’ve always dreamt of-
a grand abomination.
1. tour the US to play music
2. tour Europe to play music
3. skydive
4. parasail
5. adopt a snake
6. buy a moped
7. kiss an elephant
8. shake Brandon Boyd’s hand
9. shake Cesar Millans’s hand
10. work at a dog rescue
11. shave my head
12. work at a coffee house as a barista
13. play a show with Everytime I Die
14. start a charity/organization
15. restore a house
16. make a pumpkin pie
17. take a photo with a lucha libre
18. busk in New York City
19. drink coffee in Seattle
20. eat cheese in Wisconsin
21. go to a strip club in Vegas
22. play at Emo’s in Austin, Texas
23. high five Mike Patton
24. get arrested
25. swim with dolphins
26. learn to play guitar well
27. write a song on the piano
28. play warped tour
29. dance in a flash mob
30. grow a garden
31. learn to roller skate backwards
32. teach someone how to swim
33. skinny dip in the ocean
34. host a scrabble tournament
35. drink das boot in Germany
36. dreadlock my hair
37. play SXSW
38. receive a voice lesson with Melissa Cross
39. make love in a library
40. wakeboard for more than 10 seconds.
41. build a robot
42. attend a Lady Gaga concert
43. camp out on the beach of lake michigan
44. drink a $400 bottle of wine
45. see Dracula’s castle
46. publish my journals
47. see a psychiatrist
48. see a psychic
49. ride a horse in the ocean
50. build a home recording studio
51. go hiking in Vancouver
52. eat sushi in Japan
53. be a zombie extra in a zombie film
54. buy a boat
55. scubadive
56. get Evan drunk with Keith and Jordan Buckley
57. be a maid of honor
58. throw a larger than life Halloween party
59. geocache in Australia
60. thrash at a Boston hardcore show
61. hold a two-toed sloth
62. join a roller derby team
63. be a vegan for a year
64. buy a pair of Louboutins
65. work in a haunted house
66. volunteer at a soup kitchen
67. get someone to write a song about me
68. ride a train
69. inspire someone to start a band
70. mentor a child
71. finish my tattoo sleeve
72. ride a bike down a road named “memory lane”
73. run a marathon
74. play a show with Letlive.
75. teach someone how to read
76. adopt a teenager
77. skateboard a half-pipe
78. cut the hair of a celebrity
79. hug strangers in L.A.
80. steal a dog from a dog fighter
81. be kissed in Paris
82. publish an article in Alternative Press Magazine
83. learn to swing dance
84. save someone from suicide
85. make dinner for my parents
86. sing to a crowd of 5,000
87. save a teenager from drugs
88. take my dad sailing
89. take my mom to a halloween convention
90. help to deliver a baby
91. smash a television with a baseball bat
92. play soccer in england
93. brew a fresh pot of coffee for Dave Grohl
94. visit a witch doctor in the jungle
95. stay overnight in a haunted asylum
96. paint Davey Havok’s nails
97. go Christmas caroling
98. be in a music video
99. go white water rafting
100. adopt a husky, name him ozzy and bark with him at the moon
Life sure as hell knows how to throw lemon juice in my eyes:
Just found out my grandfather has prostate cancer.
omg, Jenn, i’m so sorry. call me if you need to talk!
This song is SO beautiful. I can’t stop listening to it.
STEVEN WILSON
“Insurgentes”
She asked me if the title “everyone made it out alive”
was about the fire.
She wondered if I had dreams
reoccurring about the catastrophe,
assuming that I was still suffering from PTSD.
I’m not sure that I ever fully dealt
with the effect of that plight
and the stress that it triggered later.
My heart still breaks when I think of that night…
“The Great Escape of 2008”
…that’s what we called it, anyway.
We jumped from the flames
but it still engulfed our hope.
We lost our housing but more importantly,
we lost our home.
The walls that encased our friendship,
the floor that kept our memories from hitting the ground
had burned and collapsed and…oh God, the sound…
The melody of billowing flames and screeching cries,
a harmony of shattering glass and weeping eyes.
The sirens screamed in our heads for hours
for days, for nights, for weeks.
You wouldn’t believe how often those haunting frequencies
interrupted our sleep.
Days after, as we tried to rest our heads
on unfamiliar beds,
we strained our necks to comprehend
just how we wound up in this mess.
We did it wrong; we lost control.
Instead of pulling our friendships in closer,
we let them slip through our fingers.
We let our capsized hearts sink deeper.
But no, I don’t have dreams about the fire anymore.
And though I tense each time I hear
the shrieking of a smoke detector,
I no longer suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Though we watched as our world burned that night,
our personal belongings could never measure
up to the grim possibility of losing eachother.
Our bodies escaped unharmed from
that third story smoke chamber,
and we’re still breathing three years later.
So no, Mom, I’m alright. I promise I’m fine.
But we’ll never be the same after that night.
I am immovable.
I am immortal.
I am elevated by love
and destroyed by silence.
I am focused.
I am in flight
but I am sorrowed by the sight
of our hearts crumbling.
I question everything
but I am certain of my purpose.
We breathe for a reason and I will not
accept that my breathing is fruitless.
I have found weightlessness
in the demolition of resistance.
My soul is a vessel to carry my voice.
My body, a creation to make that possible.
The only choice I have ever had
was to enlist my talents and
give my destiny a heartbeat,
or to sell out to a disillusioned mass
and join a fear-stricken middle class
and let my soul die of irony.
But I choose to be free
and that choice is mine to keep.
With my pen and paper,
microphone and speaker,
I am a vehicle
for this visionary.
I am everything that they feared in me.
I hear this question often. In fact, whenever I make a comment about writing, needing to write, “this is the perfect weather to write,” I get this question.
There are a few distinct “ideas” that my writing typically revolves around. Even when I try to veer away from those same melodies, the music makes it’s way right back around to the same original sound. Everyone has a muse. In fact, the deeper I dive into my psyche, the deeper my understanding of why I needed to experience the things that I did. The more I understand the trauma, the more at peace I become with suffering. It’s as if we don’t heal and the pain never subsides, we just grow more accepting to it. We decide (at what point, I still don’t know) to live with it and create with it instead of deny and fight our past.
Maybe this is when we grow.
As many times as I write the same line, it doesn’t change a thing. It will always hurt. My cuts will always bleed and I will always circle back to that same damn misery.
But you know what? When people read your words and say “I know what you mean” it sure makes it easier to find brief comfort and security.
That’s why we write. Not to forget or change the past, but to alleviate it. To give our anguish a chance to breathe, even if just temporary. Rip that band-aid off, air it out, clean it up and then cover it until the time comes to tend to it again.
But these cuts, they’ll never heal. They’ll just be a reflection of the life we lived. So with that, we can either bury our emotions and hold our torment in or we can write our story.
I choose to write.
Stacking hearts like bones in a prison cell.
Keep your ear to the wall and wait for the sound.
Her ghost may be calling, you wait every night
for that same falling feeling you felt in flight.
I waited for you and hoped that you would fly for me
but you claimed that you were afraid of heights.
Those lies that slide through your teeth may be
enough to set you free this time,
but in your sleep, they’ll be counting your infidelities
to hold you accountable for your crimes.
Red hands, red hands,
you’ve mastered a plan to get clean.
(your dirty hands wont catch me)
Disguise the blood with smoke and mirrors,
their eyes will never see the side of you that I’ve seen.
Flash back to her and the hallucinations you’ve seen.
Flash back to when you climbed that mountain for
just a taste of rain.
Rewind to a time that you crossed black terrains
just to whisper her name.
What changed? What changed?
Keep stacking those hearts and stuff them in your closet.
At least pretend as if nothing ever happened.
My time may not be coming but your’s is soon to end.
Because they’ve been counting…
I’ve been counting…
Red hands, red hands,
you’ve mastered a plan to get clean.
(your dirty hands wont catch me)
Disguise the blood with smoke and mirrors,
their eyes will never see the side of you that I’ve seen.
Raise you glass, you’ve only got a few more left.
You can only hide behind your mask for so long.
©Jennifer Bartlett 2011
In the last six years,
what started as an expression of art
has become much more like a body part.
I remember dreaming about you,
imagining how it would feel as I walked down my hischool halls
thinking of how stunning it looked attached to Brody Dalle’s.
Everyone else told me not to do it,
arguing that it didn’t fit my personality
but instead of heeding their wise words,
I took action to turn my reveries into reality.
In august of two thousand five,
I left the nest for the very first time.
Packed my things, flew out from under my parent’s wings
and I was finally free at the age of nineteen.
It took me not more than twelve hours and thirty minutes
to find a willing participant
to apply a little pressure and a quick pinch,
slide the metal through and cinch.
In moments, what I had envisioned throughout my teenage years
was now a tangibility to set me apart from the bulk of my peers.
I may have been nervous to reveal my new self to my parents,
but fear, I did not
because I knew that soon they would reach acceptance
and in no time at all, their anger had been forgotten.
Years passed by and not many could understand
my reasons as to why I stood my ground
when I refused conservative jobs and their dresscodes
just to keep you around.
I wouldn’t conform to anything for anyone;
you were my direct out.
When others shook their head in shame,
I held up mine, high and proud.
You were not just an accessory,
you were a declaration of independence.
A chance to prove myself fearless
to an undaring existance.
You helped me to weed out disapproving lives
as we stared down harsh judgmental eyes.
The statement that adorned my delicate face
helped to unveil those who hid behind deceptive grace.
But more so, you had a hand in developing
the strength in my voice; the power in my stance
and though paying off student loans faster
may have seemed compelling,
I knew that your removal would only lead me
to jobs that would not last.
Because you were more than just an adolescent fling
and you reach far beyond just another piercing.
You were a main component in my maturation
and a prominent fixture of my early twenties.
As I turn twenty six this month, it’s time to say
goodbye to my sixteen year old dream
because ten years later, I have become what I
have always wanted to be.
So thankyou for representing my reservation-free identity
and R.I.P to my faithful scenester lipring.
2005, the day I got it pierced:
2011, the day we parted:
©Jennifer Bartlett 2011
