TEARS ON A TRICK MIRROR

(Otherwise known as 150 Reasons to Keep Writing During an Apocalypse)

 

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1. it is the light of little heavens (poured scattershot over the page) 2. also a mouth full of monsters, betoothed with many midnights (tongue of summer swelling) 3. cracked glass thru amber (leafbit, of lovedrunk dreamers) 4. memory’s paws prancing upon fresh snow (silence) 5. to gnaw on grace 6. play hopscotch with eternity 7. it gets easier 8. it also gets harder 9. both  10. the right words are worth a fight 11. to dance with our disease 12. to get lost 13. to get found 14. shipwreck words that reek of hope & secondhand heavens 15. sentences, scenes, discarded dreams 16. lovely fissures & secret light 17. secret darknesses, too 18. words like electric antlers 19. sheer mouthfeel of IF 20. a stranger's tongue once buried will bloom 21. ghosts are hungry 22. so feed them a lonely sentence? 23. maps like to mutate 24. imagined people are still people 25. some skies are made of glass 26. some scars like to sing 27. yr perfect sentence is the one not yet written 28. yr characters still need a spokesperson 29. there is enough silence to share 30. books will save us from reality 31. soft animals of syllables 32. to reject rejection 33. mouth of truth to gobble up lies 34. something to cling to 35. to make a mushroom out of live's flowers 36. something that is both poison & antidote 37. gutclinched with possibilities 38. unlearn the rules 39. break the language bones 40. reconfigure them until it feels like something that’s yours 41. tell a truth beyond truth 42. conversely, to tell a beautiful lie 43. good titles are talismans 44. weight & texture & breath 45. to smuggle coded messages thru to an imaginary future 46. story isn’t over yet 47. haunted by empty pages 48. at night u leak sentences 49. a half-collapsed cathedral 50. silence = too loud 51. someone once told u not to 52. concocted companions make the best of friends 53. glass sadness spirals 54. the light is listening 55. ____ 56. no one is worth not writing for 57. dreamfuel 58. secret sigils 59. tattoos for consciousness 60. map with many destinations 61. primer for possibilities 62. a sentence to live for 63. a paragraph to die toward 64. a chapter to melt into & away from 65. phase change 66. hate's silent sublimations 67. someone singing in the distance 68. in need of time travel 69. in need of trick mirrors 70. in need of rabbithole(s) 71. in need of light catchers 72. in need of alternate self 73. in need of glitch / algorithm 74. in need of inverted landscapes 75. in need of a collection of cadences 76. in need of heartbreak conversion device 77. in need of impossible possibilities magnet 78. because it’s not too late 79. just because yr lonely doesn’t mean u deserve yr loneliness 80. because whoever made u feel small was wrong 81. because it is, still, not too late 82. to rage against nothingness with a somethingness 83. because sometimes a sentence saves 84. syncopated hope 85. yr characters can’t write themselves 86. to build a soul out of syllables & sound 87. to vibrate however quietly with ferocious intentions 88. to haunt something back that has haunted you 89. to lilt toward the sublime 90. to, as EB White said, be obscure clearly 91. because u are worth every tomorrow 92. because a book can be anything 93. the things yr writing toward matter 94. the things yr writing away from, too 95. to get drunk on starlight 96. to carve up melancholy like watermelonmeat 97. to herd ants of ideas like giant peppercorns 98. to pinch a diamond thru yr tearducts 99. to make all mirrors slither 100. to fashion an inside-out altar for bees 101. to not be famous 102. words hunt u most mornings 103. revenge 104. imaginary people seem more real to u than real people 105. to freeze time 106. yr in love with longing 107. to fix / break something 108. because the sky is a liar 109. to let light into an inscrutable wound 10. just because 110. to build a labyrinth 111. to court disaster 112. to control chaos 113. to chaotize control 114. to  bend a possibility 115. to rupture reality 116. to invoke an elsewhere 117. to summon a demon 118. to summon a Self 119. to sabotage a certainty 119. sentences that cut 120. lines that gauze 121. characters that infect 122. voices that heal 123. beginnings that cartwheel around the lip of a volcano 124. middles that meander 125. endings that scar 126. details that destabilize 127. worlds that lurk 128. truth that rings realer than reality 129. something that darkens in the glow 130. books are prisms 131. books make any room look better 132. books concentrate reality 133. books absorb reality 134. books deflect reality 135. words = sexy 136. words smell good 137. to avenge all yr former & future selves 139. to resurrect a sky that someone buried by mistake 140. just to write a sentence you've never seen written before 141. because going outside is scary 142. because u can no longer afford fun 143. because everything is astonishingly loud 144. because words won’t betray u (they always lie) 145. better than screaming 146. because the sky looks awfully suspicious today 147. mouthfeel of words 148. u can do it barefoot 149. u don’t have to leave yr dog 150. to make love perceptible thru language’s languid & lavish constructions