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Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
March 9, 2013
~MisfitableGrae asks some important questions for which there are no easy answers. no wonder it took him 1455 pages is a bit of introspection beautifully expressed.
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Suggested by leyghan
Literature Text
when i was seven years old, a group of kids in my grade threw rocks at me for liking neopets more than webkinz. from then on, i was convinced i knew what hatred meant. but i don’t know how to describe it to the little girl who sits in the corner of my womb and in ten years might call me mommy and ask for help on dividing the world into black and white.
would i point to the churches with their bigotry? to the cotton fields of the south in the 1800s? to the classrooms of modern day america? would i tell her about how the jews stood in straight lines, waiting to die, with fear in their eyes and faith in their hearts? or would i try and describe the sound tyler clementi’s body made when it hit the water of the hudson river after he jumped from the george washington bridge?
would i point to myself and say, “i am hatred, i am hatred to others. i am lying and cheating and stealing and coveting and jealousy and hubris. i am the idea of every time someone wants to kill someone, or a cop beats up a pedestrian. i am street brawls and blown up bombs. i am closed coffins and suicide victims. i am bullet-proof belief, and bullet–proved belief. self hatred is my redemption because even monsters have mirrors, and there is a balance that exists everywhere.”
and if she turned her head and asked me to describe peace to her?
would i say the opposite of war or maybe the imaginary goal we all sing songs about around campfires but go back to shooting spitballs at the backs of each other’s heads? would i say kumbaya my lord, kumbaya? would i say that time of autumn where there are no more chaotic falling leaves because all of them are already dead? would i point to the time before humans were intelligent enough to fight? The time of australopithecines and few IQ points, and no weapons of mass destruction? would i tell her about the time the hittites and the egyptians signed the first ever peace treaty?
would i say, “my name’s grace and that means gift from god, but i will never be a gift from god, ask anyone who knows me. i’ve messed them up so bad, i must be some kind of punishment. that amazing grace song gives us graces a bad name. sometimes we’re not amazing. we’re just wretches who live their whole life blind, afraid to see. and i’m definitely not amazingly, joyously, god’s gift to the people in my life. you know what’s an awesome name? clementine. because she drowned and I’ve never gotten the hang of breathing and swimming at the same time, so some days i think my head’s not gonna break the surface before i run out of air. that was a metaphor, sweetie. you want to know what peace means? wait a few years—they’ll have peace when I’m dead.”
would i point to the churches with their bigotry? to the cotton fields of the south in the 1800s? to the classrooms of modern day america? would i tell her about how the jews stood in straight lines, waiting to die, with fear in their eyes and faith in their hearts? or would i try and describe the sound tyler clementi’s body made when it hit the water of the hudson river after he jumped from the george washington bridge?
would i point to myself and say, “i am hatred, i am hatred to others. i am lying and cheating and stealing and coveting and jealousy and hubris. i am the idea of every time someone wants to kill someone, or a cop beats up a pedestrian. i am street brawls and blown up bombs. i am closed coffins and suicide victims. i am bullet-proof belief, and bullet–proved belief. self hatred is my redemption because even monsters have mirrors, and there is a balance that exists everywhere.”
and if she turned her head and asked me to describe peace to her?
would i say the opposite of war or maybe the imaginary goal we all sing songs about around campfires but go back to shooting spitballs at the backs of each other’s heads? would i say kumbaya my lord, kumbaya? would i say that time of autumn where there are no more chaotic falling leaves because all of them are already dead? would i point to the time before humans were intelligent enough to fight? The time of australopithecines and few IQ points, and no weapons of mass destruction? would i tell her about the time the hittites and the egyptians signed the first ever peace treaty?
would i say, “my name’s grace and that means gift from god, but i will never be a gift from god, ask anyone who knows me. i’ve messed them up so bad, i must be some kind of punishment. that amazing grace song gives us graces a bad name. sometimes we’re not amazing. we’re just wretches who live their whole life blind, afraid to see. and i’m definitely not amazingly, joyously, god’s gift to the people in my life. you know what’s an awesome name? clementine. because she drowned and I’ve never gotten the hang of breathing and swimming at the same time, so some days i think my head’s not gonna break the surface before i run out of air. that was a metaphor, sweetie. you want to know what peace means? wait a few years—they’ll have peace when I’m dead.”
Literature
Why I Laughed at His Funeral
Was dull, as funerals
go.
It was nothing I could help, the sound of it
left me. And in the moving crowd of black
around collars and scarves and
the formless grays of our town
, bowel movement of black,
broken by a laugh, then two, then
a whole cascade. Who is to say
I wasn’t mad from knowing the truth
or wanting to, not knowing enough?
Bobby Sweethouse died
throwing himself off the school roof.
His mother was the first to collect his remains,
ashamed almost to see
all the mess her boy had made.
Many of my friends had said,
he deserved this for being a queer,
or something along those lines, I’m sure
they could pull whatever th
Literature
Send Me the Rain
today, they're all talking about the fires.
the people on TV, the voices on the radio,
the mouths that open and whisper
and softly touch tongues. even the sky is
revealing black plumes of smoke,
flaunting shameless and seductive curves.
the rain's been too dry and the lightning
isn't wet enough, panic is
rising out of control in this
burning city. that's
not all;
we have a crisis on
our hands- the balloons are
running out of air and even
the experts don't really know why,
and on top of those sinking rubber toys
my soul is losing moisture
faster than the crackling grass under the duress of flame.
i'm sta
Literature
for unseeing eyes
laden with sky
we stumbled
and painted mockingbirds
on loveless branches
folding in our slender limbs
and ducking under our own
voices, fidgety and frail
against the wall of night.
between the dipping blades
and drawn shoulders
we learned to craft our words
steady-soft,
a drumming rain
that carved canyons
in open hearts and
drew the sunshine to
our supping lips.
keen-eyed, we watched
remembering the weight
of unseeing eyes
and scalding remarks
and we learned to slip
the noose-knots and slide
through the soul-cracks
and somehow
build kingdoms under
upturned noses.
with lyrical uncertainty
and tender determinat
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the day after i hid in the plastic tunnel to get away from the pebbles and the kids, i made my mother go pick up a webkinz stuffed cat. i can’t describe the feeling i got when i first logged onto the website and found out that their chat rooms were so censored you had to hold conversations with a list of phrases they gave you.
that feeling wasn’t hatred or peace. i think it was fear.
did...i just write some kind of prose? what? oh god, i'm sorry.
the title is talking about Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace which is over a thousand pages long.
i'm going to be submitting a love poem in a few hours, just had to get this out of my head. it's better if you read it out loud, fast and like you're kind of ashamed of saying it.
that feeling wasn’t hatred or peace. i think it was fear.
did...i just write some kind of prose? what? oh god, i'm sorry.
the title is talking about Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace which is over a thousand pages long.
i'm going to be submitting a love poem in a few hours, just had to get this out of my head. it's better if you read it out loud, fast and like you're kind of ashamed of saying it.
© 2013 - 2024 MisfitableGrae
Comments65
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This is so beautiful I'm crying... I'm sorry if that is creepy I said that once and now the person I said it to thinks I'm creepy...
It honestly is beautiful, the words are gracefully put together.
I hope to read more of your work.
It honestly is beautiful, the words are gracefully put together.
I hope to read more of your work.