legitsalt pending artist website :3

Miscellaneous poems from miscellaneous times

i'm skipping the whole description thing, for the time being


“Butchers and Erosion” (Fall 2024)

*to the tune of Black Dresses' "Waiting42moro"*

[White noise kind of drown me out,,,]

I'm aiming at veracity
I'm trying to speak the,,
  truth

And of course there's obfuscation
And of course there's obfuscation
And of course there's obfuscation
When I'm trying to speak my,,
  truth

It's like the words just fall a,,
  way

Tired of passive-aggression
Tired of feigning interest
Tired of sarcasm
Tired of the,,
  truth

I inherit
This language
It says it speaks
It says it speaks the,,
  truth

But when I stop and stare that way,
It just all begins to sway
It says, "I'm trying to find the,,
  truth"

Truth and imperfection
Truth and imperfection
Truth and imperfection
Truth and the,,
  truth

Signifiers signifying
Signifiers signifying
They say that they're signifying
I'm waiting for a,,
  sign

Speaking that language
Speaking a language that's
Trying to speak about,,
  me

Grammar rules try to choke me out
Emails and no complaining
It's all formal and inhumanely
It's all formal and it's,,
  dumb

And now I try to learn to speak
While I practice biting
My own,,
  tongue

If my words betray me,
What have I become
When my words betrayed me,
What did I be,,
  come

Was it betrayal or maybe something--
Was I butcher or maybe something--

And so my body e,,
  rodes

I am erosion,
I act out erosion,
As I butcher this world
As I butcher these,,
  words

Irregardlessly
Importune to me
Make me,,
  numb

I try to cry out
But I don't even know my name
And when I try to speak
My words don't mean
What they think they oughtta
What they think they,,
  do

It's the butcher:
  erosion
Me and
  you.

"speaking makes it so (1)" (Fall 2024)

My stomach buzzes with disconnection
A soft fire sears. my skin
I need to pull my stomach from what's in

For
        I'm not supposed to have a shirt
My sk   the shirt rubs it raw

"speaking makes it so (2) - or no?" (Fall 2024)

My stomach shimmers with disconnection
It stings to wear this skin
Flesh. raw flesh. open wound. cut open
By cloth--by polyester--by chafing, loose veils(s)

Soft pain
Lucid rememberence

"Eating an ear" (Spring 2025)

It is soft
It is tender
Pinsered by teeth
Interrogated by tongue
Porous and smooth
The flesh gives way, but
Something underneath
Bite down
Feel it
The not quite connection of cartilage
Pliable yet firm
Inviting like a push door
Soothing
Skin cut by bone, tearing
Ripping inside
A warm embrace
Slovenly like a toothpick
Like tootsie pop
Like saliva patina
Crushed
Trace the ridges of the undercavern
Maw
Fat reserve
Dog food
Burnt quickly
Supple, settled
No resistance
Loose and inviting
No blood
Swallow
A salty shadow remains
The flavor of an impulse:
Top and bottom buoyed
Like magnets strangling a balloon

"Strangling" (Spring 2025)

Thumb pressed in from the outside
Feeling cardiac fingerprint
A lock without a key
The key is to lock it
Hear it click
Like bubble wrap
Like a poster tube
Grasp it
You understand?
Question
Desire
Unrest
Desire for order
Desire to know
Bone termites migrate south
By way of nervewrought thoroughfares
Sapience congested
Gasp
Sputter
Words writhe
Pain rises above air
But below pleasure
Tidal colonies shift like
Fields of grain (rooted body hair)
Speech
Stutter
Coalesce
Come together
Clench
Know it
Feel it
Shuttered blinds
Splash happily in
The first mud puddles of Spring
Interlaced memories
Remember
The penis comes again
It clicks:
A complete shut out
Bummer
I thought they'd win

"Privacy and the wind (the wound)" (Spring 2025)

Stop it!
Let me go!
Push it harder
Push it till it breaks
Warped wood square peg
In metal frame circle hole
Feel it in your neck
It the back of your head
Feel seen
Maybe
Feel life blood
Breathing
A rhythm of
To slice you open
Entrails of tissue
Eyes in the darkness
They're watching you
Sliding down
A deep hill
Into a trench
Exposed and alone
But what if you aren't
It won't fit
It doesn't shut
You press it and it stays still
For a minute
Of silence
Of forgetting
Of safety and
Solitude
Sliced open by midnight pupil
Pushed open by penumbral breeze
Bisected blackness of light
Just let me be
Just me
Echoes
Reminders
Shame
But the door won't quit
Threshold to the outside world
Organism that clenches
Circulation
Wriggle like carpet fuzz
Creaking stairs
An eye mask
An injured leg
Intestines crawl like neckties
I want to be alone
But my body won't let me be
My body that is not mine
My body that's beyond me
That swallows me
Within tonsiled ceiling
Where flaps swing open
As rotten me at abattoir
Fetid, hanging, limp, open, alone
And infested with maggots
Crawling in my head
In my eyes
In the corners of my eyes
I hear them every night
The sound of rusted hinges
And architectural nearsightedness
A place for no person
An experiment in falling apart
Turning to sludge every day
Being watched
Becoming invisible
Like leaves rattling in a dirt mound
An embrace of many, many more
Creeping shadows cut deep
Paranoia in the midnight sky
Other people live here now (too)

"Gravity haunted bones" (Spring 2025)

Pressure
Pushing
Straight and narrow
Tied up in ligamented catacombs
Electric cables
Flesh taped to the ground
Unstable
Rattling
Breaking plates
Smashed windows
A tourist in the night
Evidence of pain
Skin tight
Succumbing
Pinching
Chafing
Biting
Tearing slowly
Eating through time
Digesting
That is, acid melting down
Crayon blowtorched
Twig snapped
Hand caught in hydraulic press
The vertex hurts the most
Arthritic-like
Injured from knowledge
Scars that say, "you were here"
Cut open passageways
Loose panels
Electrical wiring
Spilling out
Tasting empty
Like yesterday
Like iron at the back of your throat
Fractured and whining
Push past it
Press it down
Cauterized trauma
Splintered intersections
Throbbing
Mewling
Clawing
Sleep it off
It wakes you up
It pulls you down
Like time-lapsed roots
Like reminders of infection
Dislodged
Limp
Limping
Secrets that whisper in winces
And stay secret
Since you haven't asked
If you look like an injury

"Sugar cookie" (Spring 2025)

Sugar cookie
Soft and chewy
Sugar cookie
Yummy yummy
Sugar cookie
In my tummy
Sugar cookie
Sharp like shrapnel
Sugar cookie
Cuts me open
Sugar cookie
Raw skin bleeding
Sugar cookie
Soft and chewy

"0de to a ble3ad1ng limb" (Spring 2025)

ILL FUCKING CUT YOU OFF YOU STUPID FUCKING BITCH!!!!
Slice it thin
Slice it thin
Slice it so fucking thin
Slice it thin like a sliver
Slike it thin like a pate
I WANT TO BE SOMETHING! I WANT TO BE--
I've got a pain in my neck
EYE EYE
I'm bleeding out on the floor again
I'm breathing out of my mouth again
If I cut it off, I can be done
I'm done feeling like a no one
Bite it off
Bite it off
Bite it off like a tongue
Dig in deep
Dig in deep
Dig in deep like a bullet
Like a bullet, like a thumb
EYE EYE
I'm begging for some forgiveness
I just want it to end
This isn't pain
This isn't funny
This isn't e-du-ca-tio-nal
I'm not happy
I'm not learning
I'm just choking out on the floor
EYE EYE
I can feel a callus forming
Like a pustule in my eye
I hate that I feel like this
Cuz I don't wanna die
i just wanna be some--

"Radial Symmetry" (Spring 2025)

Arms shoot from my stomach (naval?)
Hands reach out my mouth (tongue?)
Two fingers dislodge my eyes (pupils?)
My neck bones are caressed, inwards like
My arms bend backwards
I feel it like it's new

"Rip my eyes out" (Spring 2025)

No stealing
Can't live
Everything is borrowed
Time,
Apple,
Etc.

"Epopee of the bleeding limb (part one)" (Spring 2025)

A strange boy approaches me. He asks if he can use my phone. I oblige and hand it over. Greedily, he takes it, slobbering with juvenile incompetence. The phone looks fragile in his obtuse hands. He grips it in one, clawed hand and pecks at it with the index of his left. I peek over and see an inchoate catastrophe. His finger smears the screen with a cracked resolution. It looks greasy and inhospitable. In his hands, the thing is repulsive -- an object of abscess. I avert my gaze and retch. The boy lolls out his tongue and stares with sloven confoundment. He is putrid and ignorant. The boy's only speech in an undulating and incomprehensible half-grunt, half-moan. I glance back at the uncouth display. The boy thrusts the plastic carapace back at me. "Thanks," he says, "this saved my day." "You're welcome." The boy walks away. I wince at the thought of my ruined fantasy. My stomach churns. And I go on with my day. Living in a world with others. (the bleeding limb draws closer)

"i want it i need it to make me feel heated" (Spring 2025)

I need to be loved
Like a scythe
Loves a wheat stalk

I need to be held
Like MrGear
Holds a 1000° knife

I need to be crushed
Like a hand
By a mallet
Like frozen play-doh
By hydraulic press

Like Monokuma
Loves Monomi

“MY FLESH FEELS LIKE FIRE (flounder.ing)” (Spring 2025)

FLOUNDER

And stutter;
Fall deep underground.
Open your eyes
To fear and confound:
Five tall doorways,
BUT NO ONE AROUND.

FEEL IT SO DEEPLY,
AND FALL
ON YOUR FACE.
CUT UP YOUR SKIN.
FEED IT TO ANTS.

Like you're growing some fins

(BEFORE DROWNING (DEEP END))

CHOKING ON AIR
Like it's an oil spill.
Plastic trash like a necklace.
It's so cheap. It's so cute.

AND SMILE AND WAVE,
FEEL IT SEEP IN.

LIKE MUD IN A PUDDLE
OF SOFT SEDIMENT,
BURNING AND FLAILING AND
WAITING TO TALKING

TO TWO TWO
AT A TIME.
TREAT THEM TO ICE CREAM
PAY, IT'S YOUR DIME.

FEED ALL THE ANGELS
THAT SWEET SACCHARINE.

FLOWING LIKE WATER –
LIKE BLOOD FROM A BIN –

PACK IT IN TIGHLTY,
SQUEEZE TO FIT IN.

FEELING SO LONELY,
SO LOST FROM WITHIN.
EIGHTEEN METAL ARMIES
MARCH ON PHOENIXIAN TYRANT.
BURN IT DOWN AND FALL TO PIECES.
YOU HAVE TO. AND THEN? GO AGAIN.

MADE WITH A PURPOSE:
FLOPPING, PISCINE, AND THIN.

“PELAGIAC” (Spring 2025)

TOUCH THAT LINGERS
TRACE THAT TRACKS
(THE HUNTER)
PRICE THAT PAYS, FOR ITSELF
IN FINGERPRINTS

PEELING PAINT
GLOMMING GLUE
FOOD THAT WON'T LET
YOU FORGET
FEED YOURSELF WITH
  • INSECTS
AND WIND UP CHEWING
  • INSECTS
CRUNCHY CHITIN BONES

but mostly it's the stick–
the residue what remains.
The sludge that piles up in
Sewers and slides down
The sluiced grooves of veins.

Corrosion fills the void.
(The void that needs be empty).

Pick a path of pestilence
Pursue the promises of a purge
Of soap and water and alcohol
Rub them till you're raw
Yet even then it lingers
(IT’S THE ONLY SKIN REMAINED)
And lower down, a larceny
The theft of a dream that tames.

Fingers touch the world like
Thorny vines; glass jars seem
As thistles (stickily sublime);
Invasive species dominate
Whenever you wet your whistle.

Breath in poison; feel it filter
In through follicles; feel it
Flow faster than blood (your blood)
Feel the contagion that contains
<all those petty pleas for solace
(A weight – a tax – a pain)>

"When's it time for a turniquet?" (Spring 2025)

I got a bad education
It's ringing in my head.
(I got a bad recollection
That just backfills this shit with dread).
It's like jaywalking alone at night
And passing a CCTV camera
With a sign that says,
"You will be found."
When is it over? When do I go?
When is it time to stop the blood flow?
-comma- What's a turniquet, again?
How are you supposed to use it?
(Context: my CPR license is expired
And I haven't even the slightest
About when it was first acquired)

"epopee of the bleeding limb (part 0): post #8: fullbright, jet and teaching in japan" (Spring 2025)

.......im so fucking tilted right now. ive been trying all day to just do SOMETHING, but my body fucking refuses time after time to work. My legs don't work, my fingers don't work, it's been a waking shitshow of delirium since waking up this morning. There was a moment when i could move and i could express volition through my veins without it having to feel like sloughing a cow. It's so fucking frustrating. My body did this yesterday. It did it half the days last week. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO WORK PLEASE JUIST FGUCKJING WORKDKKIORFLKMIWAJILDJLKJLIKAWDKJL
..,..
anyways. even though im fucking pile of unbaked unleaved bread  , i have things i want to say . ive been wanting to say them for a while and i refuse to let my veins that pulse with glue prevent me from doing...
i have so many things i want to say. i have an outline for an essay on fortnite and the battle royale genre, i have an essay on ai images, copyright law, and a game review on minecraft dungeons. it's fucking annoying because for all of these i know what im going to say. maybe not exactly but also yes exact;y/ biut i dont even get the chance to try and prove it because im stuck mired in this stupid crap . ujnable to move, barely able to breathe. fuck me dude. ....
anyways, i want to write about the future in a personal way. motivating this most recently is that i finally read the message from the yale alum that was matched up with me to mentor me (he sent it a month ago or somethingi dk). also motivating this is that tomorrow there's an east asian studies career event hosted by one of my professors, but i havent been able to leave the house in any functional capacity (not even anxiety, just this fucking putty limbs crap), so i don;'t think that will happen (if happen means i show up and get something out of the event and am not like a sloshing, writhing eel in a bucket the whole time. anyways, both of these things and many before and likely after them intersect with work opportunities in japan. the alum mentor who got matched up with me is saying that he had this fulbright in japan. i matched with an alum last semester too (though we actually communicated past the initially couple of messages) and she also was in japan post grad for some work. people keep telling me this over and over: there's all these programs you can apply to to teach english in japan, to work in japan, to learn japanese there. and i have legitimately no interest in any of them. what's difficult, though, is that this is constantly heralded as this divine thing that all successful japanaese academics must move through, but like, me, im not about that in ANY kind of way.
I have personal / ethical reasons why I wouldn't be interested in teaching in japan, but i don't think they are actually the primary reason why im zero percent interested. in fact, i think the objections have developed in the interim to provide some kind of internal justification for as to why i have no interest in this thing. oh, it's because the thing is actually *bad.* ah, and then that means i am a better person for not going. I tell myself this narrative sometimes, probably, but if i sit down with it and think about it in any kind of concerted fashion, i don't see myself genuinely buying into it. I can't say for sure what the cause would be. I think, unfortunately, the largest culprit is burnout. I have fallen off my interest in japanese area studies so much man. everything is a chore and i have throw myself as if off a building to get any kind of momentum going on japan related things. it makes me feel sick, genuinely, thinking about being in japan for the time that these programs would require. Sure, i guess i could do it, living one day at a time, but I actually feel dizzy and nauseous and want to rip my spine out when i think about that these would be what i would have to do. and it makes me cry. because i want to be someone who helps work against eurocentrism of knowledge and who does work that i know i could have done at one point. But right now when i envision this stuff i just see the floor falling out from under me and gravity shifting so crash over and over into a cobblestone pavement. i feel sick. i am not always in the type of physical way i am right now which is probably playing a kind of part in how i envision the future, but even when im relatively more stable, these visions spin out into intrusive thoughts of self harm. and people keep saying : do this : do this : do this : do this. i need to eat i need to eat and im not eating and this is a way to eat but i can't i can't stand on my own two feet and say this, it's all vertigo and and and now an electrical agitation shoots across my face and an obtrusive something infiltrates my throat. my skin doesn't feel safe my skin doesn't feel safe i can't deal with this skin i can feel all this skin and i cant deal with it i t jhurtts i ts hurts i ioqnjn ,wmnt,mnmnnnnnnnnnn
i havent eaten three meals in a day in i don't know how long. maybe it's been a month. i went to the grocery store yesterday, finally. barel,y but i still cant eat and  i still dont have foodd : go live in japna, do that. ripping my nostrils out. ripping my cheeks ouit . betrayal. i cant even close my mouth. just a lame, dry gape as my bpdy slumps down moreand morelllllllllllll
i aawntt to bne alive. i want oto eat. i want to be alive. i awnt  to eat. i acantp go too ja[an. and every pne keesp aksing me to ,mi ik ai iwant o to breathhe to be abvle to rbeareath i want oto walk.  ia want to walk. i want to move where ie want to move. i want to have a will. i want to live in different skin. ina different body, in different time. i want to live in tthe past. when i wanted thnigs. iwant tpo i want iwant iwant antin
no no noawe no on non on o nono nononononlnln nl . i eill not fo that i refse.
let me go. let , me have m ybnody back. l,plaesesaeaseada,cx.z


"INTERLOPER//INTRUSION ;(Dear Diary...)" (Spring 2025)

GET OUT OF ME.
GET OUT OF THERE.
STOP IT. FUCKING COME
OUT-- (it rattles.
my spiral skeleton staircase
-- my twisted spine --
my blistered posture).
get out get out get out
(You need to breathe).

You can't make me do this on my own.
The flesh won't move how it's supposed to. Stop Stop Stop....

And my toes clench and my palms curl.
Living as a mech suit. It hurts. Stop. Stop.
(Why won't you, the pilot, just pilot this shit?)

Why does it hurt to breathe?
Why does it hurt to be?
I know what I must do,
I just don't know if I have the strength to do it...

My phalanges sear.
I need to cut it out... but I can't--
I need to cleave, I need to speak,
I need to eat but I fucking can't...

Why won't my body do
SOMETHING???
IT HURTS SO MUCH TO KEEP THINGS
THIS WAY AND I KNOW THAT IT
KNOWS THAT--
stop. stop, what are you doing?
get out of here. you're not supposed
to be doing things this way...

Plastic glove covered hand
Making sandwiches.
Thin coating that clings to your skin
-- that etches in an unshakable
Reminder of where you end.
And you can't help
But feel it all the time everyday
When it's like this...

Stop. I need you out of here.
YOU HAVE SHIT TO DO. GO DO IT.
stop stop stop stop stop stop
don't touch that...

Leg like lightning carved tree stump.
Charcoal skeleton shoulders,
Under soft breath of dew:
Expand. Contract. Expand.
Contract-- Expire. Shatter.
Eclipse. Lapse. Retire.
CEASE. GO AWAY!
YOU'RE NOT FIT FOR THIS. DIE--

The sea's turbulent topology
Reaches to return home,
Scraping against architecture
As an afterthought...

Grind your teeth to dust.
Shut up and die.
Your ribs shake. You feel it break.
Fucking invalid.
Can't speak. Can't do shit.
Fucking shaky palms,
Knees weak shit but no gall
Nor so much as an ounce of mom's
spaghetti...

Fucking torso; obscene and hideous--
Leave. Leave.
DO YOUR SHIT ALREADY.
IM TIRED OF waiting...

...(NO ONE'S HOME)...

I leave before the echoing silence
Can tell me the truth.
I want to be disconnected;
I want wires and a sputtering heart;
I want flesh that fails;
(I want to try crystal)...

...
...Where did everyone go?...
...

Corner of the table
Sinks in. Sinks down...
--slump.--
...

I'm scared. What if I can't do it?
What if I am where I am?
And (what if) I start there too.
What if I'm the well of origination?
-- Stop it. You don't belong here (anymore)

"Tessellation" (Spring 2025)

Why does this shit always keep going?
Why does it keep compounding?

Every hour that goes by,
Is an hour that gets eaten.
It's just on, and on, and on, forever.

It slots into me.
It succumbs to me (me, I do).
It keeps going, and going, and going, forever.

Zoom out/zoom in
Spin out/around
Fall up/climb down
Kingdom/one crown

Ascendancy
Incendiary
A scented breeze
A second fee

Fracturing into little fragments,
Polygons break down in polynomial time,
And collapse into pulsing polyhedra.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
I see it turning ahead of me:
A bloody, big, old oak tree:

Ligaments and tissue and soil:
Heaving; slumped, like
A paper igloo in the rain.

Construction season because
Cracks emerge(d) because
Water freezes(froze) because
Time proceeds(proceeded) because
Being(s) precede(s)--

The kind of love that's symptomatic;
Teeth falling into fairy-fisted jars,
Falling into soot into sprite
-Ly like spawning in the light.

Like feeling when there's something
Thermo(nuclear/dynamic) and feeling like
I am fading (like Bôa "Duvet" on a TikTok feed).

It's all just this jigsaw shit (moral
Misdemeanors that slot into
Sewn shut secrets
And swine flu colored masks
That fold into bicyclical sets of spiraling eyes).

Drag it up.
Punch it up.
(Like a jump drive).
(Like a cow caught in a tractor beam).
Push it through. Force it out.
Make it real

-Ly ripped open like a mesh of squares in a Blender
Full of edges and faces and vertices.
And extrude it again,
All cubic and

Culinary like Maruchan Ramen.
Bakery that bakes it in.
Ray traced and painted faces of
Donuts in the parking lot.

Asphalt that tears to pieces,
Like making an omlette in the winter.

Like marshmallows and Hershey's
(They're manufacturing industries):

Moving mechanical,
The gears of the factories where
Cocoa and powder tumble together
In giant steel mixers--
They turn as one.

Milk and chains (of commerce)--
Louis Pasteur and spontaneous
generation--
It comes from within.
Within within, it's in, it's in.

Cuz there are people there too,
Up in the mountains and churches,

Where soldering copper tints
A triptych of stained glass windows
With a
Spiral on a spiral on a spiral;

See its splendor:
That splintered vitrine plane

(Because you are/n't/ the only one)

"epopee of the bleeding limb (part -1): a premonition?" (Fall 2024)

I guess I misunderstood the purpose of this assignment (discussion board-ing). Maybe my hearing is not so good. Previously, I believed the purpose was to discuss questions and thoughts we had while reading the given texts (vulnerable thoughts; periodically incorrect thoughts; thoughts born about by misreading or reading while too drowsy etc.).
My impression now, though, is that we are meant to fabricate something. It is not about reporting back about how you are finding yourself during the text. It is that we speculate 'as if' -- as if we had had a different interaction with the text (a more perfect one; a precognizant one), here is what I would ask:
ajklnwednkj l;a .cmkhp jakmjjlkjfjlkqelkjiljqwlkjwd
... ...
And the questions ought not to be bleeding limbs, none of this tracing the arteries to see where they fall (only to sometimes then reveala a closed circuit).

So I guess I'll try to do that now :shrug:

(I think it's ambiguous; my intention is something like an effect of passive aggression vis-a-vis resigned submission; my intention is something like to suggest that I don't agree with the design of the assignment but that now its not like I have any choice)

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