“still life (2019)”

“untitled still life (2019)”

I don't want to give names
to your fistfuls of hollow
coffee cup still half full, overturned
baroque broken words, reaching for something
that forever seems older
than you or I in every language
well run dry, and yet
despite yourself
each moment in atemporal space
teeming with life

when we met, I
wanted to drink myself into the ground,
an inelegant death like hemingway perhaps
after bleeding worlds onto ten thousand pages
inspired by black coffee and gin
I'm sober now and you're still empty glasses,
the smell of pages, wine
and cigarettes after two years of silence
I can still vanish into the liquor darkness of you
without ever tasting a drop
I don't want to die anymore
(most days)
and perhaps I am a fool
for wandering through your still life fortress of
melancholy

but you keep coming back to me,
three hundred year old moment
or perhaps you are a memory
I've never been good at untangling how I feel
and some days I feel like I am made of iron
but today I feel like nothing more than glass -


Allēna 3/1/2026 #2019 #bettertogethermke #foolInTheFortressOfMelancholy #Juneau #ourPoetry #owOofMySoul

I wrote this at workshop today.

I am the candle you allowed to go out
you would bind yourself to me but you’d never
bleed for me
and if you had fifty million words to say what you
meant
or anything at all
you’d ramble on, talking in circles
and in your haunted sound and your fury, you’d say
nothing –

did I ever mean a goddamn thing to you?
was I nothing more than another withering body in your bed,
another meal, another drink, another drug,
another stepping stone in your unanswered,
unmatched ambition?
there’s no way to tell now in this optimized
emptiness, is there?
I’ve tried to see through the cage of your lies
one too many times
so now I go about my petty tomorrows and you go about
yours on opposite sides of this compound fracture town
we are all bleeding at the seams
at the end of the day, aren’t we?

I don’t think fate was involved anymore
only hunger clawing at your insides
and when you finished devouring me in your
desperation, you corroded your soul
with something and someone else
another victim wrapped too tightly in your spell
who are you drowning with now?
of course they won’t see that the cords wrapped
around their neck aren’t love until far too late
of course they won’t have words for how you’re drinking
them dry, and
of course you won’t tell me their name
but I’ll hear their screams through
the grapevine anyway

out, out
brief candle
again and again
oh, that I would have
died hereafter
after what you did to me
but
watch me rise like the morning star
instead
burn out
shimmer and fall
knowing you can never again
touch me

-Castor 2/1/2026

#bettertogethermke #Macbeth #Sheik #Zelda

“supplication”

you have taken the world that I was
and left me empty
craving
longing
is there anything that I can use to fill the chasm
on the side of the bed where you once slept

I stumble home
if I can even still call it that
for in the taking, you
took more than just yourself
you took everything that meant something to me
from this space and left it ruined
just like me

now even the flies are starving

sobs wrack my threadbare chest
everyone that I once knew is turning
away from me and into their own personal
darkness, tired
can you come back and give me anything
even undo me again
please

-Allēna 1/11/2026

#bettertogethermke #cheatingincident #hungryGhost #ourpoetry #Zelda

We wrote object poems in workshop today.

faceless blessings in disguise
looking askance at gift horses
with bejeweled eyes
are they empty or full to the brim
do I hoard them
or do I give them away
is it finally my time to come out of hiding
after all the time that was stolen from me
this little thing is winking at me offscreen
I think it's telling me everything is gonna be alright
but that's what they said before
and if I stuck them in a lineup their dead eyes would all glint the same
people told me when I
got up from the piano bench that fame
would be inevitable
I was always going to be someone
I was always going to do something
(as if I wasn't already a gift)
time after time I tried to run
time after time I tried to just be
dissolve into winter nights and simply be
unremarkable with the man I swore I had chosen
but what I know of myself is in the doing
all I know of myself is in what I choose to give
away
I let the rest of myself die
collapsed into dead star self hatred
lost somewhere deep in kaleidoscopic shadow
The object I based the poem on.

-Allēna 12/21/2025

#bettertogethermke #objectPoem #ourpoetry

I went to the poetry workshop with Emerson again today and as such, I come bearing gifts.

This was the result of a TTRPG roll and it’s called “everything’s coming up lavender”

i was 17 when you first came to me
mind threatening to unravel in shades of crimson

now i swear everything's coming up lavender and
golden brown, i'm much madder now and
while i can't say things are fine in this pit
of snakes we live in, at least i feel
somewhat safe now that i found the melody i
was looking for

the problem is that i sought you high and
low in all the wrong places, wrote my best songs
and lines to all the wrong people
it's sad to say that you found me at my worst, but
you loved me anyway

i'm a stubborn piece of shit and i know
you know that, so are you
that's part of why i love you so fucking much
neither of us know when to quit when we know exactly what we want

so are we living the dream? maybe not yet
but do we have the grit to get there?
absofuckinglutely. and one thing's for certain
i know i will never be bored again

so thank you. thank you for not
giving up on this raging bitch
thank you for sticking it out because
i loved you endlessly then and i love you endlessly now

-Allēna 8/3/2025

Here's the TTRPG if you want to snag a copy for yourself!

#bettertogethermke #Emerson #gay #lovePoem #poetryworkshop #queerjoy #QueerLove #synesthesia #t4t #transjoy #transmasc #transpoet #transpoetry #TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity