Ashe Vernon's Blog, page 136

Tumblr vs. Tour: Poetry on Different Stages by Ashe Vernon

whereareyoupress:

I stumbled into slam poetry about a year ago. Since then, I’ve gone on tour and participated in a national competition, and I can say without even a shred of doubt that slam poetry completely changed my life. Slam takes the isolation out of writing. Often, writing is a very solitary art, and the difficulty of getting your words out to people is trumped only by the difficulty of getting feedback from those people, once you do. Slam isn’t like that. Slam is a conversation—a give and take. The audience moves with you; it tells you how they’re feeling. Slam provides a solidarity, a validation and an immediacy that writing for the page lacks.

Writing is cathartic for me. But I think that’s true for most people. But slam provides an entirely different kind of healing. As a poet with clinical depression, slam provides a vital kind of validation. I’ve never known anything as gentle as a room full of poets. In the poetry community you’re allowed to be raw, you’re allowed to be vulnerable. Typical rules of social decorum and what is “acceptable” to say and feel in public go out the window. At slams, I’ve had strangers wrap me up in their arms. I’ve had new friends hold my hand. I have never, not once, been allowed to cry alone. At a poetry slam, hurting is met with open arms and soft reassurance.

For me, poetry slams have never been about the competition—and while I know there are a handful of poets who would disagree with that, I think the poetry community on a whole is made up of people who love the heart and soul of it all more than they could ever love the points.

Poetry is there for me. It’s always there.

I got my start on tumblr, writing strictly for the page and not for performance. Back then, I’d never been to a poetry slam. It’s interesting, now, being able to look at both of these different poetry communities and how much they have in common while still being so, so different. Despite the fact that I have my name attached to every poem I post online, there’s still a certain amount of anonymity to written poetry. Even the books I sell don’t have the kind of immediacy of hearing someone speak. Written work allows my words to exist separate from me. This isn’t a bad thing. In fact, sometimes I’m very grateful for the distance.
Slam is the absolute opposite of that. There’s nothing anonymous about a poetry slam. Slam forces me to take ownership of my words and my feelings. Sometimes it’s impossibly hard. There are plenty of things in my poetry that I’m afraid to let myself feel. Sometimes, it makes me wish for the kind of distance I get from writing on a page.

But slam has taught me one thing better than anything else: 

I’m not here to make poetry out of my pain,

 I’m here to make poetry out of my survival.

Ashe Vernon has been writing for as long as she can remember, but she found poetry when she most needed it. Her words first hit the stage in the tiny town of Lufkin, Texas and since then she has been featured in two poetry anthologies and published a collection of poetry all her own–Belly of the Beast, via Words Dance Publishing. She’s stumbled her way onto stages across Texas and is currently touring the southwest with her best friend and partner in crime. At 5'2", Ashe is a very tiny person with very tiny hands and a whole lot to say about it. Her second book, Wrong Side of a Fistfight came out this summer through Where Are You Press.

"You are the softest hurricane of the season.But there is no room in these ribsfor rain."

“You are the softest hurricane of the season.

But there is no room in these ribs

for rain.”

- HURRICANE SEASON, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)

"I’m sorry for the love thatI knew how to give you, butkept to myself, anyway.I’m sorry that my..."

“

I’m sorry for the love that

I knew how to give you, but

kept to myself, anyway.

I’m sorry that my hands were

so hungry,

that they left you

so starving.

I’m sorry I kissed so hard;

sorry for crushing your mouth

to fine powder and feeding it

through the hips of an hourglass.

The fear runs deeper than the well,

these days.

We water the livestock with it.

I never told you, but I

have a desert, pressed

between the sacred spaces

of my ribs, and you

weren’t made of enough water

to prepare for a thing like that.

I’m sorry for the love that

I knew how to give you, but

still pretended

I didn’t have.

Sorry for lying with the

same mouth I kissed with.

I really am sorry

for that.

”

- SUBURBAN MIRAGE THEORY, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)

"The first time he calls you holy,you laugh it back so hard your sides hurt.The second time,you..."

“The first time he calls you holy,

you laugh it back so hard your sides hurt.

The second time,

you moan gospel around his fingers

between your teeth.

He has always surprised

you into surprising yourself.

Because he’s an angel hiding his halo

behind his back and

nothing has ever felt so filthy

as plucking the wings from his shoulders—

undressing his softness

one feather at a time.

God, if you’re out there,

if you’re listening,

he fucks like a seraphim,

and there’s no part of scripture

that ever prepared you for his hands.

Hands that map a communion

in the cradle of your hips.

Hands that kiss hymns up your sides.

He confesses how long he’s looked

for a place to worship and,
oh,

you put him on his knees.

When he sinks to the floor and moans

like he can’t help himself,

you wonder if the other angels

fell so sweet.

He says his prayers between your thighs

and you dig your heels into the base of his spine

until he blushes the color of your filthy tongue.

You will ruin him and he will thank you;

he will say please.

No damnation ever looked as cozy as this,

but you fit over his hips like they

were made for you.
You fit, you fit, you fit.

On top of him, you are an ancient god

that only he remembers and he

offers up his skin.

And you take it.

Who knew sacrifice was so profane?

And once you’ve taught him how to hold

your throat in one hand

and your heart in the other,

you will have forgotten every other word,

except his name.”

- PROFANE, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)

"Give me cheap beer and country back roads–the hum of the engine as we climb through the..."

“Give me cheap beer and country back roads–

the hum of the engine as we climb through the roof

towards a sky with no sun.

Give me that kind of half-drunken laughter,

digging elbows into ribs in the backseat.

Parked by the side of the road when

too many people and

not enough car

make for just the right kind of road trip.

Forget where we’re going.

Give me the three left turns

back onto our street

so we can spend sunrise

in the driveway

and call it

traveling.”

- ROADTRIPPING, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)

"The summer I turned twenty, I cut off all my hair,got wicked drunk and took shots at the..."

“The summer I turned twenty, I cut off all my hair,

got wicked drunk and took shots at the stars,

kissed a girl for the first time.

I didn’t fall in love, but I tried to.

It was the summer where three people died—

where tragedy was never more than

two weeks away from itself.

First, it was Allison’s brother.

Then, Mary’s fiancée.

Then, my father.

One. Two. Three.

The men in our lives, gone in a heartbeat—

too much death under one roof,

too much emptiness for the Texas sun

to lay claim to.

We dug up parts of ourselves we

could never put back in the ground,

that summer.

We learned that sometimes

people wear grief too differently

to hold one another:

that no one knows what to say because

condolences don’t pry nails out of coffins,

that tombstones are not grave-markers for the dead,

but stone slabs the living carry on their shoulders.

We learned that the aftermath of death is

unique as a fingerprint.

Allison’s was brave.

Mary’s was quiet.

And mine,

mine was furious—

I wasn’t done with him, yet.

There were too many battles left unfinished—

this was not how I wanted

to win the war.

Grief looks ugly in the mouth of a girl

still relearning how to love her father.

It is a useless extra limb on the body of someone

with ten years of bad blood to make up for.

When you know your father as little more

than sickness in a skin-suit, there

is nowhere for the rage to go when you’ve lost him.

I didn’t speak at the funeral because

I couldn’t trust myself to be kind and

much as I wanted to be angry at my father,

his memory didn’t deserve that.

My mother didn’t deserve that.

See, there is this impossible love that children carry

even for the parents that hurt them,

and I remember what he was like

before the pain and the medication

got the best of him.

And I just wanted to be good enough

for that man.

To everyone who knew me when my father was alive—

to my mother, especially.

I am sorry for the rage I hung my shoulders with.

I am sorry for becoming

all the worst parts of him.

I’m sorry that I went looking for a place

to bury all that heartache and that

I became graveyard, instead.

But the one who taught me

loud,

the one who taught me

chaos and thunder and boom

was Dad.

And I learned it well.

I didn’t have Dad’s excuse: how

the medication wore my father’s face

for him: shook my home down to its foundations

then left when there was nothing left

to lay waste to.

I just kicked and screamed and rattled

hoping that someone would hear me.

I am quiet, now.

Dad

is quiet now.

And sometimes

I miss the way his voice

could fill the house.”

- THE SUMMER I TURNED TWENTY by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)

Do you think it's important to actually feel and experience something before writing about it? Because I have never fallen in love before and I don't know what it feels like. Every time I try to write about it it looks so fake and pathetic. Instead I write

Writing from experience is important, but it’s not the only way to write. You can find honest emotions and truthful poetry even in places you haven’t been before. You don’t have to have been in love to know what you want from it. You don’t have to be in love to write love poetry.

Do you think it's important to actually feel and experience something before writing about it? Because I have never fallen in love before and I don't know what it feels like. Every time I try to write about it it looks so fake and pathetic. Instead I write

Writing from experience is important, but it’s not the only way to write. You can find honest emotions and truthful poetry even in places you haven’t been before. You don’t have to have been in love to know what you want from it. You don’t have to be in love to write love poetry.

Do you think it's important to actually feel and experience something before writing about it? Because I have never fallen in love before and I don't know what it feels like. Every time I try to write about it it looks so fake and pathetic. Instead I write

Writing from experience is important, but it’s not the only way to write. You can find honest emotions and truthful poetry even in places you haven’t been before. You don’t have to have been in love to know what you want from it. You don’t have to be in love to write love poetry.

"I found the most delicate boy,who steals looks when the thinksI don’t notice.And, oh, he’s going..."

“

I found the most delicate boy,

who steals looks when the thinks

I don’t notice.

And, oh, he’s going to ruin me.

He really is.

I already know it.

He watches like he’s afraid

to want me and I

watch like I’m afraid

to be wrong.

I am cataloging every look,

every sideways glance,

every shy smile that has us

both looking at our laps.

My chest feels heavy.

My hands are too warm

to keep all to myself

and I’m burning up.

Like an ancient sun.

And I want him.

And it’s going to ruin me.

I just know it.

”

- mama, I think I figured out how wind makes rubble out of stone, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)