“I Don’t Know What My Goals Are, No. Thanks For Asking.”

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.

#603 Time is Nature's Music

The past is a galaxy away,

But it circles through your brain.

Memories on shuffle, replaying every day.

A bop for the stars, a tune for the heart,

But a place that you can never be a part

Of ever again. It's in the past.

It's a tune, but rewritten harmonies won't last.

You cannot rewrite it.

So push skip.

The future is a massive river just a walk away.

Notes at your fingertips that will not stay

Cupped in your hands. You see, the river bends

And spins songs that could be

With a decent percussionist and melody.

The water travels everywhere and nowhere: Possibilities.

"What if's" and worrying can cause instability.

So push pause.

The present. That is something within reach.

You're climbing a mountain, with a goal to reach the peak.

Every rock, trail, and handhold is an instrument in waiting.

Except they are meant to be used, are up for the taking

For a poet and a player, a worker and a lover.

Because as much as you want, you cannot make another

Riff of the past. It's too far gone. And on record.

And the future is cold and not set in stone. So your method

To make the best music in life is stay strong.

Ground yourself in the moment, take a breath, and move on.

  for you and me who experience artblock.. keep on drawing!

IN 150 CHARACTERS OR LESS - Nikita Gill

adhd is fun bc everything I got taught is backwards

a good day makes good sleep

starting with a lil treat gets the work done

More things to do is less overwhelming

don’t make a plan just get in there

you’ll never take good care of what you don’t like so throw it out (this one is my favorite bc it’s easy to see what you don’t like)

What's that poem about the cockroach and the moth where the cockroach is like "I wish I've ever wanted anything the way that moth wanted to burn itself up in that lantern" because we had to read that in high school and it still fucks me up to this day

What else can we do? Stay strong folks 💜

Poetry? More like CROWETRY!

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