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song collage poetry

2022 poetry project

At the end of every month of 2022, I wrote a poem only using song lyrics from my top 10 most-listened-to songs that month. A collage poem, if you will, to showcase my love for both music and writing. For songs in a language other than English, I used lyric translations found online.

january • february • march • april • may • june
july • august • september • october • november • december

december

december 2022

songs used:

  • want me — baby queen

  • dover beach — baby queen

  • nonsense — sabrina carpenter

  • lamb's wool — foster the people

  • waterfall — minho from SHINee feat. limkim

  • cheshire — itzy

  • snowy — itzy

  • how can i not know what i need right now — charli xcx

  • another week — lucy tun

  • YOY — siibii

​

 

listen to this poem as a song!

cliffside

i’ll show you my house, caught between the cliffside and coastline

where the dust and heights keep me spreading out my quiet mind

could you sand me down

could you write my doubt

our names raw in other conversations

they like my intentions

that’s all i’ve got right now

 

how do you trust where you’re pulled to?

the mirage of a fool is a child, too

moonlight rises on the backseat

and i’m trying to leave the biting behind me

 

how do you want without wandering away?

undressed all of my kindness on a sunday

morning as the opposite of poetry

i stall and i’m falling too easily

 

could you sand me down

could you write my doubt

can i fool myself

get the change thrown out

could i tell you here

play my lies around

afraid of the gesture now

the ocean cradles me out

november

november 2022

songs used:

  • poppy — stayc

  • darl+ing (holiday version) — seventeen

  • dream — seventeen

  • regret — j.una

  • shooting star — carly rae jepsen

  • so nice — carly rae jepsen

  • selfish girl — charli xcx

  • fall in love alone — stacey ryan

  • anxious — carly rae jepsen

  • san francisco sidewalk — tiffany day

outside there are your friends

in bed i have held too close my unchanging picture 
who wakes to feed on crumbled determination
who leaves to advertise its bitter afterimage
who feels time as anxious, unrequited
sun crush, sun burst

​

i have stuck a sketchbook full of it
a lonely scenery swept for want
angel for a still moon

​

but today i cup my head softly
today my eyes hand roses to gravity
a cut of my anger left in the refrigerator;
tonight is sleep, the morning granted
sun being promise, sun being star

​

next summertime
i will be the one to drive to your street
to draw the blinds out of our vision
before the sun soaks the coast

​

and we can do away with what we have endured 
flow with the east and hold foam up to our face
bubbles light, refreshing, humble.
i am selfish for this romance. we could touch our fears like this

all the time.

october

october 2022

songs used:

  • flash — rocket punch

  • is this love — kihyun

  • antifragile — le sserafim

  • fast pace — seventeen

  • so beautiful — minhyun

  • i don’t know — seventeen

  • freedom — girl’s generation

  • calone — tiffany day

  • surrender my heart — carly rae jepsen

  • immature — flo

things to surrender

i am immature

​

dyed, murky wallpaper

​

jealousy illuminated by boredom, and paths with walls that toughen a body

​

dot drawn destiny, a subtle settle, no biggie, no biggie

​

i am past talk — itched, craved, melted, wasted, buried. a lion could permeate action into my hardened back. stand! lose. burn.

​

time as a chore, instead of as moments passing

​

song fills: wandering is not always suffocating

​

familiarity. it blooms and thorns in fervent children, on drunk fingertips, in instinctual sighs. i soldier and you dance. when can we be over this?

​

pain radiates a version, vividly, to the heart.

​

therapy?

​

silent desire

september

september 2022

songs used:

  • basics — twice

  • K-LOVE — SANHAE

  • leave it on the dance floor — hope tala

  • sorry i laughed — noso

  • lagoon — dora jar

  • villain — key, jeno

  • universal — SANHAE

  • tiger face — dora jar

  • waste our time — jane & the boy

  • ignore tenderness — julia jacklin

tenderness

what is a body? i fool myself ugly, easily, but it’s

of memory, spread like a rose to attend to. the script is not

sparse: peeling heartache from the mattress, hard

 echo of the refrain, air to your chest — resides there the

tiger tumbling beneath the lagoon. of touching things

bloomed by an anthem. when we cave in our caution, we

leave the basics: adventure, pleasure, desire.

august

august 2022

songs used:

  • PBR — BEL, girlhouse

  • be sweet - korean version — japanese breakfast, so!yoon!

  • beach house — carly rae jepsen

  • what’s good — seventeen

  • move me — lewis ofman, carly rae jepsen

  • hype boy — newjeans

  • because i liked a boy — sabrina carpenter

  • my friends — michelle

  • clouds — o3ohn

  • 20cm — tomorrow x together

homewrecker

i arrived with illusions of a chemical derailing. of a slowly going nowhere scene i wrote on my own, circles on a glued tongue. of a young voice filling organs and tears who want too much evidence of feeling good. i’m coming home while everyone else is passing through. you say you’re leaving and i hear you’re too estranged to stay. dinner in ten, human at twelve; i let my phone lose internet and the night come too quick, death in heaven, with the wish that i caught fish at 15 when i could.

​

this is a stop, just like the commercials. where dreams are sweet no matter how highly worth:

i’ve run on a carousel before and want a life just as reckless.

a summer of chasing intent, hunting it in the suburbs and 24-hour mcdonald’s

where to overthink was the best choice,

spilling konglish with the childhood boy on where we will be at 22 —

there? here?

i listen to my friend name her mistakes and

grab the pen to name mine, too.

​

i’m trying to leave coffee on the shelves.

to keep promise with my failing threats

and take my ID to the library.

what can’t we miss while we’re passing through?

i’ve got a youth to harvest and a woman to undo.

july

july 2022

songs used:

  • paul bigdawg — BEL, boyish

  • same dream, same mind, same night — seventeen

  • dancing with our hands tied — taylor swift

  • rain day — nct u

  • LOVE — STAYC

  • pretty girl in la — girlhouse

  • left and right — charlie puth feat. jungkook of bts

  • you and i — jakob

  • _world — seventeen

  • BEAUTIFUL MONSTER — STAYC

deja vu at the door

phases: you and i in the sand, body clung to it. knock our hands on bitter teeth because the water paces too far out to close in, and we have time to be mean. (spite wants me to miss, memories filler for hate.) does your heart not hurt like your eyes do? i mean when you call out every monster you see instead of trying to cherish the courage you tell us we’ve never had. what do you taste when the words father, mother flower and bust in your one breath? that oasis is reminiscent of you —

 

picture: i want to go swaying through these

burned down houses and cloud the rays

that feel more cold than warm to a child,

this child,

be careless and complicated and crossing 

over to something overdramatic, easy, where

fingertips kiss grains and laugh without pain —

a paradise of things just like us.

 

 

​

— sacred and meaningless where it is positioned.

june

june 2022

songs used:

  • don quixote — seventeen

  • blue flame — LE SSERAFIM

  • money on that — isaac dunbar

  • HOT — seventeen

  • shadow — seventeen

  • to my first — NCT DREAM

  • beatbox — NCT DREAM

  • popo (how deep is our love?) — yerin baek

  • fly to my room — BTS

  • before — niki

lingered.

where did you hide this part of us? you push through the sugar like we are not changing, like you can’t feel my heartbeat giving into broken amends. “certified black tea.” you play with the tag and say the scent smells like the Halloweekend we spent denying our boundaries. 

 

do you want it back? i look at the sky and think about woozy breaths and your twin-sized bed and the delivery of those words you spread across my lips. you pretend to forget. the walls pity our control.

 

can i find out how your body reacts to the biting of my leave in the morning? God says summertime is for the fiend to burn innocent selves and make them into stars. two things in your hands leave them scorched.

may

may 2022

songs used:

  • wrecker — omega sapien feat. vernon of svt

  • FEARLESS — LE SSERAFIM

  • yuck — charli xcx

  • western wind — carly rae jepsen

  • maniac — stray kids

  • home — seventeen

  • CHANGE UP — seventeen

  • baby — charli xcx

  • sour grapes — LE SSERAFIM

  • i wish — seventeen

spring veins

love is surging out of the streets

into our kitchen of unripe warmth

that we cherish; bite and tear into

rotten champagne, chivalry, pieces of

my heart and a letter from the 

cutthroat world i put on a pedestal.

i taste again and again and again

the raw california morning

the wave that defines at my feet

the sour jubilation of this city

kept material by lovey-dovey hopes.

it is alive.

i take my desire out of my coat seam

and eat the bitter breeze, so that

(in my time) (in your time) (in our time)

dreams bloom with the stars, and

these pressed flowers don’t leave hands empty.

april

april 2022

songs used: NCT DREAM's Glitch Mode Album

  • better than gold

  • glitch mode

  • rewind

  • fire alarm

  • replay

  • teddy bear

  • never goodbye

  • saturday drip

  • it’s yours

  • arcade

  • drive

it is hard to write poetry.

but yesterday i lay on the playground and saw my words expanding above me, childish and changing in the well-knit space; i pressed my confession into the blue moon, to burn into a forest — to cross out my character and let my composites unfold.

march

march 2022

songs used:

  • left and right — seventeen

  • jayu — se so neon

  • bambi — clairo

  • bittersweet — wonwoo and mingyu of svt feat. leehi

  • amoeba — clairo

  • BOOMBOOM — seventeen

  • O.O — NMIXX

  • flower (in full bloom) — luna li feat. dreamer isioma

  • mansae — seventeen

  • 247 — STAYC

you cannot touch a designed universe

nothing in these counties roots me. mom ties the jacket around my arms and turns my hands up, to touch my anxious heart. are you running 24/7? take off your shirt. the afternoon comes secretly and consumes the scent of this substitute garden. eat. watch. i’ll convince myself that all echo chambers protect sentiment until i’m left with a cut-out of a person. zero one one zero zero one one one : zero one one zero one one zero zero : zero one one zero one zero zero one : zero one one one zero one zero zero : zero one one zero zero zero one one : zero one one zero one zero zero zero. keep on. if my selfishness is a formula, what capacity for flaw? i love you, i say, with humility — the party multiples with coke and company and you leave to wither your heart and body. flame entwine art entwine dream, real and dreamy, like a street and a house and a girl. your family dreams inside a neighborhood of organized normalcy, where knees pierce blisters on the cement; i miss making time whole, and not just half. 

february

february 2022

songs used:

  • pity party — JAMIE

  • i’m home — minho from SHINee

  • RUN2U — STAYC

  • catch. — harry teardrop

  • WE GO — fromis_9

  • message in a bottle — taylor swift

  • child — mark from NCT

  • trouble — troye sivan feat. jay som

  • bad alive — wayv

  • KEEP IT UP — rex orange county

earth, spilling

i caught my young heart flowing into the sink

drip spill burn catch

midsummer in bitter fashion;

i pull at twisted strings that feed expensive silence

a mediocre man sober at the soiree.

 

i caught myself hanging my heart in the city light

in useless sunny consoled expectations

in confidence, a narrow fence, pity alive;
you know the far away me that i swallow down
stubborn guts with your name in the crevice
a dozen days away from home (it gets to you)
i'm closer to October. it gets to you.

​

if a dream is accidental, maybe the wake is a second chance

your mouth again, pity drowning, 

my strangers laying in the streets,

love: what meaning can be tasted in silence?

i'm a child in tandem with the face of a man

fittest to envy wonder.

 

(one, two) (go around) (now, now) (right here)
somebody, you, lover
rough roles; i spent my thorns at the check-in.

january

january 2022

songs used:

  • birthday party — NCT U

  • white night — NCT 127

  • remember — davii feat. haeun

  • pandora's box — NCT 127

  • step back — GOT the beat

  • dreams come true — NCT 127

  • to the mountains — lizzy mcalpine

  • shutdown — moonbyul feat. seori

  • no news on tv — noga erez feat. rousso

  • every moment of you — sung si kyung

your last person

I want to tell my old self I am another you:

the limelight inside tomorrow, your skin,

of my mouth the keys to Pandora's box;

time flows many tears
but happy happier —
I'm an experienced boatman,
I will be a different scene.

​

Whisper it on me like this gloomy weather:

Did he have a crush on you? she said, 

Tell me, play with your enemies

I gaze at you (your entire being)
you flirted some, flirted some,
with a silhouette of a masterpiece
become, delude, too many touches fallen
I was good at a white night;
you can ruin me, she said,
hold my waist to believe in my passing dreams.

​

Give it a go:

your blanket reaches my ears

your voice vibrates like want, want, want 

this lonelier lullaby postponed

I loved

I loved

I could not understand (your entire being)

I'm trying peace,
black flags drink more don't overdose —
I like the expression of another you.

​

He's sick and tired, rainy wind, free your childhood memories
rose, wave, rogue, wish, red — you are born again

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