Misha has a POSSE
Good afternoon from Portland, Oregon, where I am kicking the tires and setting up systems.
It feels like time to make a re-commitment. I dedicated myself to the Muse when I was 13 years old, became a hatchet girl for poetry. And the Muse has protected me, and guided me, over the decades of daily poems. Of sending the poems into the world the old fashioned way: journals, magazines, book contests, others. Trying to gain glory for myself through the work of words.
During the pandemic I decided to name myself The Poet Laureate. I dedicated myself to many projects during that time: posting poems around a city shut down and wounded. Casting a spell of healing. Posting poems in walled gardens every single day. Felt good about myself during it. Wore my laurels with pride.
But I’ve always been hesitant to post poems on the open web. To open myself to a world unmediated and pulsing outside of places like a private Instagram, Facebook, discord servers. The enemy’s tools.
The social web is so enshittified it’s not fun or useful anymore. It’s become a tool of evil and manipulation. Over the last 4 years I’ve whittled myself further and further away from algorithmic tools. I’m off Facebook entirely. I’m off the dreaded Twitter (to deadname X). I post on Instagram, and feel bad about it, every day, holding my nose as my poems are placed between ads for underarm deodorant and military ads to poor people. Even some freer places, like bsky, are turning into The Wailing. And discord is starting to live up to its name. The world is enough of a Pandaemonium. I don’t need to be infected any further.
But I want to share my poems. And I want to allow them to be seen by anyone and everyone that would ever want to see them.
So: back to the early 2000s.
A weblog. A blog. A digital garden of my own, hosted at https://poemsbymisha.micro.blog/
Right now, I’m planning to keep things at my little blog. But at some point I may decide to visit the enemy’s camp, and follow the strategy of POSSE: Posts on my Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.
I commit to you 3 things:
- Daily posts of my daily poem, available to you.
- Inspirational quotes and images.
- Reminders that I am alive, that I am thriving, that I am living in words, that I’m clattering along in this delicious ok life.
I also commit to never see a like, or reply to a comment (I’ve set the blog to not have comments. And micro.blog doesn’t have a like, or an algorithm, or anything else of that nature). I’m using micro.blog because it doesn’t have ad content, is the committed work of an independent developer who lives on a small fee from the users (you will NEVER be asked to pay for my posts), and it’s easy to use. It’s not trying to be anything else than it is.
We are all lonely out here. We are feeling the drums of war and pipes of despair. We are all needing a practice that is outside of the project of isms (capital, fasci). So: a gift. Words by me, daily. Come read. Rest a while.
Love and stuff,
Misha the Poet She/Her Transgender Poet Laureate, Emeritus