Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry)
LightNews LightNews
banner
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry)
@crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
210 followers 190 following 75 posts
Poet, author, forager, mom, oddball and rabble rouser
Posts Replies Media Videos
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
Latest work.
#poetry #readersky #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #mentalhealth #RuralLife #motherhood #survivors #MidwestPoet #MinnesotaPoet #MinnesotaWriter
November 1, 2025 at 2:41 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
Tell me that T-shirt, the skin tight leather pants and that grin don't say it all for Erika Kirk.
November 1, 2025 at 2:31 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
I've been taking a picture straight up at the sky every morning when I walk the dog for over 4 months. It's become a lovely ritual & I love seeing the patterns over time (like the sky is much bluer in April & you can the wildfire smoke effect in June). #naturelover #mindfulness #photoprompt #skies
August 2, 2025 at 4:26 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
#poetry #readersky #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #bpd #mentalhealth #mentalillness #mooddisorder #bipolar #recovery
August 2, 2025 at 3:28 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
#blueskypoets #poetry #poetrycommunity #CronesOfAnarchy #CoA #mindfulness #naturelover
July 26, 2025 at 2:44 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
Watching videos of #gabbypetito I remember that feeling.
To anyone still living this -- reach out for help, make a safety plan, and get away.

#poetry #survivor #domesticviolence #awareness #readersky #DomesticViolence #Abuse #DomesticAbuse #DVSupport #Narcissist #Gaslighting
July 20, 2025 at 3:26 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
July 13, 2025 at 4:09 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
From Flower Girls (Floral Feminist Poems)

This activity was funded in part with a grant from Southwest Minnesota Arts Council made possible by the voters of Minnesota, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.
#blueskypoets #poetry #foraging #wildfoods #rewild
July 10, 2025 at 3:52 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
July 9, 2025 at 1:59 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
One of the pieces in Flower Girls (Floral Feminist Poems & Artwork). I did the art for this one, freehand with a mouse, which is surprisingly difficult. ;) afflink: amzn.to/4ez3Las
Image description -- freehand drawing of an iris with leaves like serrated knives and dark droplets at the top of them, on a purple watercolor background. Text: Grandma Iris She had words like broadswords, So jagged and unbending For someone who carried Such delicate beauty. All my life she took turns Stabbing and forgiving me. ~ Alicia Bayer @crazybrokenthing (Artwork in this piece by Alicia Bayer) ** This activity is funded in part with a grant from Southwest Minnesota Arts Council made possible by the voters of Minnesota, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
July 8, 2025 at 1:20 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
#selfcare #mindfulness #dumpsterfire #keepongoing
July 6, 2025 at 2:19 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
#blueskypoets #poetry #poetrycommunity #LetThemEatCake #RiseUp #SpeakOut #DoSomething #BlueCrew #CronesOfAnarchy #CoA #NotMyPresident #EatTheRich #SocialJustice
July 4, 2025 at 3:25 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
July 3, 2025 at 3:51 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
June 30, 2025 at 9:33 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
🦊 Written this week.....

#WomensPoetry #WomensWriting #blueskypoets #poetry #poetrycommunity
June 27, 2025 at 8:25 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
My mother & aunts had a complicated relationship with religion, partly because of time they spent in a Catholic orphanage in the 1940's.

From Crazy Broken Thing (Poems from the Attic Book 1) (afflink: amzn.to/4l4j7GC)

#WomensPoetry #WomensWriting #blueskypoets #atheism #poetry #poetrycommunity
My mother and her sisters had a very complicated relationship with religion, in part because of time they spent in an abusive Catholic orphanage in the 1940's after my aunt was in a terrible accident. I wrote this poem years ago about my Aunt Leslie and the ways all three girls responded to the abuse they survived there. From Crazy Broken Thing in the Poems from the Attic series (afflink: https://amzn.to/4l4j7GC) THE ENTRANCE OF GOD When she was a girl, my Aunt Leslie sat straight down on a wrought-iron spike. The forbidden church and the angry priest become nothing. She woke to white, to her two sisters packed away in a Catholic orphanage, to her mother pulling her hair out, one blade at a time, crying I cannot be a mother, to her mother with no man to stitch her up, sending the stitched-up Leslie to the orphanage too. And for some months the three girls sat with the nuns, with the orphans, with God sending them to bed with no supper. My Aunt Linda had God beaten into her. My mother had God beaten out of her. And Leslie, poor Leslie, just sat among the black and the white-- with the nuns, with the prayers, with a wrought-iron hole through which God came and went. ~Alicia Bayer @CrazyBrokenThing
June 26, 2025 at 7:26 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
Bloodroot, from my book Flower Girls, artwork by Daryl Hrdlicka in pencil and wild mushroom ink

#afflink -- amzn.to/4je3Tyi

#WomensPoetry #WomensWriting #blueskypoets #poems #writingcommunity #poem #poetrycommunity #feminism #survivors #triggerwarning
TW: allusions to s* assault. Bloodroot Forty springs have brought beauty and beginnings to that hillside but still the bloodroot bursts every March remembering the stain on dark soil and the sound of no being buried in black earth. And really, how few of us don’t have that story? Bloodroot is a native plant for every woman. ~ Alicia Bayer @crazybrokenthing From the newly published Flower Girls (floral feminist poems). Artwork by Daryl Hrdlicka. Out now on Amazon https://amzn.to/4je3Tyi (afflink) ** This activity is funded in part with a grant from Southwest Minnesota Arts Council made possible by the voters of Minnesota, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
June 23, 2025 at 6:33 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
June 21, 2025 at 3:27 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
One of my latest works, thinking about all the women who came before me and real life in those "romantic" olden days....

#WomensPoetry #WomensWriting #blueskypoets #poems #writingcommunity #poem #poetrycommunity
Softness You forget that nothing was soft back then— not the bodice of the blouse meant to thrust you up towards men’s lust, not the sheets you birthed in, only the grass you broke down in, knees pressed into silken green that had never known blades. You forget that life was measured in months before the next devastating thing. And still your grandmothers all the way up that line fingered at the flesh of their own necks and waists, delicately, dreaming of a soft landing someday in a place like this. ~ Alicia Bayer @CrazyBrokenThing
June 19, 2025 at 2:51 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
Living the fairy tale life. 👠

#WomensPoetry #WomensWriting #blueskypoets #poems #writingcommunity #poem #poetrycommunity
May 3, 2025 at 2:21 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
From "Crazy Broken Thing," my first book in the Poems from the Attic series. afflink: amzn.to/4jcSCNB

#blueskypoets #poems #poetry
A poem from the attic.... Echoes it was sometime after the man with the gun. i remember walking towards san jose with new flip flops because we couldn't afford shoes. the police had caught him and we were somewhere new. it was just you and me, mother, and i remember the walk as never really ending. all i know now is the scent of june and residual fear somewhere near el camino. when one strap broke i went barefoot. i learned to run without making a sound. ~Alicia Bayer @CrazyBrokenThing From "Crazy Broken Thing," my first book in the Poems from the Attic series. afflink: https://amzn.to/4jcSCNB Crazy Broken Thing and the second book in the series, Slut Shamed, were books of poetry compiled of poems that I wrote over 30 years ago before I put my words away and got busy working, healing and raising five children with my husband Daryl. In 2021, I received a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to publish the two books. This project was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
April 12, 2025 at 5:00 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
Finally, a goal I can rock. 😉
April 3, 2025 at 3:54 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
A poem from the attic, written 30 years ago to my first husband and published in 2022 in Slut Shamed (Inappropriate Feminist Poems) (#afflink amzn.to/4hGl6OZ).
Here's a poem from the attic, written 30 years ago to my first husband and published in 2022 in Slut Shamed (Inappropriate Feminist Poems) (#afflink https://amzn.to/4hGl6OZ). That book and Crazy Broken Thing were published thanks to a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, made possible by the voters of Minnesota thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. The Wicked Woman 🍎 "The dwarfs took pity on him and gave him the glass Snow White-- its doll's eyes shut forever-- to keep in his far-off castle..." --Anne Sexton, "Snow White" during the journey, someone slipped fate erred death came lodged from my throat your beauty woke i wanted to move again to change my dress, to cut my hair play poker with those seven guys who loved me first i wanted a name, not a calling a life perhaps to live at least through my childhood before i sat down as miss charming the girl you came home with was not the one you purchased how sad, to find the perfect wife and have her wake now it is you who lies silent while i merely lie looking towards the woods and knowing you loved me more when i was under glass ~Alicia Bayer @CrazyBrokenThing
March 20, 2025 at 2:58 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
March 9, 2025 at 4:52 PM
crazybrokenthing.bsky.social
Another poem from Flower Girls (Floral Feminist Poetry & Artwork). Art by Victoria Bayer with foraged wild mushroom ink. amzn.to/4je3Tyi (afflink) #poetry #poetrycommunity
Here's another poem from my latest book, Flower Girls (Floral Feminist Poetry & Artwork). This illustration is by Victoria Bayer with foraged wild mushroom ink. 🍄🍄🍄 Wildflower Girl I went looking for my parents In the storm clouds and sunshine, Amongst the worms, wasps and waters, Everywhere two scraggly stems Could tuck their leaves and forget Momentarily Or for fifty years To shelter their small seedling And help her bloom. I spent my summers searching For roots and shade. It was always barren. I have finally learned at last That the best that some could do Was to toss the best parts of themselves And have faith in the wind. ~Alicia Bayer @CrazyBrokenThing on Facebook and Bluesky Flower Girls is out now on Amazon https://amzn.to/4je3Tyi (afflink) in Kindle or paperback, or order through Barnes & Noble or your local bookseller. You can also ask your library to carry a copy. #poetry #poetrycommunity #flowers #feminist ** This activity is funded in part with a grant from Southwest Minnesota Arts Council made possible by the voters of Minnesota, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
February 26, 2025 at 3:30 PM