Jared Gilbert
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frivolousquill.bsky.social
Jared Gilbert
@frivolousquill.bsky.social
330 followers 1.4K following 110 posts
Hat-wearer. Infrequent poet. Sarcasm-forward.

✒️ https://frivolousquill.gilbertsrus.com

🔊 https://subscribepage.io/morning-commute
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frivolousquill.bsky.social
Fulcrum Archimedes asked for a lever to move the world, but who asked him to move it? Where would I find a lever that long, let alone a place to stand? Probably something to do with Lagrange points and orbital mechanics. I took calculus in high school. Where would I move it? Slightly to the left so it catches more sun in the mornings? Andromeda, with the other upwardly mobile planets? Can't I just stand where I am with my coffee and adequate lever and move this mug, this spoon?
December 3, 2025 at 7:57 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Straight on til morning.
December 2, 2025 at 12:25 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
#poetry
Conspicuously Reading Nikki Giovanni in a Coffee Shop Like when your spine aligns with a guest-bed groove, or you reach the dip you'd thought long lost, forever, between the dunes of your shoulder blades, or you dream of grandma and the walks to DQ cherry sundaes and playing with fridge magnets on the floor and her cigar box of fragmented Canary, Blue-Green, Green-Blue, and Mango Tango, and farewelling, engulfing hugs against her house-coated breasts before you fall into the cold of the world. Isn't that a dream you'd share with everyone?
December 2, 2025 at 11:45 AM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Text SIGN POALGB to 50409 to sign my petition with @resist.bot .
July 13, 2025 at 1:16 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Becky, from Ottumwa

#poetry #poets #poetrycommunity #firstcrush
Becky, from Ottumwa My friend's cousin's name was Becky. She lived in Ottumwa, wore sneakers and a ponytail. Each summer she'd ride the year-end school bell into town, radiating an aura of balloon races and farrowing. Once, I think, she touched my arm. 'Cecelia' reminds me of her, still. Not because she broke my heart, but because I made her laugh.
June 18, 2025 at 4:49 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Well, that was a weird damn dream.
June 9, 2025 at 4:51 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Damned if I'm going to pour my beer like a peasant. #aldi
June 6, 2025 at 2:33 AM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
#Netflix giving my heart a stress test when I'm just trying to chill.
June 5, 2025 at 7:36 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
#poetry #poetrycommunity #poem
What's one more dish to clean, spill to wipe, errand to run? Another ache, another twinge, another throb? If bad things come in threes then you've stopped counting, which God tried to tell Job but Job had other things on his mind like flaming sheep and absconded camels, not to mention his son's leaky roof. And this was before ultrasounds and MRIs and sinister masses, so what else should we expect except mounting, increasingly specific woes?
May 18, 2025 at 1:43 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Wherein I visit the catacombs in Lima. #poetry #poetrycommunity #poet
Ossuary Take my bones when I am finished with them. Legs here-to-thering, fingers tearing, knuckles cracking, toes maintaining the balance of my imperfecting spine. Place my corpse in the fermenting ground until the Earth has had its fill, until the mycelium has eaten well and spread word of my demise. Age my bones to usefulness and do with them as you will. Be-table my femur, adorn with my ribs and let me breathe again. Rest my hips atop my feet in a parody of eternal dance, set my skull to watch above any sacred thing or special thing or Tuesday thing. Add my voice to the calcified choir somewhere in the back and let me sing of your life, your worth, your deeply tethered soul and of the day you join your voice to mine in the harmony of the steadfast dark.
April 11, 2025 at 6:43 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
She Forgot the Grits

#poetry #poem #poetrycommunity
She Forgot the Grits Why must everything be a thing? Why does every leaf-fall end in catastrophe, every botherant molehill rise to become a Homeric mountain we scale again and again and again when the wind is so welcome, the sun so undemanding, the clouds so driftingly unconcerned by our dwindling peaks while we ignore the view?
December 30, 2024 at 3:16 AM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Deep cut sighting in Savannah.
December 29, 2024 at 4:19 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Rencontrez Noël!

#poetry #poem #christmas
Rencontrez Noël If, in the midst of your holiday roast— ascending, beforked, from your holiday plate to your holiday mouth— receive from me a vexing imperative to 'Meet Christmas!', please remember that I and technology are disequally fickle and imprecise. Of regardless I do so wish you both a lifelong and joyous acquaintance.
December 25, 2024 at 2:28 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Quote-post with the real you, even (or especially) if it's been a hard day.

Narrator: It was a hard day.
December 22, 2024 at 11:59 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
#poetry #community #poem
I once grieved beneath insistent deadlines. Looming, sharp, pointy expectations brushing my head. The world holding its breath between life and death as if I held the cutters, trembling, over the blue no red no yellow wire. But what have I ever so urgently accomplished that couldn't have waited one more? Waited for a second opinion, for Christ's return, for waffles, for forests to reclaim the Earth for my fingers circling the length of your back as we fall asleep?
December 17, 2024 at 3:11 AM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
That time I inadvertently wrote an Advent poem.

frivolousquill.gilbertsrus.com/unaccompanie...
Unaccompanied Minor I don’t know what angelic aerodynamics were involved in sending Christ from his Father’s right hand to Mary’s womb but when my son took off toward his grandparents at 140 knots my heart leapt to follow with stubby wings which floundered in his wake and I wasn’t even sending him to be crucified only coddled by flight attendants who knew exactly who he was.
December 15, 2024 at 2:40 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Please Advise, with Love

#poetry #poem #gaza
Fewer things anger me morely than a passive- aggressive 'Please advise', leaving me to name and solve the obvious because you can't be bothered. Here let me bear that for you, make your life easier, simplify my pain to bullet points and action items. Even highlight your part, your role, your responsibility so that you are doubly-helped by me, the adult with lists checked, bills paid, you, comforted. And I always sign my work, affix my name to assume my portion, my burden. Yet I also know how this message will find you. Anxious, ambivalent, a little tired. Which is why I'd never presume to sign my name to your wellness, even hopefully. Because I know this will always find you. Here or there. Gaza or Israel. Email or ordinance. My name will find you, whether you are well.
December 1, 2024 at 1:47 AM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
#poetry #poem #community
how long should you hold another's gaze down a narrowing corridor or a door open across a sparsely square or bless the victim of a multifaceted sneeze before it becomes awkward, leaving you, each, flailing beneath the weight of compulsory debt? or is this a meger cross borne by a meger Christ longing to save the world with his hands?
November 30, 2024 at 6:49 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Thanks for joining this quarter's all-hands! I have some great updates to share. Our goals are goaling! Our trends are trending! Awkward joke!
November 25, 2024 at 12:48 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
I have many friends.

#ramjam #punlife
The words, 'Woah, Black Betty!' overlaying an image of a printer with a paper jam.
November 22, 2024 at 8:07 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
TFW your neighbor has a basement karaoke bar.
November 18, 2024 at 2:04 AM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
This week's trading card for Storytime with Mr. Jared! Featuring Hoops (Robert Burleigh), Hangry (@drewbrockington.bsky.social), and The Truth about Dragons (Julie Leung).

#readyreaders #literacy #libraries
November 16, 2024 at 8:01 PM
frivolousquill.bsky.social
Breathable Comfort and Style

#poetry
Breathable Comfort and Style I don’t trust men who don’t wear socks. Could it be the hint of villainy or my envy at not being able to pull it off? Or because the shamefill, shattered part of me that so profusely sweats through missteps and debts, bedclothes and socks, wonders where, exactly, they hide their guilt?
November 9, 2024 at 2:23 PM