Tasty tart of cow:
orange, yellow, white, then blue
star to sun to supernova 
to                   black hole 
to black hole
to                   black hole,
each more pungent 
than the last.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

As a long-time cheese fanatic, this poem was inevitable. My general rule for cheese is the stinkier the better. Blue cheese dressing and wings, manchego cheese and crackers, french onion soup, gorgonzola on pizza…the list goes on and on and on. So then, how could I write a poem that properly captures the beautiful decay that is cheese? How could I do justice to both the smells and the tastes? This is my ode to cheese.

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Cotton dried up all the words.
I used to flood the room with them, put out
fires before I started lighting them. I spilled
so many you couldn’t hear the spaces,
even between sentences. 

I can’t find my way around       
phrases anymore, they don’t 
sniff out my pen. So much smoke left

I forgot that letters burn like candles,
lit at both ends and the scent’s strongest
where there’s the least sense, but

candles burn like letters, they leave
behind the smell of what they’re made of 
and this is made from neither cotton, nor wax.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

I think a lot about aphorisms. Sayings, clichés, expressions, slang, etc. are more interesting than the ideas they represent because language is made for and by human beings. The more words we give to something, the more important that thing is to us. Words, intellect, dopamine, and feelings are all “good servants and bad masters.” What are your fickle companions?

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I wouldn’t slow down if I were you.
Consequences
haven’t caught up yet:
finish the yellow stripes
on the highway, outrun
the brush strokes and
blur the lines solid—
roll through caution
melt the prairies
make a molten April
so fast the trees leave
yellow streaks over you,
even the warm can’t hug
you now, don’t stop now.
forget the road, trust the 
wheel, bite the tires, and
roll yellow fields
into yellow skies,
into yellow fields,
into yellow skies,
into yellow…

You forgot, didn’t you?
About the road
and how the yellow 
was supposed to remind you
where the sidewalk ends.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

A lot of my poems just start out as descriptions. In this case, it also ended as a description, but my hope as a poet is that you think of or see something differently because of what I’ve showed you. This is my attempt at infecting your idea of yellow. Maybe next time it will be red, or god forbid, whatever your favorite color is. Take this as a warning.

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Pricks fingers,
Hides wild Pokémon,
Licks ankles,
Rashes skin,
Creeps with crawlies,
Fills our fists when we need ammo,
Grows like poems,
Some longer than others,
All break the surface,
All draw blood,
All conquer castles,
Through the cracks.

1art by Sashank Krothapally

Poetry Tip of the Day!

I started a journal to prove I was doing something with my life. My logic was: if I force myself to fill up a page every day, I will do enough to have something to write about. I wrote my first entry in April of 2022, and last month, I ordered my 2026 journal. Filling pages is now the least of my problems, and it’s changed my life.

You see, I am terribly inconsistent. If you follow this Substack, that should be blatantly clear by now. This attempt wasn’t my first, and since the ripe of age of 10, I’d dedicated a bookshelf to being a journal graveyard. I wasn’t convinced anything would be different this time. But one page at a time—one root at a time—that shelf is a graveyard no more.

Some entries take longer, and I need to squeeze everything into the margins. Others are shorter, and I try to write as big as possible. But the sod took. The pages filled. Yes, there are weeds. Yes, there are also flowers. But it’s my yard, and it’s prettier than what was there yesterday.

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For the jeans she was wearing,
For the jeans I didn’t.

For wrists that spin voices,
For the hips that spin back.

For lips like curtains,
For teeth that part them.

For soles filled with spirits,
For spirits filled with souls.

For bartenders who reap both,
For empty barstools.

For the words they forgot,
For the feet that remembered.

For the shoes lost in transit,
For the laces that tied them together.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

Dancing, jigging, swaying, stepping, throwing ass, or getting down. This isn’t my first poem about motion and it won’t be my last. Dance is cheap and wildly unregulated. Until someone does something about that too, it’s our responsibility to exercise the right as much as possible. If nothing else, it’s cheap therapy.

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the committee pulled out its feathers,
a fence of marching shadows like the 
jagged teeth
of a comb.

the comb circles for gray hairs to smooth back, 
vultures, the pot calling
the kettle.

the strands start from their chests, they
must be old souls. mourning and
laughing,

they say heat escapes through the head,
so we must be on a scalp
the way the air is buzzing. 

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

This came out of one of my spookiest experiences living in Austin, TX, and luckily, I had someone with me to validate the eeriness of how everything went down. What we thought was a small family of ducks was actually a very large wake of vultures. The heat rippled over the pavement, and of course just as we looked back at them after realizing what they were, every single one craned their heads in our direction. That’s a poem if I’ve ever seen one.

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When I took the pass to go to the counselor,
he told me to tell him everything.

I told him about
the ups and downs
the ins and outs
why in Ms. Rickett's Chemistry class
I choose to experiment with myself.

I've never understood chemistry,
but I come every day
because I don't have a scalpel at home.

Slim. Sharp. Important.
In all of its sleek, silver beauty are
my radioactive desires.

I spend those fifty minutes a day
tracing elements on the periodic table with a finger
S, Am...
but it doesn't need to remind me 
I can't be the same.

I don't have a formula.
I don't come in set ratios.
I wouldn't feel sad 7.5 
times more than happy.

I can't help but envy these chemicals.
I don't "naturally" find equilibrium.
Ms. Ricketts says some chemicals 
are lucky enough to be amphoteric:
both acidic and basic.

Maybe I am too. 
Sometimes sour, 
sometimes bitter. 
Just not so lucky.

I'm permanently between my
boiling and melting point
constantly shifting states 
always on edge as if my own 
blood crackles with electricity.

I imagine electrons would be easier on the veins,
but if it was easy, it wouldn't be chemistry.

The counselor tells me not to feel this way,
that I have the world in the palm of my hands,
but I look every day, 
and I've never found it there.

So he tells me to dig deeper.
Find it in myself.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

Though it’s gone through a few revisions since its first draft, this is my first real poem. Real in this case meaning not-prompted-by-a-school-assignment. The previous update in this Word document was dated May 25, 2016 a.k.a. the end of my senior year of high school. One might guess why this poem came to mind during a tough time, but in a lot of ways, writing this poem is the first memory I have of making art. It was difficult, and it was educational. I didn’t know where I was going to end up when I started, but it felt meaningful to see it to completion—not for any other purpose than to develop an idea: chemistry is f***ing hard. And yes, one poem later I felt a lot better.

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In watching the blue jay and cardinal,
I became an ornithologist.

The morning cardinal, in flight, on the fringe
of its wings, I might catch a glimpse of 
purple against the sky.

The evening blue jay, sitting beneath 
the shingles, against the brick, 
purple phantom.

It was so much about flight and 
such little about study. 

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

I was in science olympiad in high school, and in science olympiad there are build events and study events. I decided the former weren’t for me after failing at building a (procrastinated) mousetrap powered car, but I could take tests. I picked the most obscure possible event I could find, ornithology, because if it was obscure enough, I might get by with a little less studying—yes, smart AND efficient. Who even knows what an ornithology is, right?

I got destroyed, but I learned a lot about birds (just not enough to do well on the test) and a lot more about myself. I learned science olympiad ultimately wasn’t for me. I moved onto other pursuits more in line with my skillsets (throwing ass), and I also learned that while I didn’t like being tested on the taxonomy of birds, I liked them! And I like flying, and colors, and salad. What’s better than a good dressing, right?

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The Haiku Genie
grants five syllables per wish:
money…and…five more!

Gym class sucked the day
we played ball. Charles mis-
understood shooting practice.

The hardest part of
dancing is cutting steps you 
learned for other songs. 

If you think swords are
mightier than the pen, 
try rolling joints with swords.

Two boys fight over
a toy. The UN breaks it 
in half. Did it work?

My first drink was a spell.
I raised spirits ‘till they 
came back to haunt me.

Men who point fingers
like guns don’t know that a 
triple barrel points back.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

Haiku. Traditionally, a Japanese poem with seventeen syllables, typically three lines long with a format of five-seven-five syllables. Deathmatch. A match in which many of the normal rules don’t apply, typically leading to a more violent contest. In a Haiku Deathmatch, you are at the mercy of the audience, and if you aren’t able to evoke thought or feeling within seventeen syllables…well it’s a deathmatch for a reason. Here are my submissions. Would you take me on?

Artist Note of the Day!!

This one is for my visual learners. The idea of pairing words with images is not revolutionary, but I find it to be fascinatingly complementary. In front of a larger-than-life abstract canvas in a museum, some people are able to appreciate the artist’s perspective instantly. Me? I usually have my own interpretation (entirely off the mark) and then walk over to the little plaque next to the piece in order to digest the “correct” meaning. I appreciate the fact that this plaque can be ignored completely and one can walk away with their own narrative. Our process is a little unconventional as Sahib’s words typically inform my art, so they are inseparable in some regard. However, you can appreciate them both separately or together.

I came across the Haiga, a refined visual art of combining brush painting, haiku, and calligraphy. A traditional Haiga requires all three of these elements. Just as haiku succeeds by creating space and energy in the relationship of its two juxtaposed parts, Haiga generates interest through the “leap” or even disjunction between the poem and the painting (the painting is typically not just an illustration of the poem, nor is the poem a caption for the image).2 The intention of the Haiga is to make the audience feel “the hand” of the poet. Modern Haiga has evolved to utilizing photography over painting or typesetting versus calligraphy. My take deviates from the conventional definition but is a genuine attempt at authenticity.

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Four neurons went up in smoke.

The boy lamented them.
The man marveled at the synapses that remained.

This grey mattered,
phantoms and ash,
from shackling to kindling, 
all up in flames.

I forged a knife in this furnace
to perform vivisections and
arrange my findings on paper.

I stained the desk, the binding, the floor,
my fingers, name, in its unmaking. 

The boy sees rubble.
The man, raw material.

A garnish is by definition
unneeded,
but it would be foolish
to bottleneck the purge,
to dam a river
while the parched 
stand in wait. 

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

A poem about coping. What it takes to get through a day, a week, a month. With no human contact. With too much human contact. With no time to ourselves but too much time to fill. I try to lean into writing when I can, but I struggle with the speed of it. Waiting for the thoughts to reach the page and before they bounce back and I decide against putting them down at all. How to make it all slow down. It’s a poem about keeping up with a runaway hamster wheel. In my life, when I have been best at practicing stillness, writing is easiest. The material flying by is easy to catch. This is an ode to that rubble.

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If I put up a wall like you said,
know I did not forget to paint it,
the grout is salted with skin,
blood made the mortar match the bricks.

There is body buried in this earth, this is as much shrine
as it is construction, know I had to scale it to raise the 
mountain, know it was designed to be scaled again.           

Know over is not the only strategy. Fire 
at will. Fire away. Batter and crumble until all that’s left is 
the reason behind it. Know the reason will build
it again. 

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

I’m always hearing about boundaries. In therapy, they tell you that keeping boundaries is healthy, and the people we love will respect those boundaries. They will remind that it’s not wrong to have boundaries. In practice though, it’s far more complex than just “setting a boundary.” Sometimes boundaries intersect. Sometimes boundaries come across as the lack of love instead of presence of it. There’s a lot of compromise and management of expectations to be done. The hardest part is remembering the boundary you set in the first place. After all of the reworking, it’s easy to lose sight of where you started. Where you felt the most comfortable. This is a reminder to hold true to your boundary. Walls don’t have to keep people out. They should be a way to let the right people in.

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I swallowed a kaleidoscope
to spit rainbows;
red for the halos
of angels who fly at night,
orange in their temples,
buzzing off of fruits. 
yellow like ichor or
green like the ginkgo biloba:
                panacea for too many blue bottles and					
                ultraviolet teeth.
in all the brilliance I spewed
not one pot of gold.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

Hey it’s been a little while, but I wanted to drop this piece in the spirit of bringing a little color into your new year. It’s 2025 now, and in the last 4 years of “real adulthood” I’ve found that far too much is left to chance. We see our friends less, and when we do, the expectation for a good time is so much higher. It’s easy to remember the times we woke up and rolled out of bed not knowing it would be the best day ever. There didn’t need to be an expectation for a good time. Worst case, we could try again tomorrow. That is no longer the case. A “good” time requires careful planning and timing and follow through and LUCK. Here is to leaving less to luck in 2025 :)

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In the first era, Zeus cast Kronos and the other titans from Mount Olympus. The impact of their bodies knocked most of the remaining life out of them, and the ones who didn’t immediately succumb to their wounds became the first pedestrians of Death Valley. Unknown to the Greeks and then to the Romans, the Titans wandered this desolate place until even their immortality evaporated. While Zeus and the other Olympians grew fat with ambrosias and nectars, their once mighty ancestors laid down their aching bones to decorate fields of sand. Rivers and streams of their tears had since dried up leaving only beds of salt in their wake. Blankets of sand covered their skin in layer after layer of Earth until Gaia herself couldn’t help but buckle under its weight. No amount of water could unearth their carcasses, and no amount of earth could entirely cover their hulking masses. Unable to die, the Titans slept—the first giants to breathe their last in the Garden. 

In the Second Era, they named this place Dune. A place so alien it might as well have been another planet, Arrakis, but none could call it Earth. A place so insufferable, it could not be considered a part of God’s creation. Even the residents of Dune didn’t know its origins at the time—but the Gods had created this Godless place. But leave it to life to find its way through the cracks. A new organism grew out of the rotting Titans. The “Sleeping Giants” were slowly consumed by a variation of sand plankton. These sand plankton fed on the remnants of ichor in the Titan remnants and grew hundreds of meters long–the new giants of the Garden. These “sand worms” produced a psychoactive waste. This waste attracted Death Valley’s first tourists. Ancient humans found a way to harness the substance and travel far out of the desolate and unforgiving Garden of Sleeping Giants. The Titans could not find a way to avenge their banishment in life, but they were able to do so in death. Their essence created the scourge of spice that caused humans to nearly go extinct in the Second Era. Only when the last of the worms had been hunted and killed while an addiction to spice ran its course on humanity, did Death Valley become a graveyard once again.When the spice ran out, people left the Garden of Death and finally honored the Garden of Sleeping Giants for what it was—Hell.   

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Short Story (Kinda) Tip of the Day!

Wow, so yes, I did indeed commit to another posting schedule that I didn’t stick to for even one more post…sorry about that. But! What I like about writing is that I don’t have deadlines (outside of what I put on myself, which is more than enough). So I will keep that cadence, but know I am trying my hardest to write more. If this were my job, I’m sure in some ways I would love it, but I fear a world where the pressure stamps out the poetry. So here I am preparing for my account meeting writing notes about databases while I find moments in between to finish this post.

Back to the actual post now! I recently got the opportunity to take full advantage of working from home and go see Death Valley with the official Four-Fours Poetry Artistic and Creative Director, Pragna Gaddamedi herself. We had the privilege of being out on the salt flats on one of the hottest days of the summer, and there was something so thrilling about being around that much nothing. Writing in an environment like that makes the act of writing almost passive. There’s so much nothing that anything would fill it. This was what came out of that sandy, sweaty goop. A loose myth that explains why there’s so much nothing there. It’s not a fully-developed idea, but I see a rich history there that people wouldn’t expect. And using the history in the history book is way less fun.

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Puff
Puff
Pass
Puff 
Puff 
Pass
Puff 
Puff
Puff
“Hey!”
Sorry
Pass
Puff
*light*
Puff
Pass
“Nah.”
Pass
Puff
*cough*
Pass
Pass
Puff 
Puff
Puff 
Puff
*cough*
Puff.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

It’s been a little while since the last post, and I thought being late was bad. Instead, I’ve missed three scheduled posts. For all of you out there who are reading, thanks for being patient. Hopefully, this one is worth the wait.

This poem is about a ritual many of us have done more than a few times. As with any ritual, there are rules to be followed. Sometimes we get caught up in the moment. We forget the rules. Forgetting the rules is almost as much a part of the ritual as the rules themselves, and as with all traditions, everyone does them just a little differently. In the circle, a lot is said without saying much at all. Verbs speak louder than words. If you know the ritual, hopefully the poem smells like it right now too.

I’m going to start posting weekly instead of biweekly in an effort to maintain the quality of writing and give myself time to come up with better content. Finding time to write and working is a balance I still haven’t figured out. I always find my way back though.

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Somewhere along the way,
I stepped on grief, stuck to the bottom
of my favorite shoes. I wear them 
often and my footprint shows 
your absence. 

The gunk is hairy now, and 
cracked and battered, but hasn’t 
peeled and I chew on the idea
that you might’ve tried a bite
if the weed was strong enough. 

I heard that it was pills. We’re
all still having trouble swallowing
anything. I imagine a world without 
swallowing now. Just blowing bubbles.  
Chewing gum. Sour Apple. 

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

Death and I have a weird relationship—as I’m sure is the case with most people. It’s never been something I was afraid of, and this doesn’t translate well to the grieving process. This poem was a way for me to navigate those alien feelings. I feel loss, I feel absence, but I don’t have an association with grief yet. In a way, I feel privileged by this, but I can’t help but feel like something is broken inside. Or at least the loss doesn’t manifest as clearly as it does for others. I don’t know if there is a right way to grieve, but this is how I do it. I miss him. I didn’t have the words for him during his life, but these are the ones he left me with. I just know there’s more gum and less pain where he is now.

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Flowers given with love last longer.
        The first time someone clapped for me
                I decided to live the rest of my life in 
                        the cave of its echo. They walked 
                out of the same entrance I
        we dug with our bare hands. 

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

Inception. Perception. And Reception. Thinking of a thing. Bringing the thing to life. And letting it live and breathe on its own for everyone to see. The artist and the observer are inseparable, and it’s something I’ve struggled with on both sides. I already sit in my room alone with all these words and obsess over them, but the obsession has to be understood. Otherwise, it’s insanity. On the other end, being the observer isn’t easy either. You have to make the effort to understand. To see something for what it is or isn’t and be bold enough to say. Audience is sanity. Cruel at times, but necessary. Who else is going to give the flowers? The stones?

After college and isolated by a pandemic, I lost both. Writing became an argument with myself, and I realized I am not a good audience. I don’t clap. I don’t laugh. I scowl and shake my head…at EVERYTHING. It’s a frustrating head space to be in after writing and learning about writing and performing and learning about performing every single day. And then nothing. Months would go by, and I wouldn’t even get so much as an idea. The issue was the audience that mattered (me) was shutting down the show before it started. Yes, this all ended up being about self-love, but I think it’s especially important when making art. You have to love it enough, or be obsessed enough with something, to allow it to be crazy. It doesn’t always land, but at least it flew.

The picture below is a piece made to show this relationship between artist and observer. It’s one I worked on with a dear friend through the course of a several month-long conversation, and it now lives on my left thigh as a constant reminder. The star (inception), the eyes (perception), and the diamond (reception). Lady Gaga said it best, I live for the applause.

2tattoo by @blasifer

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Lungs in the stoplights: 
a sigh of relief 	   in green, 
a shiver		           in yellow, 
a held breath            in red. 
Music is suspended in 
the skyline, if I just pinch and 
inhale I might float away
out and over all the signs. 


Like the signs, the people here
don’t say much. They observe. 
Through telescopes. Aim 
lenses, point red lights, 
and flash sirens.

I remember that mist is also
blinding and white and
dance between the lanes of a
two-way street, a place far away
from lights and signs and even if
there’s one nearby,
It’s too loud out here 
to read anyway.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

Another day, another poem about Portland. Aside from more occasional activities like going to work or swimming at the beach, the city made me hyper-fixate on things as routine as walking around. I became more and more aware of the eyes following me—even through the bass drum blasting in my ears. The most comfortable thing I could do was keep moving and keep hoping the street signals would help me do so. Every time I stopped, I counted the seconds until the flashing stick man allowed me to pass to the next intersection. Avoid eye contact. Pretend to scroll through my lock screen. Kick a rock. I tried to do anything except acknowledge that their looks had any effect on me. I fantasized about a Sahib who would throw his bag to anyone who would catch it, and dance in the middle of the street, right through the glares and unfazed. If I couldn’t be him, I can at least tell his story.

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We stick to our roots,
we keep our ground hogged.

The dirt has a way of worming
too deep, too warm, too wet to 
keep us from sticking.

Sky is an unfathomable limit
when the ceiling is rock bottom. 

But the holes we fill
we dug ourselves.

If we live in our graves it is because
we chose not to live outside of them.

But when we came and saw how pretty,
how even our dark made so many smile.

When they did,
so did we.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

I’m not sure why I decided to write about Groundhog Day, but I remember it definitely wasn’t February 2nd when I wrote it. In elementary school, I was so excited to hear whether it had come of its hole or not, but I’ve since forgotten the history behind it. Luckily, this is a poem and not an essay, so the history matters not. I wanted to put myself in the mind of the groundhog—with no context or history. What would I think if I just came out of the ground to see all these weird hairless groundhogs staring and taking pictures? Maybe I would be scared, but what if I did this last year. Maybe now I look forward to it. Maybe it’s what gets me out of my hole in the morning.

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Met a female dragon, had a fire conversation
told me tall tales about her reptilian origins,
how she spent her days polishing knight off her claws,
then coughed up a smokescreen, tipped the waitress in soot,
filled her flask with the last of the gasoline, and

sent me to drown at the bottom of the volcano;
said to look out for the mantle, the ones who ignore it 
pay with their heads either way.

1art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

Poetry Tip of the Day!

I get a LOT of inspiration from music. I like to think I have range, and I hope all the songs I’ve been posting with my instagram posts (@44poetry) further prove that. But most of the time, if I’m driving or working or at the gym on my own, I’m listening to rap. Lil Wayne was one of the first rappers to introduce me to the genre, so it was inevitable that I dedicate a poem to him. It always takes me a few listens to fully appreciate the way he manipulates language. There’s a charisma to how he delivers metaphor, and it’s something I try to mimic in my writing here. The first line is from Drake and Lil Wayne’s song HYFR. The rest is yours truly.

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When a cat calls,
a dog barks and
his sheep follow.
Birds of a vicious 
feather flocked
together and just like
that the pigs flew.
They love kittens,
but hate catfish:
fish that swim in schools;
and even if you catch a lone wolf
the pack is never far behind.

1photograph by Sahib Chandnani, “Lil Sebastian” taken in Austin, TX

Poetry Tip of the Day!

Hopefully, by now you know I love a little word play. I love how the things we care about most, we give the most names to. Sex, drugs, and in this case animals, have as many names and sayings as we have time to think them up. My idea for this poem was to use as many of these sayings as possible to demonstrate the primitive animal in us. Form-wise there’s nothing too crazy going on here, but this is also for clarity of the message: human beings can really suck, society is a zoo, and sometimes it’s hard to tell who is on the right side of the cage.

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