Beck Robertson - Beck Robertson: Words That Inspire

Poetry

Essays

Spoken word

If you feel the desire to write a book, what would it be about?

I write like it’s a confession. Poetry, essays, and stories that bleed, quietly, beautifully, and sometimes with teeth. This is a space for the overthinkers, the romantics, for the ones who feel too much and say too little. If you’ve ever underlined a sentence like it was a lifeline, you’re home.Welcome to the archive of my obsessions.

Writing from the edges of desire and disorder.

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Woman reading a book with tea and flowers.

poetry from “salt water” by Brianna Wiest

Write every day, read every day, sleep, and sweat.

I like to write like I’m bleeding in public and pretending it’s performance art.My name is Beck Robertson. I’m a poet, writer, and curator of emotional wreckage. My work lives at the intersection of desire and disorder, where femininity gets tangled in neon wires, and every confession is a kind of rebellion.beneath the skin is my first poetry collection. It’s not about healing. It’s about naming the wound.I’m drawn to the aesthetics of collapse: glitchcore visuals, black corsets, and the kind of vulnerability that feels like a dare. My writing is influenced by Joan Didion, Melissa Broder, Anne Sexton, and the digital detritus of our oversharing age.This isn’t a brand. It’s a breakdown you can subscribe to.Welcome to the archive of everything I couldn’t say out loud.

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<h3>MAJOR/minor</h3>I hear the chordsThey're in the keyBut major playedDiscordantlyA tinkle of the ivoryThe hum, the strumIs minor keyWhen this note strikesIt hits just rightIt mirrors meThat minor keyArpeggioChromatic scaleNight corset madeFrom fine bone whaleUnlace my staysSo I can breatheFor major chordsHave made me bleedI knew a major symphonyIt's lovely notes washed over meYet never thought The minor keyCould play such perfect harmony<h3>SNAKESKIN/ Medusa was a girl once</h3>She oozes and spitsUncoils then hitsShe's the cobra,the cobra, with eyes like tar pitsYellow, yellow is the moonYellow is the sunYellow are the flames that danceIn irises that love no oneSoul lights, lamp lightsAll of it's the sameYou're under a tranceAnd she's never to blameSkin shedder, life shredder,adopter of every new guiseHer inky eyes sear into you,she knows all of your liesYou may hear her rattleor you might hear a hissShe's the sniper in the grassThe one that doesn't missThe sweetest smell of cinnamonBitterest tang of muskSharpest kiss of leatherTo scent her robes of duskFrom the shadows, the night,that's where she cameUnfurls out of darkness,then returns againOnce she's eyed you, you're markedTo be consumed at leisureJust one little offeringFor a largesses's pleasureHer fangs are like iceHer eyes are like hellHer mind is a sphinxHer heart is a cellYou look at the moon,then you look at the sunBut neither can helpWhen you know you are done<h3>Pharmatopia</h3>Wake up feel the rage pills to the machineEvery hour on the hour pills to the machineThere's the rush to damp the hate pills to the machineCleanse the dirt extrapolate pills to the machineHumans, monsters, nothingnessAll disperse in clear, sharp blissWe are cold and we are dumbGive us pills and make us numbKeep calm carry this pills to the machineDisconnect to tally this pills to the machineSoothe the beast calm the ire pills to the machineBury it with pharma fire pills to make us cleanLife's a twisted fairytalethe kind that makes you screamwe dress up truth in liar's robessleep through a nightmare dream

Preview of my first collection.... coming soon...

Every morning, I wake up with a phone pressed to my face like a cold confession booth, demanding repentance before I've even sinned. I'm old school compared to most, so first I check my emails, then my texts - but even I can't resist graduating on to a sneak peek at my notifications.&nbsp; WhatsApp messages, Facebook likes, X shares, all of them are dopamine’s little electric kisses - because I need proof that I exist.Before coffee fully revives my bleary consciousness, before I become a woman with a body, bills and memories of encounters I probably shouldn’t have had, I'm a digital corpse who requires resurrection by likes. In the gospel according to Instagram, he who is seen is saved.We've built a cult of screens and offered ourselves up as the sacrifice. We think the gods of technology will bless us with love and immortality. Instead, we get chronic anxiety, failing eyesight, a numbness to reality, and a pixelated simulacrum of connection that looks nothing like real intimacy. <h4>"We wore masks until they cracked. Now we call it art."</h4> There's no room for originality in our economy of attention, only replication. We are taught to regurgitate trending audio clips, to mimic the influencer’s curated kitchen.&nbsp; We adopt the political discourse that guarantees us social safety. We do all of this instinctively because we know that deviation is punished, just like it was in high school and has been all throughout history. It wasn’t always this way. Art used to be rebellion, poetry was a bloodletting, and music, music was a protest, or maybe sometimes a prayer. Now it’s an algorithmic echo chamber. Your content gets shadow-banned if you’re too raw. Your existence gets shadow-banned if you’re too real. <h3>Addiction by Design: No One is Free</h3> It is no accident that you can’t stop scrolling. Your addiction was engineered by men who wanted to build a dopamine slot machine and sell your attention to the highest bidder. It is a digital meth lab with sterile branding. The icons are bright, the notifications drip-fed. The infinite scroll on your feed has been designed to override your natural sense of satiety. You're the lab rat pressing the lever, begging for food that never comes, running on a treadmill of illusion, while calling it connection. None of us escape this. Not the academic who tweets her theories to a phantom classroom, nor the fitness girl posting her shredded abs with a caption about self-love to mask the bulimia beneath. Even the passionately political dude ranting about capitalism is mining his own trauma for content.&nbsp;Nihilism is monetised now. Your rage is data-mined for advertisers delectation. Every post is a sale, every confession conversion copy for a future sponsor.We are not people anymore. We've morphed into avatars with flesh attachments. <h3>Oversharing: Confessions to Nowhere</h3><h3> </h3>People call it vulnerability. I call it tactical confession. Our feeds are confessional booths with no priest because there's no absolution here , only echoes of our own desperation to be seen. We share our sexual trauma for likes. We post our mental breakdowns as aesthetic reels with text overlays proclaiming “healing is not linear”.&nbsp; There is no healing happening anywhere, only performance. We're doing all of this because somewhere along the line, oversharing became the cheapest way to buy attention. <h4>"Performance is the new confession."</h4> When I read Joan Didion, I'm struck by her detached incision. Her pain's laid out forensically, with the distance of a journalist and the heartbreak of a mother writing her child’s obituary.Then&nbsp; I read David Foster Wallace and I'm struck by the ADHD-style hyper-consciousness of his prose, the gnawing analysis of every twitch of culture.&nbsp; The suffocating sense of being trapped inside your own mind.&nbsp;Both of them wrote about despair with a precision and artistry that made it bearable to witness. Now, people just curate their pain for public consumption, editing out the jagged edges to fit a palatable narrative. Trauma must be SEO-friendly. Grief needs to be an engagement funnel. If you're not careful, you'll find yourself writing about the worst trauma of your life in bullet points, just to optimise your LinkedIn algorithm. This is not healing. This is how we die. <h3>Authenticity is Dead, Long Live the Algorithm</h3> Original thought has become an endangered species. We used to create art because we couldn’t bear not to. Now we create content because we can’t bear to disappear. We don't write books that bleed anymore, instead we write captions with strategic hashtags. We don't paint because the madness demands it, we design carousels that convert.&nbsp; We think we're free because we can say anything, but everything we say is shaped by what will trend - or not get us&nbsp; de-platformed or demonetised. We're not brave. We're brand-safe rebels with sponsored rage. The internet's littered with people screaming into the void about their uniqueness while using the same templates, phrases -&nbsp; and now AI tools - that promise them they can stand out. There's no marketplace for originality, only replicas trend now. <h4>"Originality died the moment we hit publish."</h4> We're collectively dying of oversharing and performance. Mystery has fled the building and there's no space for silence. Art must be optimised for engagement. We've traded in authenticity for relevance, swapped out creativity for virality.&nbsp; Privacy has been sold down the river for performative vulnerability.&nbsp; &nbsp;The worst thing is about all of this is that none of us&nbsp; know how to end it. Then again, in today's environment, within the continuous scream of social static, I truly think we have lost the ability to end anything. We'll probably just keep scrolling forever.Share