August 2011
1 post
Infidelity by Jude Nutter
…After the first death there is no other. —Dylan Thomas When the hawk slaked down into the garden and entered the chittering bud of linnets and sparrows feeding on the bread crumbs and stale cereal, you were telling me the story of how you took it upon yourself to bury, as you would in the weeks to come most of your own platoon, the young German—the first man you ever killed—...
June 2011
2 posts
there was earth inside them
There was earth inside them, and they dug. They dug and dug, and so their day went past, their night. And they did not praise God, who, so they heard, wanted all this, who, so they heard, witnessed all this. They dug and heard nothing more; they did not grow wise, invented no song, devised for themselves no sort of language. They dug. There came a stillness then, came also storm, all of...
May 2011
2 posts
“Smell of tree and ink
Stories waiting in each hand
This is a good day”
– mcspinsta (via prettybooks)
3 tags
My Friend Is Lost In Nepal. by Benjamin...
I received a letter in the mail, informing me that my friend has disappeared into Nepal. It says, after boarding a train in Patan,
he was never heard from again. I have considered flying into the Kathmandu valley to look for him but I cannot afford to be lost, among all those prayer flags and
protests.
To find him, years later at the Namche Bazaar. Breathing thin air and buying...
April 2011
3 posts
lyssamae:
Desiderata- Max Ehrmann
Go placidly...
You Remain, Arthur Symons
As a perfume doth remain In the folds where it hath lain, So the thought of you, remaining Deeply folded in my brain, Will not leave me; all things leave me - You remain. Other thoughts may come and go, Other moments I may know That shall waft me, in their going, As a breath blown to and fro, Fragrant memories; fragrant memories Come and go. Only thoughts of you remain In my heart...
chrstn:
If this comes creased and creased again and soiled as if I’d opened it a thousand times to see if what I’d written here was right, it’s all because I looked too long for you to put in your pocket. Midnight says the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped by nervous fingers. What I wanted this to say was that I want to be so close that when you find it, it is warm from me.
~ Ted...
March 2011
3 posts
sometimesagreatnotion:
Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday. Heart feels better, then. But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart. Heart is so new to this. I want them back, says heart. Head is all heart has. Help, head. Help heart.
- Lydia Davis,...
“Naked you are simple as one of your hands;
Smooth, earthy, small, transparent,...”
– Morning, Pablo Neruda (via fuckyeahneruda)
[CHRISTINE] sweet sassy molassee: Mathematicians... →
chrstn:
Mathematicians still don’t understand the ball our hands made, or how your electrocuted grandparents made it possible for you to light my cigarettes with your eyes. It isn’t as simple as me climbing into the window to leave six ounces of orange juice and a doughnut by the bed, or me becoming the sand you dug your toes in on the beach when you wished to hide them from the sun and the...
February 2011
5 posts
Dancing in the Night by John Gardiner
Of all romantic hideaways for lovers to cuddle and make love, 8th Ave. in NYC is not even on the desperation list, yet there we were for three years, creating our own heat when the pipes froze every February, the chorus girl and the actor, and I will never forget one night when we crossed the great sensual divide, stuck together with bliss, having swallowed each other whole and eaten any morsels...
Carpentry by Anis Majgani
I want to make you moonbeams out of fallen leaves I want to make a house to hold your sleep
Absence by Jeffrey McDaniel
On the scales of desire, your absence weighs more than someone else’s presence, so I say no thanks
to the woman who throws her girdle at my feet, as I drop a postcard in the mailbox and watch it
throb like a blue heart in the dark. Your eyes are so green - one of your parents must be
part traffic light. We’re both self-centered, but the world revolves around us at the same speed.
...
"Four in the Morning" by Wislawa Szymborska
The hour from night to day. The hour from side to side. The hour for those past thirty.
The hour swept clean to the crowing of cocks. The hour when earth betrays us. The hour when wind blows from extinguished stars. The hour of and-what-if-nothing-remains-after-us.
The hollow hour. Blank, empty. The very pit of all other hours.
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four...
2 tags
"The Kingfisher" by Mary Oliver
The kingfisher rises out of the black wave like a blue flower, in his beak he carries a silver leaf. I think this is the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life that doesn’t have its splash of happiness? There are more fish than there are leaves on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher wasn’t born to think...
January 2011
3 posts
2 tags
“cirrus
1. hip to be swear
new year a new west state of mind of rest and...”
– Emily Fedoruk (via catsandboys)
(via severnb)
2 tags
Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you’re tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep. Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You...
3 tags
Tony Steinberg: Brave Seventh Grade Viking Warrior...
Have you ever seen a Viking ship made out of popsicle sticks And balsa wood? With tiny coils of brown thread for ropes, Sixteen oars made out of chopsticks, and a red and yellow sail made from a baby’s footie pajamas?
I have.
He died with his sword in his hand and so went straight to heaven.
The Vikings sometimes buried their bravest warriors in ships. Or set them adrift and on fire, a...
December 2010
6 posts
3 tags
2 tags
The Menace of the Flower
blogut:
Flower of drowsiness, lull me but love me not. How you profuse your perfume, how overdo your rouge, flower who kohl your lids and exhale your soul in the sun! Flower of drowsiness. There is one resembles you in your deceiving blush, and too because she has black eyelashes like you. Flower of drowsiness. (And I tremble alone to see your hand in mine, tremble lest you turn into a...
2 tags
“Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad—
Broke my brittle heart...”
– Dorothy Parker, A Very Short Song (via holdonmagnolia)
2 tags
expletives and eyeshadow →
kerrycoxpoetry:
i had all these things i wanted to tell you none of them would you want to hear, i’m mostly sure although you do have a willingness to let my voice stick into your skin like pricklebushes in summer but i’m here oppositely angry staring at my fingernails hiding crescent moons sprinkling superstitious spices under my pillow to take away the dreams of flood and fires uprooted...
2 tags
“When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down...”
– WB Yeats, “When You Are Old” (via xraystyle)
2 tags
New York, New York, David Berman
april-is:
New York, New York David Berman A second New York is being built a little west of the old one. Why another, no one asks, just build it, and they do. The city is still closed off to all but the work crews who claim it’s a perfect mirror image. Truthfully, each man works on the replica of the apartment building he lives in, adding new touches, like cologne dispensers, rock gardens, and...
November 2010
7 posts
2 tags
Variation on the Word Sleep; Margaret Atwood →
kellybee:
I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear I would like to give...
2 tags
POEM ABOUT YOUR LAUGH
Susan Glickman From: Henry Moore’s Sheep. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990.
When you laugh it is all the unsynchronized clocks in the watchmaker’s shop striking their dissident hours. It is six blind kittens having the nipples plucked from their mouths. It is the ecstatic susurrus of prayer wheels. When you laugh innumerable pine trees shed their needles at once...
2 tags
“Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged...”
– Pablo Neruda (via immortalquotes)
2 tags
hewing the carcass
crfloor:
he embraced me as unmowed grass embraces the foundations of old farmhouses
as rust seizes the edges of abandoned fenders
and i felt as tombstones do, quietly standing in for the long-gone.
2 tags
Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem →
chrstn:
My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers of my palms tell me so. Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish at the same time. I think
praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think staying up and waiting for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this is exactly what’s happening,
it’s what they write grants...
2 tags
Trains
shanai-matteson:
There are times when I see us as passengers
on separate trains, passing each other
at those ghost-early hours of night,
small shards of light signaling
between the cars; the other riders,
if there are any, dead asleep
in the distances they have created.
I see our reflections in the windows
merge, mouth to mouth,
passing through one another-
the outline of a tree where...
2 tags
I spend my days staring. alternating between synthetic blue water and sky. When we were seven we ran in circles outstretched hoping for something to crash into us, to fill this void. Looping figure 8 style on its side and a bad case of apathy. Name games, waiting games, late night poker and 80-proof spilling over our eyelids. I’m sitting in a park waiting for something to happen. You’re...
October 2010
5 posts
2 tags
Flashy Words
by Shihan
Flashy words make the world turn but it don’t turn right Flashy words make the world turn but it don’t turn right
So I use these real eyes to realize the real lies being spoken but not heard cause We are more fascinated by that which are fabricated
The iconoclastic tactless tactician aims Tongues spits truth, words like wrecking balls Bounce off brains cause nobody likes...
2 tags
Letter to a Substitute Teacher
by Gary Gildner
Dear Miss Miller, You are someone too sweet to sleep alone And I can’t help myself.
sitting here hearing your soft voice so I must tell you I like you
very much and would like to know you better. I know there is a difference in our age and race
but we do have something in common—You’re a girl and I’m a boy and that is all
we need. Please do not look at...
2 tags
Forgotten Language
by Shel Silverstein
Once I spoke the language of the flowers, Once I understood each word the caterpillar said, Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings, And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed. Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets, And joined the crying of each falling dying ...
2 tags
Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda
by Shel Silverstein
All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas Layin’ in the sun, Talkin’ bout the things They woulda-coulda-shoulda done… But those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas All ran away and hid From one little did.
2 tags
Wanting to Die
by Anne Sexton
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I...
September 2010
6 posts
2 tags
Loss, Abayomi Animashaun
poetry365:
Such lies have been told about her.
My favorite: ‘when she comes
The blue hand of the sky vanishes.
Hippos storm the sun.
Birds peck furiously at anthills.
Wings wrap tightly against trees.’
But notice how she doesn’t say a word
And sits beside you when
The moments of love have flickered their last.
How she stands beside you when solitude
Has you cornered. Right now she is...
2 tags
"After Reading Old Unrequited Love Poems" by...
If I didn’t think it would make me appear crazy still, I’d apologize to you for having been so crazy then.
Reading the poems I had written about “us” resurrected all that nervous heat, reminded me
of the insistent stutter of my longing, how I could never just lay it out there for you.
The answer, clearly, would have been no, thank you. But perhaps that tough line
would have been enough to...
2 tags
"Poetry Comes After the Fact" by Derrick Brown
Look at you, dressed up like a short story.
Easy on the eyes and punchy.
Another night beach trespass and I laid on the rocks with you like all teen movie finales. You kissed like a runway virgin and strolled like a whore outta money.
You spoke soft as a wet mint and soothed me like a new air conditioner.
Like all bartenders on slow days, you listened. You wished I had called you more like all...
2 tags
"Balloon" by Michael Cirelli
Michael, you can’t expect the world from me, when my feet are hardly on the ground, she said. And also, I want to hollow you out and make a sleeping bag of you. And again, something along the lines of, I feel like a wild bird, perched on you. One more time, he wanted to hear, hold me baby baby baby, while they rolled around the bed like a cement mixer—He didn’t know what to...
2 tags
"Down There" by Cristin O'keefe Aptowicz
“Down There”
This is how you refer to your genitalia. This is also where your mother told me, while standing at the basement door, I could find some ice cream.
2 tags
"Pearlie Tells What Happened at School"
by Diane Gilliam Fisher
Miss Terry has figured since we are living in a coal camp, we ought to know geology, which is learning about rocks. Every day we got to bring in a different rock and say what it is. Even our spelling words is rock words, like sediment and petrified. Yesterday, Miss Terry says, Who can use “petrified” in a sentence? and Walter Coyle raises his hand, which, he...
July 2010
6 posts
2 tags
Poetry 365: In Love With the Bears, Greg Kuzma →
To see them coming headstrong battering the air home to Goldilocks and three chairs three bowls of porridge three beds taking the steps three at a time barging into the rooms this is what I grew up on three bears with nothing to do no terror of woods each with a small anger toward usurpers that easy knowledge of something taken and not returned something broken and not fixed something...
2 tags
December Night by W. S. Merwin
The cold slope is standing in darkness But the south of the trees is dry to the touch The heavy limbs climb into the moonlight bearing feathers I came to watch these White plants older at night The oldest Come first to the ruins And I hear magpies kept awake by the moon The water flows through its Own fingers without end Tonight once more I find a single prayer and it is not for men
2 tags
Beggars and Kings - W. S. Merwin
In the evening all the hours that weren’t used are emptied out and the beggars are waiting to gather them up to open them to find the sun in each one and teach it its beggar’s name and sing to it It is well through the night but each of us has his own kingdom of pains and has not yet found them all and is sailing in search of them day and night infallible undisputed unresting filled...
2 tags
The Ships Are Made Ready in Silence by W.S. Merwin
Moored to the same ring: The hour, the darkness and I, Our compasses hooded like falcons. Now the memory of you comes aching in With a wash of broken bits which never left port In which once we planned voyages, They come knocking like hearts asking: What departures on this tide? Breath of land, warm breath, You tighten the cold around the navel, Though all shores but the first have been foreign,...
2 tags
Sonnet 152 - William Shakespeare
Well-known? Maybe. Still amazing? Absolutely.
In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn, But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing, In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn, In vowing new hate after new love bearing. But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee, When I break twenty? I am perjured most; For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee And all my honest...
2 tags
"The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel
From The Last American Valentine
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
the government has decided to allot
each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it
to my ear without saying hello.
In the restaurant I point
at chicken noodle soup. I am
adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long
...
May 2010
5 posts
2 tags
Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?