love, humming

"In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral..."

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:47:00 -0500

“In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses.”

- Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

"1. It’s like her body makes forgiveness the way mine makes blood. The way it flows from her when..."

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 19:12:00 -0500

“

1. It’s like her body makes forgiveness
the way mine makes blood.
The way it flows from her when she’s injured.

2. She says “There is no such thing as destiny
There is nothing you can’t control.”
But she is wrong. She is so, so wrong.

3. I choke on my secrets. I show her my scars.
She says “Memories are like family,
you can always walk away.” (She hasn’t
seen her father since high school.)

4. She’s one of those anarchists
that’s really just hopeful.
Revolutionaries that in their hearts
are still children with tree branch swords.
Deep down, she believes the world is perfectible.

”

- On Loving An Optimist

Photo

Sat, 25 May 2013 22:46:43 -0500

Nicola Samori - Maddalena, 2010, oil on wood, 70 x 50 cm | More...

Sat, 25 May 2013 08:18:00 -0500

Nicola Samori - Maddalena, 2010, oil on wood, 70 x 50 cm | More posts

(from About This by Vladimir Mayakovsky)

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:44:15 -0500

(from About This by Vladimir Mayakovsky)

"If I should cast off this tattered coat, And go free into the mighty sky; If I should find nothing..."

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:54:00 -0500

“If I should cast off this tattered coat,
And go free into the mighty sky;
If I should find nothing there
But a vast blue,
Echoless, ignorant —
What then?”

- Stephen Crane

Photo

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:50:29 -0500

"The writing of some men is like a vast bridge that carries you over the many things that claw and..."

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:21:51 -0500

“The writing of some men is like a vast bridge that carries you over the many things that claw and tear.”

- Charles Bukowski

Stephen Fry: To Myself: Not To Be Read Until I Am 25

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:20:40 -0500

I know what you will think when you read this. You will be embarrassed. You will scoff and sneer. Well I tell you now that everything I feel now, everything I am now is truer and better than anything I shall ever be. Ever. This is me now, the real me. Every day that I grow away from the me that is writing this now is a betrayal and a defeat. I expect you will screw this up into a ball with sophisticated disgust, or at best with tolerant amusement but deep down you will know, you will know that you are smothering what you really, really, were. This is the age when I truly am. From now on my life will be behind me. I tell you now, THIS IS TRUE - truer than anything else I will ever write, feel or know. WHAT I AM NOW IS ME, WHAT I WILL BE IS A LIE.

God has pity on kindergarten children.He has less pity on school children.And on grown ups he has no...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:18:15 -0500

God has pity on kindergarten children.
He has less pity on school children.
And on grown ups he has no pity at all,
he leaves them alone,
and sometimes they must crawl on all fours
in the burning sand
to reach the first aid station
covered with blood.

But perhaps he will watch over true lovers
and have mercy on them and shelter them
like a tree over the old man
sleeping on a public bench.

Perhaps we too will give them
the last rare coins of compassion
that Mother handed down to us,
so that their happiness will protect us
now and in other days.

by Yehuda Amichai

(Sasha Sokolov, School For Fools)

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:19:00 -0500

(Sasha Sokolov, School For Fools)

"Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life. Others..."

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:05:37 -0600

“Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.”

- Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman

Stephen Crane

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:04:53 -0600

Behold, the grave of a wicked man,
And near it, a stern spirit.

There came a drooping maid with violets,
But the spirit grasped her arm.
“No flowers for him,” he said.
The maid wept:
“Ah, I loved him.”
But the spirit, grim and frowning:
“No flowers for him.”

Now, this is it —
If the spirit was just,
Why did the maid weep?

Photo

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:02:09 -0600

Fable

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 23:26:55 -0600

Once upon a time
there was a lonely wolf
lonelier than the angels.

He happened to come to a village.
He fell in love with the first house he saw.

Already he loved its walls
the caresses of its bricklayers.
But the windows stopped him.

In the room sat people.
Apart from God nobody ever
found them so beautiful
as this child-like beast.

So at night he went into the house.
He stopped in the middle of the room
and never moved from there any more.

He stood all through the night, with wide eyes
and on into the morning when he was beaten to death.

by János Pilinszky

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:42:20 -0600

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness. And God said, ‘Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.’ And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. ‘What is the purpose of all this?’ he asked politely. ‘Everything must have a purpose?’ asked God. ‘Certainly’, said man. ‘Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this’, said God. And He went away.

"In the pathway of the sun, In the footsteps of the breeze, Where the world and sky are one, He shall..."

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:05:26 -0600

“In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.”

- Dorothy Parker, “Penelope”

Photo

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:10:23 -0600

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:37:00 -0600

A Poem A Day: Still Life with Suicide by Alexander Long

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 19:43:00 -0600

A Poem A Day: Still Life with Suicide by Alexander Long:

Maybe it’s worth it: no one dies
More alone, more slowly than the suicide.

They have become their desire, their own admirers, they are no longer
Clichés of our own grief and narcissism.

But why does this poem feel otherwise, why have I placed my friend B.
Inside a still life, the moment before

He looks up at St. Joseph’s statue, spits, and kisses

The pistol? No desire, maybe, though this moment has snow
Falling, enough to create a quiet so large that even madness

Seems to descend like a gift, or a song. I don’t know
Much about madness, but B. must have practiced it daily

The way a singer will leap through scales backstage
Or in the green room holding a cup of tea.

If B.’s performance was final, his image is not.

That’s why I’m here, still.

& & &

How selfish the living can be:

At dinner after the funeral, I broke three fingers
Breaking someone’s jaw who claimed

That B. was a pussy. How blinding

Grief can be, how selfish and necessary
To blurt it out between shots of Bushmill’s and plates of roasted pork.

B. and all the suicides don’t have to deal with us anymore; how
Careless of me to lump them all

Together. Dante knew better, but
Still got it wrong. What dreams may come

For them are not suffused with rings of fire,
But are fleshed out in sleep, gauzy canvases of us grieving,

Then forgetting them.

Wind blows through the high windows of the mansion they stay in.

The white curtains sway like wet swans or the mane of a palomino.

B. leans back, curls into himself, and sips some warm milk.

He pulls the white blanket up.