"Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow's dust flares into breath." Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Mark Strand, The Coming of Light
Free Dirt by Henri Cole, 2013 My house is mine: the choice of menu, the radio and television, the unpolished floors, the rumpled sheets. It's like being inside a rolltop desk. I have no maid who takes care of me. Sometimes, during breakfast, I speak French with a taxidermied wren. There is no debt between us. We listen to language tapes: Viens-tu du ciel profond (Baudelaire)? Always, I hear a little oratorio inside my head. Moths have carried away my carpets, like invisible pallbearers. I like invisibleness, except in the moon's strong, broad rays. Some nights, I ask her paleness, Will I be okay? I am weak and fruitless at night, like a piece of meat with eyes, but in the morning optimistic again, like a snowflake that has traveled many miles and many years to be admired on the kitchen pane. Alone, I guzzle and litter and urinate and shout. Please do not wake me from this dream, making meals from discrete objects―a sweet potato, a jar of marmalade, a bottle of sauvignon blanc. Today, I saw a sign in majuscule for free dirt and thought, We all have chapters we'd rather keep unpublished, in which we get down with the swirl. The little wren perched on my finger weighs almost nothing, just nails and beak. But it gives me tiny moments― here at my kitchen table― like a diaphanous chorus mewling something about love, or the haze of love, a haze that makes me squint-eyed and sick if I think too much about it. What am I but this flensed syntax, sight and sound, in which my heart, not insulated yet, makes ripple effects down the line? [via The Paris Review↱]
Record Body Count by Rheostatics, 1991 Joey pulled himself up to his knees, Pulled his body back up the bank, And looked back down there. He said, "The water wasn't that deep, but I almost drowned there. You can drown in a bathtub, so they say. "Someone in class called me a loser, So I decided to skip the day, Hey, hey, hey, skip the day. "I tried to look casual slipping 'round the back Just a shot-put across the track And to the gate beside the portables. "A red tie and school-grey slacks Doesn't blend in with the grass As the teacher was changing class. "He chased me halfway through the park, 'Til I ran into the woods, And I'm very good in the woods! "So I was an Indian, Built a fire by the creek And dried my eyes there. "There's a record body count this year. There's a record body count this year!" Joey stepped up on a block of ice, Put a rope around his neck, And fell asleep before he died. [(YouTube↱)]
The Thing Is BY ELLEN BASS "to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again."
Louise Erdrich Birth "When they were wild When they were not yet human When they could have been anything, I was on the other side ready with milk to lure them, And their father, too, the name like a net in his hands."
"And the people stayed home. And read books and listened, and rested and exercised, and made art and played games, and learned new ways of being and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless and heartless ways the earth began to heal. And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed." – Written by Kitty O’Meara
Working Class Hero John Lennon As soon as you're born, they make you feel small By giving you no time instead of it all 'Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be They hurt you at home and they hit you at school They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool 'Til you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be When they've tortured and scared you for 20 odd years Then they expect you to pick a career When you can't really function, you're so full of fear A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV And you think you're so clever and classless and free But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be There's room at the top they are telling you still But first you must learn how to smile as you kill If you want to be like the folks on the hill A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be If you want to be a hero, well, just follow me If you want to be a hero, well, just follow me
I'm not a religious person but by Chen Chen, 2017 God sent an angel. One of his least qualified, though. Fluent only in Lemme get back to you. The angel sounded like me, early twenties, unpaid interning. Proficient in fetching coffee, sending super vague emails. It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. This was annoying because I'm not a religious person. I thought I'd made this clear to God by reading Harry Potter & not attending church except for gay weddings. God did not listen to me. God is not a good listener. I said Stop it please, I'll give you wedding cake, money, candy, marijuana. Go talk to married people, politicians, children, reality TV stars. I'll even set up a booth for you, then everyone who wants to talk to you can do so without the stuffy house of worship, the stuffier middlemen, & the football blimps that accidentally intercept prayers on their way to heaven. I'll keep the booth decorations simple but attractive: stickers of angels & cats, because I'm not religious but didn't people worship cats? Thing is, God couldn't take a hint. My doctor said to eat an apple every day. My best friend said to stop sleeping with guys with messiah complexes. My mother said she is pretty sure she had sex with my father so I can't be some new Asian Jesus. I tried to enrage God by saying things like When I asked my mother about you, she was in the middle of making dinner so she just said Too busy. I tried to confuse God by saying I am a made-up dinosaur & a real dinosaur & who knows maybe I love you, but then God ended up relating to me. God said I am a good dinosaur but also sort of evil & sometimes loving no one. It rained & we stayed inside. Played a few rounds of backgammon. We used our indoor voices. It got so quiet I asked God about the afterlife. Its existence, human continued existence. He said Oh. That. Then sent his angel again. Who said Ummmmmmm. I never heard from God or his rookie angel after that. I miss them. Like creatures I made up or found in a book, then got to know a bit. [via PoetryFoundation.org↱]
“Built to be lonely to love the absent. Find me Free me from this corrosive doubt futile despair horror in repose. I can fill my space fill my time but nothing can fill this void in my heart.” ― Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis
Good Bones by Maggie Smith, 2016 Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I've shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I'll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. [via PoetryFoundation.org↱]
"If dark nights must come, let them come. Open your doors. Let them come, my dear, and ask them what they want. Maybe all they want is your presence. Nothing else. Maybe all they want to do is to hold you so close and polish you secretly, without telling anyone– Maybe that is all they want. Know that deep inside they hold ten thousand fragrant mornings. They hold the source of laughter. They hold life." ~ Guthema Roba
The Way It Is "There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread." ~ William Stafford ~
Good Bones BY MAGGIE SMITH "Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful."
Confronting Hatred by Rudy Francisco, 2017 how beautiful would it be if we lived in a place where everyone called hatred by its full name, tapped it on the shoulder, looked into its eyes without shaking and said "you cannot live here anymore." [via Get Lit Anthology↱]
Jane Kenyon At a Motel Near O’Hare Airport I sit by the window all morning watching the planes make final approaches. Each of them gathers and steadies itself like a horse clearing a jump. I look up to see them pass, so close I can see the rivets on their bellies, and under their wings, and at first I feel ashamed, as if I had looked up a woman’s skirt. How beautiful that one is, slim-bodied and delicate as a fox, poised and intent on stealing a chicken from a farmyard. And now a larger one, its tail shaped like a whale’s. They call it sounding when a whale dives, and the tail comes out of the water and flashes in the light before going under. Here comes a 747, slower than the rest, phenomenal; like some huge basketball player clearing space for himself under the basket. How wonderful to be that big and to fly through the air, and to make so great a shadow in the parking lot of a motel.
"Sit and be still until in the time of no rain you hear beneath the dry wind's commotion in the trees the sound of flowing water among the rocks, a stream unheard before, and you are where breathing is prayer." ~ Wendell Berry
“Hemingway feels it from the grave every time the bulls run through the streets of Pamplona again he sits up the skeleton rattles the skull wants a drink the eyeholes want sunlight the young bulls are beautiful, Ernest and you were too no matter what they say now.” Charles Bukowski Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Thomas Hardy, ‘The Darkling Thrush’. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead, In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited. An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, With blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom …
