January 2012
11 posts
6 tags
Bop: Haunting by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
In the evening she comes, her same unsatisfied self, with the hard, smug look of salvation. Mama, stop bothering me. When we argue, she says what you’re saying is not scriptural. You need to get back in your Bible.
In one dream, I slap her. I’m tired of her mouth.
I hate to see the evening Sun go down
Brief reflection on killing the Christmas Carp by...
You take a kitchen-mallet and a knife and hit the right spot, so it doesn’t jerk, for jerking means only complications and reduces profit.
And the watchers already narrow their eyes, already admire the dexterity, already reach for their purses. And paper is ready for wrapping it up. And smoke rises from chimneys. And Christmas peers from windows, creeps along the ground and splashes...
9 tags
9 tags
4 bee poems by poncho peligroso
bee poem 1
i am a bee, so i am too small and too weak to pick flowers and bring you them, but i will fly until i find flowers and when i find the flowers i will fly back to you in a perfectly straight line and then i will land and dance for you a little wiggle dance contained in this dance will be information about the location of the flowers so that you can go get them and appreciate them, the...
8 tags
From the Lil Wayne Letters by Lauren Ireland
JULY 14 2010
Hey. I hate it when my hands smell like pennies. Do you think we’re too sad for each other? Last night I dreamed the richness of gasoline, ropes of hair, canvas, that dead bird. I mean almost everyone is lonely. Almost no one’s amazing. I know—how about we ride into a time that hasn’t been invented yet. Then we’ll invent music.
JULY 18 2010
You know that things become...
7 tags
“I feel the dead in the cold of violets
And that great vagueness of the moon.
...”
– Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, from “I Feel the Dead” (trans. by Ruth Fainlight)
7 tags
Seven Happy Endings by Li-Young Lee
Love, Love, Love, where are we now? Where did we begin? I think
one of us wanted to name this, wanted to call it something! Shadows on the Garden Wall. A Man Rowing Alone Out to Sea. A Song in Search of a Singer.
I think that was me, I wanted to call it something. And you? You were happy with a room, two rooms, and a door to divide them. And daylight on either side of the door. Borrowed music...
6 tags
9 tags
meditation on life and nature by zachary whalen
i like breathing
taking big breaths
it feels pretty good
i also like when the wind blows
making my hair look all cool
guess i’m really into like wind and air
stuff like that
i wonder what it’s like to get old
probably it’s bad but like
do people care as much
like about what you do / how you behave
seems like people wouldn’t care
about having goals or being...
7 tags
Poemkemon #1 by Kim Calder
Its fire is put out when it sleeps. The fire burns weakly when it feels sick. Its fire never goes out. Because it is very proud. It hates accepting food from people. A poor walker, it often falls down. It doesn’t like to be taken care of. It lives alone, away from others. Apparently, every one of them believes it is the most important. It lives a solitary life. Its cries are very strident....
9 tags
John Wayne's Perfumes by Wayne Koestenbaum
In Cast a Giant Shadow, John Wayne wore Claiborne Sport; in Flame of the Barbary Coast, Femme; Dakota, Diorissimo.
In The Undefeated, John Wayne wore Unzipped; in Overland Stage Raiders, Opium; Stagecoach, Snuff.
In The Alamo, John Wayne wore Anais Anais; in Jet Pilot, Joop Nuit d’Ete; Chisum, Charlie.
In Barbarian and the Geisha, John Wayne wore Baby Doll; in Wake of...
7 tags
Salute by A.R. Ammons
May happiness pursue you,
catch you often, and,
should it lose you,
be waiting ahead, making
a clearing for you
[HAPPY NEW YEAR!]
December 2011
42 posts
10 tags
How to Become A Famous Writer
http://writersroutines.tumblr.com/
9 tags
IT MAKES YOU ASK THAT QUESTION, "WHICH WOLF?" by...
Which Wolf strays? How is the hair? rigor, rigor, rigor, rigor us & pass the Pigs. Two Wolves walk into a Pig Bar, dressed like Pigs. Eat the Pigs. 1st Wolf leads a long life. 2nd Wolf dies young enough to scar his kids. Which Wolf strays? Two guys walk into a bar. First guy says, “Hey bartender, I got a joke. Two guys walk into a Pig bar dressed like Pigs–” “Woah, buddy. This is a Pig bar...
6 tags
Lynda Barry
Sometimes, I think the only art left for us is slowly peeling the label off a beer bottle while somebody tells you about a dream they had. —Lynda Barry
11 tags
Keep It Up And You'll Freeze Like That by...
A family that dresses up as clowns together stays together. At least, that was Father’s idea. So he bought costumes for himself, his wife, and his young son and daughter. They didn’t take them off for two days. The father wore his to the office. The wife wore hers to the grocery and a PTA meeting. The boy played shortstop in polka dots. The little girl in the purple wig had tea...
7 tags
Werner Herzog
aviatorslandnomore:
Do you have any formal interest in psychology?
I loathe psychology as one of the major faults of our civilization nowadays. There’s something not right about this amount of introspection. I can only give you a metaphor: When you move into an apartment, you cannot start to illuminate every last corner with neon light. If there are no dark corners or hidden niches, your house...
11 tags
A Theme Song That Never Gets Old by Christopher...
We keep a bear above our bed. We like it up there, mounted in attack stance—shoulders hunched, claws raised, eyes satanic, lips folded back revealing black gums and teeth. What teeth! Julie and I are startled by those teeth every night of our lives, and we’ve been under the bear for going on eight years now. Gurgle goes the mouthwash, soap on our faces, flush the toilet, and crawl under the...
7 tags
Working Plans For A Tiny Animal by Patrick Lucy
SECTION 17-B, ANTLER BRIGHTNESS
For a tiny animal prone to overheating, the illuminated antler is a critical way to maintain body temperature.
At room temperature, a healthy animal’s antlers will glow at anywhere from four to eight lumens (depending on mood).
But in extreme heat… antlers can put out over two hundred and fifty lux. When that happens the small animal is called an eclipse.
5 tags
4 tags
5 tags
“It’s dark.
You exhale a fist of memory.
I love you like weathering wood
in a...”
– James L. White, from “Lying in Sadness” in The Salt Ecstasies (via proustitute)
4 tags
So What by Kim Addonizio
Guess what. If love is only chemistry— phenylethylamine, that molecule that dizzies up the brain’s back room, smoky with hot bebop, it won’t be long until a single worker’s mopping up the scuffed and littered floor, whistling tunelessly, each endorphin cooling like a snuffed glass candle, the air stale with memory. So what, you say; outside, a shadow lifts a trumpet...
7 tags
Your Dog Dies by Raymond Carver
It gets run over by a van. you find it at the side of the road and bury it. you feel bad about it. you feel bad personally, but you feel bad for your daughter because it was her pet, and she loved it so. she used to croon to it and let it sleep in her bed. you write a poem about it. you call it a poem for your daughter, about the dog getting run over by a van and how you looked after...
8 tags
Melanie Richards
So good!
Please check out her personal blog where she posts a bunch of her work:
http://itspoetrytime.blogspot.com/
Here’s her tumblr:
http://sedimentary.tumblr.com/
8 tags
Meh by Melanie Richards
Adulthood is like an impotent unicorn
standing on a hill, knowing everything,
on account of the sudden acquisition of binoculars. I have the silvery-white mane, and yet I cannot prance. This unicorn is a being which worries about avian flu and swine flu, the direction of the wind and whether it will bear mosquitos or meteorites. This is a mythical being that fights its brothers, that leaves a...
8 tags
The Secret Constant by Melanie Richards
The sky looks the same, a constant of clouds and frame, just more or less light.
7 tags
Commitment Issues by Melanie Richards
The first ten minutes of a movie are always my favorite part. I sign petitions and call Senators but I will not drive an hour and a half to show up at the rally. I bookmark interesting websites “to look at later,” but I never do. My student account at the university says that I am one thing, but in my spare time I seem to be that thing never. I am the half-filled glass. I am the...
11 tags
7 tags
Sleep is a Brick Floor by Jon Woodward
sleep is a brick floor a vast and simple one we breach out of it and fall back in like whales in the ocean I’ll
be doing the dishes and all of a sudden I’ll see my arm making nice circle motions attached to my wrist down inside a big
soapy pot where my hand holds a scrubber thing and digs it against the pot moving by means of somehow unknown and violent anticircular flexations
6 tags
Two Reasons Why I Like Men // Dorothea Grossman
syllablefingers:
(1) The vulnerability of their legs
in shorts,
(2) The innocence of their bare chests
in August.
(via exempli-gratia)
5 tags
“Isn’t it always like this –
joy and sorrow calling
to each other
across an...”
– Sally Bliumis-Dunn, excerpt from Angie, Leaving (via holdonmagnolia)
5 tags
“Today I bought
the first pumpkin
of my season.
The sun was
hitting the water...”
– Dorothea Grossman (via grammatolatry)
“I’ve been numb for over a month now
and the winter sneaked in
with fast-moving...”
– Dorothea Grossman (via rosiee)
9 tags
Second Poem by Peter Orlovsky
Morning again, nothing has to be done, maybe buy a piano or make fudge. At least clean the room up for sure like my farther I’ve done flick the ashes & butts over the bed side on the floor. But frist of all wipe my glasses and drink the water to clean the smelly mouth. A nock on the door, a cat walks in, behind her...
6 tags
“Veganism — trying to be nice to others”
– Steve Roggenbuck
Enough by Suzanne Buffam
babybirch:
I am wearing dark glasses inside the house To match my dark mood.
I have left all the sugar out of the pie. My rage is a kind of domestic rage.
I learned it from my mother Who learned it from her mother before her
And so on. Surely the Greeks had a word for this.
Now surely the Germans do. The more words a person knows
To describe her private sufferings The more distantly she can...
8 tags
Give Me Your Hand by Gabriela Mistral
Give me your hand and give me your love, give me your hand and dance with me. A single flower, and nothing more, a single flower is all we’ll be.
Keeping time in the dance together, you’ll be singing the song with me. Grass in the wind, and nothing more, grass in the wind is all we’ll be.
I’m called Hope and you’re called Rose: but losing our names we’ll both...
“i’d rather be a tree in lord of the rings than a person in real life”
– selections from Spencer Madsen’s Twitter by Elaine Sun (editor)
5 tags
Credo by Andrew Zawacki
You say wind is only wind & carries nothing nervous in its teeth. I do not believe it.
I have seen leaves desist from moving
although the branches move, & I
believe a cyclone has secrets the weather is ignorant of. I believe in the violence of not knowing.
I’ve seen a river lose its course & join...
5 tags
The Thin Red Line by James Jones
If I never meet you In this life Let me feel the lack A glance from your eyes And my life Will be yours
4 tags
i honestly do not know who this poem is directed...
your philosophy of life is that drugs are cool you are so nihilistic that you don’t care about the environment your worldview is that violence, offending people, and killing animals are the best your belief system is that tonight you are going to get fucked up you are an asshole to other people because of the human condition, existentialism, and your high IQ you would rather punch someone in...
5 tags
Osaka Hat by Michael Earl Craig
When in nature throw your cigarette butts into the river. When in nature with
a Japanese maiden rub her knuckle with your knuckle. She throws her hat
into the river and laughs. Clouds push down to fill the valley with cloud.
Nowhere have I seen such greenness in a river. The hat floats quickly downstream.
5 tags
Further Notice by Philip Whalen
I can’t live in this world And I refuse to kill myself Or let you kill me
The dill plant lives, the airplane My alarm clock, this ink I won’t go away
I shall be myself — Free, a genius, an embarrassment Like the Indian, the buffalo
Like Yellowstone National Park.
8 tags
I Give Up by Philip Whalen
I hate the morning, I hate the night Lie down and die, tell me some more Don’t go to sleep, don’t leave me alone
The dreams: of changes, suffocation Loss of speech, pursuit by monsters Or of endless logical argument
Awake and watching you sleep is worse The stores are closed, no buses run Homicidal maniacs prowl the suburbs
And the happy phantom of my greatness Wakes and grasps this...
4 tags
A Vision of the Bodhisattvas by Philip Whalen
They pass before me one by one riding on animals “What are you waiting for,” they want to know
Z—, young as he is (& mad into the bargain) tells me “Some day you’ll drop everything & become a rishi, you know.”
I know The forest is there, I’ve lived in it More certainly than this town? Irrelevant—
What am I waiting for? A change in customs...
7 tags
A Felicitous Life by Czeslaw Milosz
His old age fell on years of abundant harvest. There were no earthquakes, droughts or floods. It seemed as if the turning of the seasons gained in constancy, Stars waxed strong and the sun increased its might. Even in remote provinces no war was waged. Generations grew up friendly to fellow men. The rational nature of man was not a subject of derision.
It was bitter to say farewell to the...
5 tags
In Autumn by Jon Anderson
At day’s light I dressed my cold body & went out. Calling the dogs, I climbed the west hill, Threw cut wood down to the road for hauling. Done, there was a kind of exultation That wanted to go on; I made my way Up through briers & vines To a great stone that rises at the hill’s brow, Large enough to stand on. The river Below was a thick, dark line. My house was quaint. I sat,...