January 2012
11 posts
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
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How to Become A Famous Writer
http://writersroutines.tumblr.com/
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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...
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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
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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.
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“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)
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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...
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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...
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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/
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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...
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The Secret Constant by Melanie Richards
The sky looks the same, a constant of clouds and frame, just more or less light.
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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...
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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
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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)
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“Isn’t it always like this –
joy and sorrow calling
to each other
across an...”
– Sally Bliumis-Dunn, excerpt from Angie, Leaving (via holdonmagnolia)
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“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)
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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...
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“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...
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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)
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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...
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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
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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Not for Chopin by Arda Collins
Don’t put off your shower any more listening to Chopin. Take the Preludes personally; he’s telling you that he can describe a progression that you yourself have been unable to see, shapely, broad light at one-thirty, evening traveling up a road, an overcast day as gentle bones. Don’t remember the music; remember it as something obvious that you are compelled, doomed, to obscure...
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The Camp River Poems by Karyna McGlynn
1 What the River Wants. Its banks, so it can move as if it has a destiny to fulfill. Our bodies and our belongings and the rain all at once, so it can swell up like a tomboy and climb the trees.
2 The River as a Mirror of Self. But you will only sometimes, after too much gin, feel as though you waver that way.
You will forget how to do a back-flip. You will forget how to skip stones. You will...
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Ode to Spring by Frederick Seidel
I can only find words for. And sometimes I can’t. Here are these flowers that stand for. I stand here on the sidewalk.
I can’t stand it, but yes of course I understand it. Everything has to have meaning. Things have to stand for something. I can’t take the time. Even skin-deep is too deep.
I say to the flower stand man: Beautiful flowers at your flower stand, man. I’ll...