“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

― Steinbeck

My Meadow, My Twilight

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering,
and in their lying suddenly still again—flat, and still,
like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more
available, more to lose therefore, more to love, or
try to…
But to look up from the leaves, remember,
is a choice also, as if up from the shame of it all,
the promiscuity, the seeing-how-nothing-now-will-
save-you, up to the wind-stripped branches shadow-
signing the ground before you the way, lately, all
the branches seem to, or you like to say they do,
which is at least half of the way, isn’t it, toward
belief—whatever, in the end, belief
is…You can
look up, or you can close the eyes entirely, making
some of the world, for a moment, go away, but only
some of it, not the part about hurting others as the one
good answer to being hurt, and not the part that can
at first seem, understandably, a life in ruins, even if—
refusing ruin, because you
can refuse—you look
again, down the steep corridor of what’s just another
late winter afternoon, dark as night already, dark
the leaves and, darker still, the door that, each night,
you keep meaning to find again, having lost it, you had
only to touch it, just once, and it bloomed wide open …

By Carl Phillips, found here

“When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer

there are some coincidences that are not coincidences

today i pulled cello suites out of the river
and Bach rose from the remnants of your voice,
and i looked back to 2008,
wishing we were in bed, the mornings of the years to come still spread before our feet.

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

- charles bukowski

for two nights, i have been dreaming of people that haven't appeared in my real life in months or years.

you were in the house, it was a rented house, with couches, and kitchen countertops. your things were everywhere, your backpacks, your cameras. you came in with your red hair wild and free like it always is. we didn't speak much, we shook hands like we had never met.

it was ours to fight for

there will come a time when you think everything is finished. that will be the beginning

- louis l'amour

oh. even when i don't go looking for it, it is in front of me.



--

Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next.


It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it.



If we can't face death, we'll never overcome it. You have to look it straight in the eye. Then you can turn around and walk back out into the light.


- Maya Lin

we grow bigger
we swallow
we conquer, and are conquered
we divert
we diverge
we kick
we scream hoarsely
we make out in stairwells
we swell, but disappear
we dig without movement
we hope without hoping
we end without beginning

they lied, healing doesn't exist- forgetting makes us pretend to be better,
anger takes over, lets you forgive without feeling blame,
exhilaration because finally you are no longer prisoner to guilt,
the guilt in which you lived in (but instead you named love)
reeks,
aching and stale
shirts open
mouth on mouth
wounds like flags in the sky, white like clouds over the ocean

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.

jack gilbert

i've been reassessing the way i talk. even my writing is indirect and passive and not wholly truthful. i avoid eye contact when i don't know you. i avoid names when i speak or write. i'm terrified of being straightforward. i keep saying it was about how i was raised. what the fuck do i do about this?

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom." Anais Nin

it is absolutely necessary, this expanse of time in which i toggle between optimism and mourning...

And when I use others' words as my own, or others' words as yours, since there is emptiness where our love once stood. The mountains, though silent, stand there still, whether they are in front of us or behind us.



"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."
- Carl Sagan

I read an interview on louchelink.

Two simple questions and answers that i loved:

What is your biggest fear?

Loss in different ways...people I love mostly.


How would you like to be remembered?

As a person who laughed a lot.

"What's the difference between hesitation and waiting?"

-tm

someone asked me once why i don't write humorously.

i guess in the cases where i would write with humor, i'm just already too busy laughing.

there is a balance to this, i swear it

"In order for the most banal event to become an adventure, it is necessary, and sufficient, to retell it."
- Jean-Paul Sartre

you never call.

hearing your voice after not hearing it for months was shocking.

i am so proud of you. little boy into a little man, entering the world.
your conversation is deliberate, and your vocabulary is surprising. you're not 8 anymore.

i like the way the silence sounds when you're listening to me talk.

i have never been a good sister.

i had a conversation with S. the other day, and she told me about how her brother married a girl before he had lived with her.

S. said that her brother calls her every other day, complaining about things that his wife does, things that are mundane but matter a whole lot.

i think i told you once that i felt like we were always going through something. but when i look back on it, i realize fondly that i know how you will react in these situations, and i like the familiarity of knowing how you take care of things, the way you think through them with reason.

even though there were some very dark periods, there is a familiarity to your pragmatism, a familiarity to your emotion, a sweet expectation to the way you leave your wet towels on the bed and your empty coke bottles on the coffee table.

there was a growing tenderness to the way you would touch my belly when it hurt, or kept me company when i lay on the restroom floor with pain.

the little things are the ones that helped drive my heart back to you.

the incredible warmth of your hands whenever you touched my skin. i remember maybe only one time when i took your hands in mine and they were cold. but even when your hands are cold, they are not clammy. they are smooth, like rocks in a riverbed.

the way your hair feels between my fingertips.

the roundness of your eyes, the slight droopiness at the corners. it was in your eyes that i could tell you loved me, the way they would soften across the room. i could tell the times you felt nothing for me, and the times you felt everything.

your expression when you're driving

your laugh

the way your face changes with embarrassment, the cute kind, where you smile in a square shape


your feet


i used to think that the methodical way you spoke was analogous to hardness, but you are just that way. your enthusiasm comes in volume more than animation, and your animation comes in your hands.

this morning i woke up at the sound of the alarm,
which usually doesn't happen
it's not as bad as it once was,
but somehow still,
feeling
my heart palpitating and feeling the desperate heaviness of life,
somehow confusing it with the lightness of death.

i touch my loneliness with my fingers
and stroke it softly
i make love to my loneliness, because there is nothing left,

and no, good intentions are not what matters in the end.

my boots are heavy


A Pity. We Were Such A Good Invention

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

-Yehuda Amichai

and you said you knew
how you were gonna take it
that you'd take it all
that you knew my heart was not that small
and how could we ever manage
carts and horses could never carry

all I want to give
not give enough
I want to give
not give you love

I chose the strangest little cup
to drink you from and stir you up
and you were beautiful it's true
and all I ever wanted was
to be good to you

and when you see me cry
you ask me, but I think that
you already know why
I'm staring up at the sky

and you said you understood
but promises are not that good
in this improper marriage
love and justice found miscarriage
at the only embassy
with an office for the damaged

and when you see me cry
you ask me, but I think that
you already know why
I'm staring up at the sky

-thao & mirah

it was love that set our fragile planet rolling
tilting at our perfect twenty-three
molecules and men infused with holy
finding our way around the galaxy
and paradise has up and flown away for now

but hope still breathes and truth is always true
and just when we think it's almost over
love has the final move

something right went very wrong
but love has been here all along


- C.R.

words carry oceans on their small backs

- l.y.

I suppose there is something strangely cathartic, even magical about the shamelessness of crying on public transportation during the early hours of the morning

Slow and sweet were the nights.
Now is bitter and grinding as sand--
"Let's be sensible" and similar curses.

And as we stray further from love
we multiply the words,
words and sentences so long and orderly.
Had we remained together
we could have become a silence.

- Yehuda Amichai

probably a house,
probably leftovers in the fridge,
probably shelves and shelves of books,
probably safe,
probably walkable from good or bad coffeehouses,
probably potholders in the shape of farm animals,
probably too many things,
probably full of plants we want to keep alive but never do,
probably flowers on the counter,
probably lots of trees, yes, trees

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

— Franz Kafka

"fate rarely calls upon you at a moment of your choosing"
- the transformers movie i'm watching while under the blankets in a hotel room

i find shelter, in this way
under cover, hide away
can you hear when i say?
i have never felt this way

maybe i had said, something that was wrong
can i make it better with the lights turned on?

could i be, was i there?

it felt so crystal in the air,
i still want to drown, whenever you leave
please teach me gently
how to breathe
and i'll cross oceans, like never before
so you can feel the way i feel it too
and i'll mirror images back at you
so you can see the way i feel it too

- shelter, the xx

perhaps tonight i'll make myself sick doing inversions in my hotel room while eating apples covered in peanut butter

or perhaps tonight i'll make myself sick thinking of you

one of the two.

If, when studying road atlases
while taking, as you call it, your
morning dump, you shout down to
me names like Miami City, Franconia,
Cancún, as places for you to take
me to from here, can I help it if

all I can think is things that are
stupid, like he loves me he loves me
not? I don’t think so. No more
than, some mornings, waking to your
hands around me, and remembering
these are the fingers, the hands I’ve

over and over given myself to, I can
stop myself from wondering does that
mean they’re the same I’ll grow
old with. Yesterday, in the café I
keep meaning to show you, I thought
this is how I’ll die maybe, alone,

somewhere too far away from wherever
you are then, my heart racing from
espresso and too many cigarettes,
my head down on the table’s cool
marble, and the ceiling fan turning
slowly above me, like fortune, the

part of fortune that’s half-wished-
for only—it did not seem the worst
way. I thought this is another of
those things I’m always forgetting
to tell you, or don’t choose to
tell you, or I tell you but only

in the same way, each morning, I
keep myself from saying too loud I
love you until the moment you flush
the toilet, then I say it, when the
rumble of water running down through
the house could mean anything: flood,

your feet descending the stairs any
moment; any moment the whole world,
all I want of the world, coming down.


Domestic, Carl Phillips

and today, i thought that maybe for being so different in our needs, perhaps we are too much alike.
the chronology of our anger, the geography of our hopes
all the while, our sexuality blooming around us


your cigarette-infused mouth covering mine,
saying things and swallowing my heart like
this cave that i found myself wanting to curl myself into,
and give birth in, or to (one or the other)-

in slow motion i watched your anger come through my door,
pull off my blankets from my legs, demand answers. your anger kissed me in the mouth and continued yelling at me and then

your fingers raged war against my skin, the war everyone thought had ended

but secretly i am glad that this is the war that has come to stay,
not a war between countries but of the regions of our hearts,
for war means peace soon,
in this case perhaps never,
but still it seems so likely
that even in battle i find my wounds worth kingdoms

in the morning i smell the cigarettes in my hair, and i breathe in the smells and sounds of your sweat, the kind of breath that is never satisfied

and i welcome my hunger for you
the space i have lived in
and the space i will crave

INTERVIEWER

Which is most important to writing poetry, description or compression?

GILBERT

Neither. I would say presence, feeling, passion—not passion, but love. I usually say romantic love, but here I don’t mean being thrilled. I mean the huge experience of loving another person and being loved by another person. But it’s more than just liking someone or thinking they make you happy.

INTERVIEWER

In your poems, how important is the interplay between syntax and line breaks?

GILBERT

I don’t think that way. I work by instinct and intelligence. By being smart, emotional, probing. By being sly, stubborn. By being lucky. Being serious. By being quietly passionate. By something almost like magic.

INTERVIEWER

To which of your poems are you most attached?

GILBERT

That’s like asking to which of the women you’ve loved are you most 
attached—the best ones.

INTERVIEWER

Do you think poetry is relevant in our society anymore? Do you think it has a place?

GILBERT

Someone once asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization. And he’s supposed to have said, “I think it would be a very good idea.” That’s the way I feel.

INTERVIEWER

Do you still wake happy but aware of your mortality?

GILBERT

Yes, though sometimes I have to have a cup of tea first.

i dreamt about you again. maybe it was because i spent time envisioning our childhood, banging on pots and pans, dancing in our diapers (my mom said that since we could walk, we could shake our booties).

some similarities cannot be seen, i suppose.

"When there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire"
- stars