crushedherbs - Tumblr blog

[crushedherbs]

Once, years ago, I emerged from the woods in the early morning at the end of a walk and—it was the most casual of moments—as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was not the drowning sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle toward it; it was given. Time seemed to vanish. Urgency vanished. Any important difference between myself and all other things vanished.

Mary Oliver, from "The Perfect Day" in Long Life: Essays & Other Writings

[crushedherbs]

swimming in the dark, tomasz jedrowski // normafa, budapest

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"And then I saw my entrance into Paradise and I had no words of its beauty..."

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feathers and blood on the ground

bright light in many colors

angels singing and writhing

crying with joy and trees and flowers

and the water becomes a flood

and the stage, the kingdom of Heaven

here tonight, under the cafe

here tonight, on concrete

our world is made

[crushedherbs]

the only son

the cosmic lamb

staring up, seeing spirals

of a dygogram

quieted

with myrrh incense

but churning yet, a maelstrom

holy pestilence

his body still

locked in a wave

jaw gnashing, chewing blood and

gnawing in his grave

[crushedherbs]

storm upon this earth

rain and thunder befall it

i promise you love

or whatever you call it

i promise you safety

at the fairest of price

deny me not prayer

nor sacrifice

my hand reaches out

across the dead sea

you must dedicate

in deliverance to me

[crushedherbs]

water spirit's lover

plays the fiddle at the throat of the creek

sing together forever

a little tune of peace

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what you hate is a ghost which

posssessses you

and acts on the world

in cruel and secret ways

and you resist it but

avalanches of agony twist you

into betraying yourself

to the end of days

[crushedherbs]

corn field

ancient beast

seeping up

from the tilled earth.

orange moon

distant hills

closing in

on the valley.

kirk bell

howling dog

echoes around

when the sun sinks.

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a red cross on the moon,

the star shivers and explodes

across the sky.

imagine how far away

the end of it felt

at the beginning.

as white salt rain

evaporates the sea

i find an old love letter.

can you tell me now

what you held back

when we dreamed?

[crushedherbs]

Standing there still, at the turn in the path — your blurry eyes, always looking back.

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i am pierced by four stakes

and divided into eight pieces.

the light is blinding,

i am god burning on the hill.

i am the queen's waiting snakes

and the priest of Utu's thesis.

the way back to Akkad is winding.

i am your severed will.

[crushedherbs]

The Tiger (from the poem by Nael, age 6)🐅

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*

hanif abdurraqib

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“The physiotherapist came to Maman's bed, turned down the sheet and took hold of her left leg: Maman had an open hospital nightdress on and she did not mind that her wrinkled belly, criss-crossed with tiny lines, and her bald pubis showed. 'I no longer have any sort of shame,' she observed in a surprised voice. ‘You are perfectly right not to have any,' I said. But I turned away and gazed fixedly into the garden. The sight of my mother's nakedness had jarred me. No body existed less for me: none existed more. As a child I had loved it dearly; as an adolescent it had filled me with an uneasy repulsion: all this was perfectly in the ordinary course of things and it seemed reasonable to me that her body should retain its dual nature, that it should be both repugnant and holy - a taboo. But for all that, I was astonished at the violence of my distress. My mother's indifferent acquiescence made it worse: she was abandoning the exigencies and prohibitions that had oppressed her all her life long and I approved of her doing so. Only this body, suddenly reduced by her capitulation to being a body and nothing more, hardly differed at all from a corpse - a poor defenceless carcass turned and manipulated by professional hands, one in which life seemed to carry on only because of its own stupid momentum. For me, my mother had always been there, and I had never seriously thought that some day, that soon I should see her go. Her death, like her birth, had its place in some legendary time. When I said to myself 'She is of an age to die’ the words were devoid of meaning, as so many words are. For the first time I saw her as a dead body under suspended sentence.”

—Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death (1964)

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("I exist in two places: here and where you are")

Suzanne Buffam, "Vanishing Interior"

Sufjan Stevens, "The Only Thing"

Rene Ricard, "And Then I Tried"