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Forugh Farrokhzad, from ‘On Loving’, Sin: Selected Poems

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i love having a corporeal form. i love eating warm food on cold days. i love taking hot showers. i love sleeping on clean sheets. i delight in earthly decadence. i wake up and eat warm bread slathered in butter. i own multiple pairs of soft fuzzy socks. this body is so comfy and i'm not returning it any time soon

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THIS.

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something holy inside you wants to get out but you can’t let it

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schuylerpeck / instagram: hiitssky

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Orions Belt Region in Gas and Dust via NASA https://ift.tt/33bcpvw

You may have seen Orion’s belt before – but not like this. The three bright stars across this image are, from left to right, Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak: the iconic belt stars of Orion. The rest of the stars in the frame have been digitally removed to highlight the surrounding clouds of glowing gas and dark dust. Some of these clouds have intriguing shapes, including the Horsehead and Flame Nebulas, both near Alnitak on the lower right. This deep image, taken last month from the Marathon Skypark and Observatory in Marathon, Texas, USA, spans about 5 degrees, required about 20 hours of exposure, and was processed to reveal the gas and dust that we would really see if we were much closer. The famous Orion Nebula is off to the upper right of this colorful field. The entire region lies only about 1,500 light-years distant and so is one of the closest and best studied star formation nurseries known.

(Published January 11, 2022)

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— “the most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.” ; ferdinand foch

richard kadrey ; aloha from hell // smoke and fire 1 ; jennifer walton // a quiet visitor ; holly warburton // la nuba roja ; david de la heras // burning hill ; mitski

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[ID: A blue, gold and brown illustration with two figures, both long-haired men. The man in the foreground has long curly brown hair cries, wearing a cloak with floral embroidery on the sleeve-covers and stars on the ends. His pants have patterns of fish swimming away from a current. He is pinching some dandelions between his fingers and they grow at his feet. The man in the background has an arm wrapped around the crying man, a smile on his face and a blindfold over his eyes. His hair is a long wave with golden fish jumping from it. His left palm has a dark hole with stars inside. ]

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AND THE NIGHT SAID, "WHO ARE YOU BENEATH MY WINE-DARK CLOAK? WHO ARE YOU BEYOND THE PRYING EYES?" FOR HERE DOES THE GENTLE HEART YEARN IN TRUTH, IN SECRECY.

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People gathered around lava, Iceland.

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Dorothy Parker, from The Trifler in “The Collected Poetry Of Dorothy Parker”

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Aren’t you always in a state of prayer?

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Earth, Jupiter, and Venus seen from Mars

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and yes, the world is chaos;

yes it contains impossible & improbable things;

yes it strips the flesh from our bones and bares us

to frost and to flame, to scorn and to shame.

yes we die easily.

the trembling at the edge of darkness

is the arc of our whole beings—

shot out and twisting in spirals forbidden

by the laws of the waking world.

and the dreams, yes the dreams,

like dirt layers and sediment, in eons geologic,

bury you and rebury you, wrap like bandages

or vines around your being, an ivy that someday

crushes the brick and mortar. (time, you say,

your tone a joke just for me, for others could not

bear it: time you say is a pestle.)

was it bones? was it brick, plaster stripped?

and when you close your eyes and begin

to sleep, to dream, (perchance),

what clockwork dissolves and rebuilds?

how do the gears catch and twist you?

or should i say: me?

(where do we begin and end, my dear?

i no longer know—centuries bring me to your door,

and centuries still will take me. i will huddle

in the warmth you provide, and perhaps we

together will be mad again, or never mad,

or beyond it all. perhaps we are a mockery,

perhaps we are a work of art,

perhaps we are nothing more than the whim

of some greater motion—or a small wish,

dearly kept in a massive heart, trembling,

trembling, even as we twist and split again—

departure is the shudder itself.)

“i would have liked to have been better,”

you cry silently in the dark,

“i would have liked to be more.”

but i am always here, my love,

and at least this we can give each other

and in some small measure the world.

we are never over—we only begin—

and craving is the only end, and the only death

a longing. “maybe we were pointless,”

you whisper, and i steal the words from your lips—

no more. “no you’d never be,” you revise, “but I—”

and in this way you demand the theft again,

but it does little to ease the pain of doubting,

the harm of unending longing through the muffle

of so many silken layers and veils, the strands of web

that twist and catch on your arms,

(trembling, trembling)—and you flinch in terror—

this pain is at its core love, but bound as it is in

fog and horror, like silhouettes that lurk always

just out of sight—the nameless seeking is much like

this exactly, the nameless fleeing.

i stretch my fingertips to brush at the corner

of your eye and banish whatever i find there.

(you are not sure it is enough.

what is the point again of seeking and fleeing?

what is the point again of unending end?

what mazes we guide ourselves down—

and to what purpose?)

and in the stars there is no conclusion,

and in poetry there is no form—

only our wandering from port to port.

you rest again a while (away from me,

at times, our ends at odds with the other)

in the shelter of that harbor, or better alee.

my waves cannot always reach you there,

nor any other, but the stillness breeds nothing

and again you flee, you seek—

yes these are the patterns of you, my dear,

and i do love them. they speak to me of

all of those springtimes others might have sought

for flowers—still others for storm—and maybe for

just a moment

the unfurling of petals is no different, for us,

from the tempest.

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Scatter my wayward pieces across that cold, yawning winter sky // Part 20

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the sea in you etheridge knight / what’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen? / virginia woolf / the shape of water / natalie diaz / nina röder / against me

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ALNILAM:

Darling, the stained glass figures

that break, melt, and reform behind your eyes—

I would take your sorrows on the tips of my fingers

and lick them away like honey.

The currents, the ocean that has risen

to eclipse the sunlight through the glass

and those endless layers of refraction,

the twisting paths the rays took to find you,

the rays’ warmth bled away to the waters

and eaten by the hungers etched in the glass:

the greed for legacy, the glory-longing,

the impulse to draw claws through another’s

soul and leave marks to record your being,

a tally, leaden—

and blackened edges and borders

that say to the light Stop and No Farther—

But even as I love these boundaries of your

living body, the edges both sharp and soft,

and subtle, the cloak and fog of you mortal—

I will pull against the sea-veils and silica,

the lying colors, to arrival:

to hold you between my palms,

and our selves sweep one into the other;

the waves will carve out the cathedral

its residue of whispered sins and ritual;

the brine will scrub out its prayers and incense

that smoked the vaulting; its stone and timbers

will sag and crumble.

ALNILAM, as herald of BETELGEUSE:

This is to which the water pulls you,

an end.