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Cento poem for my poetry class. Still feels very cobbled together, but it is a work in progress.

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Even After All this time The Sun never says to the Earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look What happens With a love like that, It lights the whole sky.

حافظ (via observando)

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We have to create. It is the only thing louder than destruction.

Andrea Gibson, “Yellow Bird” The Madness Vase (via wordsnquotes)

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The winter I told you I think icicles are magic you stole an enormous one from a neighbor’s drooping shingle and gave it to me as a gift. I kept it in my freezer for seven months ‘til the day I hurt my leg and needed something to reduce the swelling. Love isn’t always magic. Sometimes it’s just melting. Where it’s black and blue, Where it hurts the most.

Andrea Gibson, “Maybe I Need You” (via oh-girl-among-the-roses)

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I hope your name will help you carry justice in your palms keep your intentions clean/with the cloths of warrior women who came ahead of you ahead of me/mine include Madonnas/whores/mad women in attics old maids/witches/ hags virgins who were never really virgins except when they needed to be smart women/make your own list of saints

“for my daughter” by Staceyann Chin (via aprilzosia)

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Death doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints It takes and it takes and it takes And we keep living anyway.

“Wait for It,” Hamilton (via lookingforshadows)

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Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babiesare not starving someplace, they are starvingsomewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would notbe made so fine. The Bengal tiger would notbe fashioned so miraculously well. The poor womenat the fountain are laughing together betweenthe suffering they have known and the awfulnessin their future, smiling and laughing while somebodyin the village is very sick. There is laughterevery day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,we lessen the importance of their deprivation.We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must havethe stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthlessfurnace of this world. To make injustice the onlymeasure of our attention is to praise the Devil.If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.We must admit there will be music despite everything.We stand at the prow again of a small shipanchored late at night in the tiny portlooking over to the sleeping island: the waterfrontis three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboatcomes slowly out and then goes back is truly worthall the years of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert, “A Brief For The Defense” (via noahslark)

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Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong

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“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. -Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

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Do not go gentle into that good night,  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  Though wise men at their end know dark is right,  Because their words had forked no lightning they  Do not go gentle into that good night.  Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright  Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,  And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,  Do not go gentle into that good night.  Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight  Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  And you, my father, there on that sad height,  Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.  Do not go gentle into that good night.  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas (via me-myself-and-that-guy)

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If I were young as once I was, and dreams and death more distant then, I wouldn’t split my soul in two, and keep half in the world of men, So half of me would stay at home, and strive for Faërie in vain, While all the while my soul would stroll up narrow path, down crooked lane, And there would meet a fairy lass and smile and bow with kisses three, She’d pluck wild eagles from the air and nail me to a lightning tree And if my heart would run from her or flee from her, be gone from her, She’d wrap it in a nest of stars and then she’d take it on with her Until one day she’d tire of it, all bored with it and done with it. She’d leave it by a burning brook, and off brown boys would run with it. They’d take it and have fun with it and stretch it long and cruel and thin, They’d slice it into four and then they’d string with it a violin. And every day and every night they’d play upon my heart a song So plaintive and so wild and strange that all who heard it danced along And sang and whirled and sank and trod and skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they’d crumble into wheels of gold … . But I am young no longer now, for sixty years my heart’s been gone To play its dreadful music there, beyond the valley of the sun. I watch with envious eyes and mind, the single–souled, who dare not feel The wind that blows beyond the moon, who do not hear the Fairy Reel. If you don’t hear the Fairy Reel, they will not pause to steal your breath. When I was young I was a fool. So wrap me up in dreams and death.

Neil Gaiman–The Fairy Reel (via -little-owl-)

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The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost (via observando)

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Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all.

Emily Dickinson (via clash-official)

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I know that I shall meet my fate   Somewhere among the clouds above;   Those that I fight I do not hate   Those that I guard I do not love;   My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,   No likely end could bring them loss   Or leave them happier than before.   Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,   Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight   Drove to this tumult in the clouds;   I balanced all, brought all to mind,   The years to come seemed waste of breath,   A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death, W. B. Yeats

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“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain”

― John Keats (via my-misery-index)