la-modpoetess - Tumblr blog

[la-modpoetess]

“Nous ne donnons rien au poème qu'il ne nous rende au centuple. Nous croyons le faire ; c'est lui qui, secrètement, nous fait.” - Au cœur du cœur, Andrée Chedid

Comme l’oiseau sur le roseau de Victor Hugo

La poésie nous suspend

Nous donne des ailes au travers les bourrasques et les feux de forêts

On avance, parfois aveugles

Et muet à l'essentiel

On donne trop souvent en comptant sur un retour

Comme si le vrais n'était pas toujours gratuit

Comme si le contenu d’une âme peut se calculer

Comme si c'est pas mieux de mourir de faim que de tuer ses propres principes

Tu la vois, toi, la lumière au bout du tunnel?

Tu le sens, le coup de vent qui soulève le cerf-volant,

La goutte d'eau qui provoque l'arc-en-ciel?

Le plus près j'en suis venu

C'est en pleurant, en criant ces trop pleins qu'on a

Dans un vers, dans une strophe

[la-modpoetess]

“I know how to tell a lie convincingly. The truth is, poetry is a truth resembling a lie. Hallelujah. I've seen it all.” - The Pitchman’s Joy Pitch, Ama Codjoe

Between the truth and the lie

Is the story we want to hear

The one that makes us feel better

Or confirms why we feel bad

Not many want the truth unvarnished

Most prefer a sweet tale

At least for a while

But in the end, the truth is felt

It peeks through embellishments

It connects, even as it cuts

The truth is I can lie convincingly

And so can you

But you and I both know that the only lie we will stand for

Is a story that doesn't end

Because at least then

There's always a chance for nuggets of truth

[la-modpoetess]

[la-modpoetess]

[la-modpoetess]

J'écris seulement si quelque chose me coule du cœur jusqu'aux mains. Christian Bobin

[la-modpoetess]

“We didn't bother talking about being lost; we had no hunger for stating the obvious.” - That's How Far I'd Drive for It, Idra Novey

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say

But does it matter where the road leads if you're lost anyway?

Besides, hell is other people

So maybe good intentions lead to other people?

And is it not what we all strive for:

Connection with our fellow humans

I've always hated platitudes

Along with salesmanship and commodity relationships

Which is the same thing, now I think of it

If my stumbling sincerity turns out to lead nowhere - or worse

I am willing to take that chance

And hope to see you there

[la-modpoetess]

“I was perplexed, and by this I mean I was stuck in the space between terror and awe.” - On Perplexity: Chrysanthemum, Richard Siken

Spaces between feelings contain a lot

It always amazes me how it's rarely fully one thing or another

Much of life is bittersweet

A mix of joy and melancholy

And other unnamed pulses

There are tranches between feelings, canyons

Chasms that contain what we truly feel

But which we can't put into words

In reaching for certainty

We grasp at flotsams

We simplify, for ourselves and for others

But when we look, deep down, we know

This fast moving river is too fluid

It slips through our fingers

It slips through our minds

It carves its own path of more complex spaces

Our job is to let it flow

To risk drowning

To meet its depth with terror and awe

[la-modpoetess]

Hanging by a thread 

Somewhere between frustration and melancholy

This unhealthy stasis 

For a second, won’t let me be free

The longing brings both at once

Gone the steadiness

And the ounce 

Of self-control and peacefulness 

How does the smallest thought

Of one so distant 

Both in time and space

Can bring with such force

The what-ifs of a life unlived

The uncontrollable wandering

Of feelings unfelt

Unfelt? No, just ignored

Refoulé

Not unnoticed but unheeded 

Dismissed for the sake

Of that which is 

Where, in such a turmoil of equilibrium

Do I find peace? When, where does my heart rests?

[la-modpoetess]

"Freedom is only as good as the range of good choices it provides, and all my good choices involve other people." - How Not To Kill Yourself, Clancy Martin

All my bad choices involve me with a perceived dark cloud over my head

The proverbial Eeyore picture that, for some of us, could not have been more accurate

We persist, chase that cloud, try to out-run it

Yet only another's breath, or smile, or memory

Only a connection, can truly make a dent in it

A song, a poem, momentarily

A person, more extensively

Impossible to know who these people will be until they become - without knowing - the great windmills of our lives

The chasers of quiet storms

The sparks of lightning in clearing skies

"Fait brûler du soufre pour purifier l'air," disait papa

Sulfur leaving a purified, lighter reality

I can breathe for a minute more

A moment in time where I can try to reciprocate

[la-modpoetess]

Susan Sontag, from "The Dummy", featured in I, Etcetera: Stories

[la-modpoetess]

Of the languages that we share

The one we are most fluent in 

Is silence.

It leaves much room for the imagination:

Ever expanding definitions,

Self-evident elaboration.

What does one add to silence but more silence.

An echo to coughs and fits of passion,

To moments stolen, out of time - 

A sigh - 

Endless ellipsis.

How does one express what can’t be defined

To an essence. To a soul.

Pompous musing, all rhetorical; all but this:

How does one make silence say

I miss your face?

[la-modpoetess]

“A stitch in time saves nine.”

Words can be stitches, if they be well intentioned,

If the reason behind them is,in time, to stitch a relationship.

Silence can be a stitch if shared with the right person.

And so can a gesture, love languages and all that.

Only time tells what is a stitch,

And what tear can’t be mended.

Sometimes they be one and the same.

Context guide the outcome.

The frame of mind, the emotions,

What came before, what comes next.

Stitches, tear, both move relations.

Be they forks in the road,

Bridges over rocky waters,

In-between of togetherness,

Rupture towards separateness.

Not everyone has the needle and thread,

Nor the strength to go back for nine stitches when they do.

Some connections, frayed from the beginning,

Nine stitches wouldn’t be enough.

Even for some, a waste of thread.

[la-modpoetess]

Thoughts on Time, After a Pandemic

I.

And what is time but a way to mark the distance between happenstance?

Is it the times that are strange or is it that the times are as strange as the people who live through them?

II.

You say to me good morning

Is it morning still?

It seems time since spring

Has been one long, dark evening

With no sign of a dawn

III.

“when it is over said and done

it was a time

and there was never enough of it.” - A Time, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

IV.

The times are us

And the words are hollow

And the sun has set

And summer is ending

Life goes on for some

And time stops for none

And the body needs rest

But sleep is elusive

One says goodbye

And the wind blows in

And the time passes

Forgetting sets in

And the other lives life

With the quiet certainty

That time does not

Hasten detachment

[la-modpoetess]

How dare you show up in my dream

When I thought I was on my way

To forgetting how sweet it feels

To hold a thought of you?

Your disregard for time passed,

Your presence in spite of your absence,

When in dreams you dwell and haunt -

Have you no substance to worry about?

[la-modpoetess]

The root system of a fruit tree. Practical and scientific fruit culture. 1866.

Internet Archive

[la-modpoetess]

It is freeing to have lived

Through the end of the world

Nothing left to lose

Only the look of disbelief

At life

At love

At people

Who endure

Who live their grief in silence

In noise - messy human ways -

Sometimes allowing the pain to connect them to others

Sometimes making a shell out of it

Crab girl walking sideways into the ocean

Sunrise lighting her path

[la-modpoetess]

What is it about endings that attract beginnings

Human beings are like the stardust they are made of

They can't stand a vacuum

A means to an end is an end to a start Oroboros and all that