notesfromourapocalypse

[notesfromourapocalypse]

yeah it’s gone now, sorry about that

[notesfromourapocalypse]

phone is the main enemy. never forget this

[notesfromourapocalypse]

After the phone call about my father far away, after the next-day flight canceled by the blizzard, after the last words left unsaid between us, after the harvest of the organs at the morgue, after the mortuary and cremation of the body, after the box of ashes shipped to my door by mail, after the memorial service for him in Brooklyn,

I said:  I want to feed the birds, I want to feed bread to the birds.  I want to feed bread to the birds at the park.

After the walk around the pond and the war memorial, after the signs at every step that read:  Do Not Feed The Geese, after the goose that rose from the water like the god of geese, after the goose that shrieked like a demon from the hell of geese, after the goose that scattered the creatures smaller than geese, after the hard beak, the wild mouth taking bread from my hand,

there was quiet in my head, no cacophony of the dead lost in the catacombs, no mosquito hum of condolences, only the next offering of bread raised up in my open hand, the bread warm on the table of my truce with the world.

After the Goose That Rose Like the God of Geese,  Martín Espada

[notesfromourapocalypse]

To be alive: not just the carcass But the spark. That's crudely put, but… If we're not supposed to dance, Why all this music?

To Be Alive, Gregory Orr

[notesfromourapocalypse]

Leila Chatti, “I Went Out to Hear”

[notesfromourapocalypse]

You can die for it — an idea, or the world. People

have done so, brilliantly, letting their small bodies be bound

to the stake, creating an unforgettable fury of light. But

this morning, climbing the familiar hills in the familiar fabric of dawn, I thought

of China, and India and Europe, and I thought how the sun

blazes for everyone just so joyfully as it rises

under the lashes of my own eyes, and I thought I am so many! What is my name?

What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire.

Sunrise, Mary Oliver

[notesfromourapocalypse]

Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe.

Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in.

I want an excuse to change my life.

The day A. died, the sun was brighter than any sun.

I answered the phone, and a channel opened

between my stupid head and heaven, or what was left of it. The blankness

stared back; and I made sound after sound with my blood-wet gullet.

O unsayable—O tender and divine unsayable, I knew you then:

you line straight to the planet’s calamitous core; you moment moment moment;

you intimate abyss I called sister for a good reason.

When the Bad Thing happened, I saw every blade.

And every year I find out what they’ve done to us, I shed another skin.

I get closer to open air; true north.

Lord, if I say Bless the cold water you throw on my face,

does that make me a costume party. Am I greedy for comfort

if I ask you not to kill my friends; if I beg you to press

your heel against my throat—not enough to ruin me,

but just so—just so I can almost see your face—

Catastrophe Is Next To Godliness, Franny Choi

[notesfromourapocalypse]

Oh do you have time to linger for just a little while out of your busy

and very important day for the goldfinches that have gathered in a field of thistles

for a musical battle, to see who can sing the highest note, or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth, or the most tender? Their strong, blunt beaks drink the air

as they strive melodiously not for your sake and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning but for sheer delight and gratitude – believe us, they say, it is a serious thing

just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world. I beg of you,

do not walk by without pausing to attend to this rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something. It could mean everything. It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote: You must change your life.

Invitation, Mary Oliver

[notesfromourapocalypse]

I suppose I am a student of the world and all its subtle variations. I suppose I want an ode to the mundane, yet glory keeps veiling my mother’s ashtray, a cracked slab she either stole from a temple or was gifted by a man bamboozled in a boutique store. I suppose glory flickers. Glory ghosts. Sometimes I lick around the coffee cup lapping up the omens and summon onto my tongue the sorrow that made everything possible. I suppose I sound religious. I suppose I am doomed to finding angels on my shoulders anyway. Nobody needs my hands raised as supposed shield yet I keep raising them. I suppose this existence, this country, this coast where beached angels gleam enormous blowholes sputtering a final fitful prayer. I would have spared them once, but no longer, bodied as I am with everyone I forgot to look after. My mistake was in supposing to study the world, instead of love it. I walked away from the landed celestials, who even dying were so full they burst to feed generations of bird, fish, crab. This is the measure of holiness I suppose, how much we can give at our last.

Suppositions, Omar Sakr

[notesfromourapocalypse]

Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot, enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds, enough of the will to go on and not go on or how a certain light does a certain thing, enough of the kneeling and the rising and the looking inward and the looking up, enough of the gun, the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough of the mother and the child and the father and the child and enough of the pointing to the world, weary and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border, enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate, enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease, I am asking you to touch me.

The End of Poetry, Ada Limón

[notesfromourapocalypse]

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.

Wild Geese, Mary Oliver