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excerpt fr. Hatred of Women, Cassandra Troyen

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“reach out your hand to me let all the noise fade to gray darling i’ll keep you safe these words will meet you somewhere in the middle reach out your hand let everyone disappear just for a minute it’s only us two together and darling i’ll keep you safe even when i’m far away i’ve written you a love song i’ve written down the sound of my beating heart these words will reach you somewhere in the middle just reach out your hand and i’ll be loving you”

— LDR || r.m. || 6.23.18

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“Our minds must have relaxation: rested, they will rise up better and keener.”

— Seneca the Younger, On Tranquility of the Mind (via vaeputodeusfio)

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“this is where you left us in the stench of the earth where the soil scorches and burns these are our remains our history in the dirt where the flowers no longer grow.”

— even nature scorns you | wt.

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“I asked wheather God was black or white A deep sigh. “ Oh boy … God’s not black. He’s not white. He’s a spirit. ” “Does he like black or white people better ?” “ He loves all people. He’s a spirit.” “ What color is Gods spirit ? ” “ It doesn’t have a color ,” she said. “ God is the color of water. Water doesn’t have a color.””

— The color of water

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“you may yell break your voice to a thousand pieces strain your vocal chords to mere strings till you’re hoarse and then breathless (and you do it all again) you may launch a thousand insults a thousand sticks, a thousand stones break my bones to fucking splinters make me your very own war zone you may bring me to tears break my will at times have me so disheartened that my cheeks may never dry you may play your little games give threat after threat think that i’m too nice that i’d forgive and forget oh no my friend i am vindictive.”

— and so, you will regret | wt.

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Die now. And climb up into this burning.

Li-Young Lee, from “The Undressing” published in American Poetry Review (via lifeinpoetry)

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sometimes it feels so good to sigh

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with all the noise in the world, with voices and musik and car horns and doorbells and the wind and whispered words of love and white noise and laughter, silence reminds me of who i am. Silence keeps me sane, allows me to think, allows me to feel. but even your vilest words have always beaten silence. they did what neither any other sounds, nor silence could: they made me feel alive. 

now that you’re gone, i seek sound, for i cannot handle silence. the absence of your words is too painful.

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i flow inside your head

forgive me, but i’ve shaped your sadness into these ghazals, how blood swells in your cassandra

eyes, as you aim word spears, with tender photographs, towards my chest; quick to disconnect—

the line, do i flow in and out of your head like jhelum waters? and if turquoise ash rises, when you

become a desert? once you were salt, now you’re bitter, butter, better; a mastodon of pleistocene on

tamarind reef, hungry, lowly, decaying into emily white, for me to draw curtains in your chambers—

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this skin is glass. it is all consumed; the tongue is painted black from all the  firewood I was made to swallow. (…) Who ever told humans that  witches could burn?

Excerpt from IGNITE // Demi Ev. (available soon)

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mind if I slip into something more comfortable? like a dream or memory, something ethereal; something other than this strap-suit of reality that binds the arms and squeezes the lungs, reducing existence to a struggle for oxygen; an ongoing near-asphyxiated state of being where life’s defined by bodily functions failing due to the constriction of blood’s natural flow (what should the heart pump other than love?) didn’t you use to knit wooly sweaters of hope? what happened to those things, they were so soft and warm; so vibrant in colour, I do recall they were so large that they would fit us both.

“Attire”, a poem by M.A. Tempels © 2018

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