#modern life

[toyastales]

Living amongst the trees!

[vesper93]

Notes:

"School" in the question means the educational facility you usually attend between 5-17/18. I'm not including higher education in this definition.

Gens:

Baby Boomer - 1946-1964

Gen X - 1965 - 1981

Millennial - 1982 - 1995

Gen-Z - 1996 - 2011

I'm gonna assume we haven't got any silent generation (pre 1946) or gen alphas (2012+) who have somehow miraculously finished school already, lurking on tumblr.

Reblog for wider sample.

[sorrysomethingwentwrong]

Alexey Kondakov, "An Imaginary Adventure"

[what-marsha-eats]

[april-is]

April 7, 2024: The First Line is the Deepest, Kim Addonizio

The First Line is the Deepest Kim Addonizio

I have been one acquainted with the spatula, the slotted, scuffed, Teflon-coated spatula

that lifts a solitary hamburger from pan to plate, acquainted with the vibrator known as the Pocket Rocket

and the dildo that goes by Tex, and I have gone out, a drunken bitch,

in order to ruin what love I was given,

and also I have measured out my life in little pills—Zoloft,

Restoril, Celexa, Xanax.

I have. For I am a poet. And it is my job, my duty to know wherein lies the beauty

of this degraded body, or maybe

it's the degradation in the beautiful body, the ugly me

groping back to my desk to piss on perfection, to lay my kiss

of mortal confusion upon the mouth of infinite wisdom.

My kiss says razors and pain, my kiss says America is charged with the madness

of God. Sundays, too, the soldiers get up early, and put on their fatigues in the blue-

black day. Black milk. Black gold. Texas tea. Into the valley of Halliburton rides the infantry—

Why does one month have to be the cruelest, can't they all be equally cruel? I have seen the best

gamers of your generation, joysticking their M1 tanks through the sewage-filled streets. Whose

world this is I think I know.

--

Poetry nerd extra credit: How many repurposed bits from famous poems can you find? I count 7 and I'm probably missing some!

Also by Kim Addonizio:

+ For Desire + Mermaid Song* + Onset + My Heart

* (Weird fact: this is about her daughter, Aya Cash, who starred in the sitcom You're the Worst. What!)

Today in:

2023: Insha’Allah, Danusha Laméris 2022: To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall, Kim Addonizio 2021: You Mean You Don’t Weep at the Nail Salon?, Elizabeth Acevedo 2020: Let Me Begin Again, Philip Levine 2019: Hammond B3 Organ Cistern, Gabrielle Calvocoressi 2018: Siren Song, Margaret Atwood 2017: A Sunset, Ari Banias 2016: Coming, Philip Larkin 2015: The Taxi, Amy Lowell 2014: Winter Sunrise Outside a Café Near Butte, Montana, Joe Hutchison 2013: The Last Night in Mithymna, Linda Gregg 2012: America [Try saying wren], Joseph Lease 2011: Boston, Aaron Smith 2010: How Simile Works, Albert Goldbarth 2009: Crossing Over, William Meredith 2008: The World Wakes Up, Andrew Michael Roberts 2007: Hour, Christian Hawkey 2006: For the Anniversary of My Death, W.S. Merwin 2005: The Last Poem About the Snow Queen, Sandra M. Gilbert

[journalette]

La Parisienne (1900), Ramón Casas.

[downfalldestiny]

City vibes 🚉 !.

[toyastales]

Life is like a circle.

[wdillustration]

Note: Nothing special lately but ended doing a random sketch with some Modern AU get together for a while in Belgium...

[dreamy-conceit]

Like anybody with a heart, I spend my life teetering on the verge of tears.

— Roger Waters of Pink Floyd (TikTok, 6 Dec 2023)

[zaftigpink]

[villemel]

Living the high lie [sic.]

No rules, no instructions No frontiers or boundaries As we strive higher Bypassing the physical World of self-sufficiency So many strings attached We must surely fly by Taking life for granted Food, shelter, rest No transition yet On lowland farms Seeking lonely paths Who am I to tell And they to listen Deciding upon change Breathing pranayama Periods of years pass Consuming marijuana Mastery coming later Like Ludwig's opera

I only need one pill To make the world work Never too late to try Beings soaring high

[11oh1]

[april-is]

April 2, 2023: The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Franny Choi

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On Franny Choi Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of boats: boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky-iron, boats making corpses bloom like algae on the shore. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of the bombed mosque. There was the apocalypse of the taxi driver warped by flame. There was the apocalypse of the leaving, and the having left— of my mother unsticking herself from her mother’s grave as the plane barreled down the runway. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of planes. There was the apocalypse of pipelines legislating their way through sacred water, and the apocalypse of the dogs. Before which was the apocalypse of the dogs and the hoses. Before which, the apocalypse of dogs and slave catchers whose faces glowed by lantern-light. Before the apocalypse, the apocalypse of bees. The apocalypse of  buses. Border fence apocalypse. Coat hanger apocalypse. Apocalypse in the textbooks’ selective silences. There was the apocalypse of the settlement and the soda machine; the apocalypse of the settlement and the jars of scalps; there was the bedlam of the cannery; the radioactive rain; the chairless martyr demanding a name. I was born from an apocalypse and have come to tell you what I know—which is that the apocalypse began when Columbus praised God and lowered his anchor. It began when a continent was drawn into cutlets. It began when Kublai Khan told Marco, Begin at the beginning. By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees, drew the hot liquid through our teeth, as everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled, the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse—it drifted slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we stopped hearing it.

--

2022: For the Journalists Who Write About Ukraine, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach 2021: For My Friends, in Reply to a Question, Safia Elhillo 2020: The Conditional, Ada Limón 2019: Dorothy Wordsworth, Jennifer Chang 2018: A Small Needful Fact, Ross Gay 2017: What We Need, David Budbill 2016: Husky Boys’ Dickies, Jill McDonough 2015: Why Some Girls Love Horses, Paisley Rekdal 2014: The Fox, Faith Shearin 2013: You Can’t Have It All, Barbara Ras 2012: Road Trip, Kurt Brown 2011: Onset, Kim Addonizio 2010: February, Margaret Atwood 2009: Domestic, Carl Phillips 2008: A Birthday, W.S. Merwin 2007: Words for Love, Ted Berrigan 2006: At the Trial of Hamlet, Chicago, 1994, Sherman Alexie 2005: The Waking, Theodore Roethke

[alienerad]

As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.

/ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World