#poet's corner

[brieandpinotgris]

noodling

   the walls are breathing but they’ve been doing that for ages. there’s nothing spectacular           or even                                     novel     about a place like this. all these fish that look so graceful in the pond (it was an ocean once, wasn’t it?                                  ...wasn’t it?)                 impotently flop once brought to land.

peripheral comets circling a central black hole and a star that brought a knife to the gun fight. not me, though! space

metaphors still make me gag. I may be gaudy, but never so gauche — always right, and don’t you forget it. I’ve been leaving

my old calendar pages in the paper recycling in the alley. which would be mundane and not worth stating were it not for the stranger who later takes them — and can I say:

it’s the most seen I’ve felt in a decade.

[scentedwastelanddefendor]

We hold the door open for you. The dim light falls like snow on your face and for a moment, we regret the person you are about to become.

"Close your eyes," we say. "It will be faster."

It won't be faster, but we love you too much to say that. Did anyone ever tell you that you look so innocent when your eyes are closed? You look like you are sleeping.

When you pass through the doorway, the world burns. You look back at us, eyes glittering with tears and betrayal, but we are already closing the door now.

You are grown up now. Stand on your feet and raise your head and survive. You have entered the real world now, we will tell you later. You need to be an adult.

The door clicks as it closes. We look at you again, through the windows. We were your childhood- your favourite TV show, the stuffed toys on your bed, your favourite book characters.

We will always be there for you, ready to remind you of when you were young. But a door will always seperate your past and your present, and you can never step back into this era.

Don't worry- you will get used to it though. You will smile, and one day- all of a sudden- you will forget us altogether. And then we will smile, and we will look at you one last time, and we will disappear- like snow melting into spring.

You will hold the door open for us.

[vox-anglosphere]

Westminster Abbey: The Nave & Poet's Corner as they looked in 1860

[sadiahakim]

You're a stellar nursery, honey. Stars are born from your scars.

Sadia Hakim

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

"From the beginning of my life I have been looking for your face but today I have seen it. Today I have seen the charm, the beauty, the unfathomable grace of the face that I was looking for. Today I have found you and those who laughed and scorned me yesterday are sorry that they were not looking as I did. I am bewildered by the magnificence of your beauty and wish to see you with a hundred eyes. My heart has burned with passion and has searched forever for this wondrous beauty that I now behold. I am ashamed to call this love human and afraid of God to call it Divine. Your fragrant breath like the morning breeze has come to the stillness of the garden. You have breathed new life into me. I have become your sunshine and also your shadow. My soul is screaming in ecstasy. Every fiber of my being is in love with you. Your effulgence has lit a fire in my heart, and you have made radiant for me the earth and sky. My arrow of love has arrived at the target. I am in the house of mercy and my heart is a place of prayer." Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī, Looking For Your Face

[Poet's Corner / Esquina Poetica]

[alwayssokitty]

someone once said... there's no one bad, it's just the bad things people do!🙂

[wordsfromthepaintbrush]

lament of the h/lazy

when does it get better?

yesterday I lumbered through the streets

with vision ringed in purple and black,

and the kids, they asked questions

and their parents shook their heads at me

saying "please never become them"

and they never looked back

sure, believe that I'm high,

or a failure or some bum on a drug she chose

but when I tell you I've never felt lower

cause I've tried all the pills that are supposed to unclog my head

and I still wake up hazy and can't remember

my name or my face or anything important

and clocks still tick backwards ever slower

believe what you want

or what you have the heart to believe

but I'm sick and

so tired

of being sick and tired.

[ephemeral-hiraeths]

Those little things you cause in my heart,

Leave me torn between

In the two roads, two dimensions;

Reality, and what I call Love.

Stuck in between good and bad,

I'm too dumb to realise which way is what.

[widowk33per]

Hm need to bring back poet societies. My main goal in the next four years is to find my own little tribe of poets. 

[jaggedjawjosh]

[brieandpinotgris]

what sticks

incidental lilies, tulips and lilacs, all these mundane flowers I can’t identify on sight nor ever cared to; I’m

always / curiously / just

dropping seeds while climbing craggy rock faces, rolling down grassy hills mostly un- concerned with afters;

grow

or don’t;

everything given freely,

everything taken easy.

[mysterieuxclairdelune]

I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.

-Sylvia Plath

[colinpants]

11/14/2023 (in defense of time machines)

five years ago today, we were still trying, me and my ex wife… but the end was in sight. we opened a bank account in a new town, with almost nothing to put in it except stubbornness and hope and a genuine desire to make one another happy… but it was too late.

 I wonder if you still have that account, just without my name, just like the dog and the cats and the bed (which pre-dated my presence in your life anyway) and the illnesses and the loneliness. I’m truly sorry I contributed to the loneliness. I’m sorry I couldn’t love your illnesses away. I miss feeling like your family. I miss the dog. I really fuckin miss the cats. At least with you, I got to say goodbye.

Three years ago almost to the day, my mom sent me a late birthday message on a service I have never checked until today. There were pictures of me, as a toddler mostly. Little grinning ginger kid, still kinda chubby from the baby fat, and this smiling, happy-in-spite-of-life woman that I barely recognized. With it was this message:

“Just in case I only sent two pics…”

(There were 8, she isn’t great with tech) “… you were my whole world even though it didn’t seem like it. Love you, mom.”

I’m so sorry I didn’t see that sooner, didn’t reach out and tell you that it’s okay, I always knew. The only thing I ever wondered, honestly, was what broke you so bad that all that love came out as appetite, as hunger, as need… broke you so bad you couldn’t even remember to feed me. The people who raised me instead did not love me nearly as much as you did. Little Me thought the trade-off would be worth it, that the regular meals and good grades and church services and bed times would be better in the long run than the hugs and the giggles and the dreaming and the distance in between those things, that it would make me normal so I could be a part of the world with everyone else…. But it wasn’t. it was a bad trade. I’m a 40-year-old boy who is too lonely and broken and fragile to take any part of this world, and I just want my mama back.

I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all that, and I’m not sure I have it in me to actually say it now. I’m sorry I left to get clean, I’m sorry I didn’t stay and help you too, I’m sorry I used all the money I made in my grocery career on weed and video games and not helping you pay rent. I’m sorry that you’re 75 and living in a motel and losing your memories and fire, and I’ve been telling people you were dead for years to cover up anxiety attacks when I should have just been sitting with you. I’m sorry I couldn’t love your pain away. I miss you, and all the family dogs we had, and even Terry. I really hope I make it over there. I bet you’ll see all of this on my face.

7 years ago, I got a call while I was in the middle of a stressful shift at the Tamarac Whole Foods: it was time. Mamaw was going, and she was asking for me. My mind flashed back to me at 17, cold and alone and vulnerable, begging her to take me in… and the coldness in her voice when she said no. It didn’t flash back to the road trips or the mountain days or the summer camps or the constant stream of books and museum trips and knowledge that you were always cramming into me. It didn’t flash back to how bad it hurt when I lost you the first time, when you didn’t want me anymore and wouldn’t say why, nor the endless arguments about God and faith and why none of it made sense to me (I was 11, nothing made sense anyway). I made excuses, begged forgiveness, and went back to work. But I’ve also thought of you every day since. I am constantly wondering if you would be proud of me. It’s hard to imagine, you were always so stern, but… maybe.

I’ll always wish I’d said goodbye.

[strokeofserenity]

Slyvia Plath

[poetic--elixir]

Truth is like fire; to tell the truth means to glow and burn.

— Gustav Klimt

[delirium-mind]

I miss the way I viewed the world before I knew too much about it