words to love

Angels and Moths

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:52:11 -0400

If a man once loved you,
he’s turned you into a moth.

That’s how he’ll remember
the flutter: that numinous,
that beating, that winged.

Angels and moths:
that’s who men love.

But I don’t recollect like that.
I don’t think I ever loved
that gently. And I’ve never
flown toward a burning
house, hoping, maybe
my faith lay in that
single thing left,
in that smoldering filigree.
I never reminisce
a sorrow that delicately shaped.

But sometimes I feel someone remembering
me that way: translucent,
crazy, awake only at night.
He’s regretting his fingertips
were not wide or soft enough.
He’s mourning me now.
He’s imagining me eating away
at someone else’s light.

And that’s perfect.
That’s exactly how
he always wanted to love
me. My wings,
my hair-like antennae
hanging;
my frenulum
between his forefinger
and his thumb.

— Olena Kalytiak Davis

Something More Fragile Than This by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:50:27 -0400

asleepypuppy:

Quick
before our bodies turn themselves in,
with a reverence reserved for the dead touch me
because I want to remember how beautiful I am.
While Spring snows around us, cracking her eggs
on our windows, in her meager dress of yellowing-white,
because I want to rise into today.

So why the urge to render something
more fragile than this?
Why, always, the soul blowing glass?
The soul,once again, filling the lungs
with smoke because a memory of regret sweats
in the plastic sleeve of a family
album. Because there’s a snapshot caught
between the pages of some thick book:
my heavy 20 year old frame setting off
the 60lb weight of a dying mother.Because
somewhere, there’s a negative slide
of my heart. Because and because and because
I’m sure there’s a photo
in some drawer that shows me dressed in black.

But I want to devote myself to the mystery
of this afternoon. I want to honor this falling night, worship the hour vanishing
between six and seven. This moment
where I’m standing against myself and against you with a taste in my mouth
that’s yolk.

With Bob Marley taking that one long drag
on the refrigerator door.

With the smell of spring.

"There’s nothing in the world that loves you more than the space you already take up. There’s nothing..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:29:45 -0400

“There’s nothing in the world that loves you
more than the space you already take up.
There’s nothing in the world that won’t
forget you faster than you forgot
the last person that stepped out from your life.
When the cat reaches up
one needled paw to drag down a book
from your desk, then another,
that’s not love—that’s dominance.
When you reach up your hand and try to wheedle
someone else’s to hold it, that’s love
dominating you. There’s no word for loving more
than you should, just the feeling of excess,
as if your tongue burst in a rash of red sequins,
as if everyone can see your stutter in the air,
staccato love you, love you, and nothing in the world
standing in that space to receive it.”

- “Love Poem for What It Is,” Rebecca Hazelton (via commovente)

"How do you get so empty? he wondered. Who takes it out of you?"

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:25:22 -0400

““How do you get so empty? he wondered. Who takes it out of you?””

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (via embryons)

"Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives."

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:25:10 -0400

“Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.”

- Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna (via erraticintrovert)

"I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:24:41 -0400

“I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.”

- Lauren Oliver, Delirium (via crimsun)

"Remember that there are two things in this life that are never worth crying about: what can be cured..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:23:12 -0400

“Remember that there are two things in this life that are never worth crying about: what can be cured and what cannot be cured.”

- Matthew Pearl (via crimsun)

Rocking Chair

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 09:33:00 -0400

Sad is.
Scared is.
That is all.
The rocking chair I live in rocks like a paper boat. Sometimes I am all words, and no boot.
No muster. No yes. All lag and tired pray,
all miss my hometown. Miss the woods
and the quiet porch and the talking slow.
I caught the snow on my tongue.
Snow angel, I.
My heart a blue lamp.
My mother calling me home.
We cannot be called home enough times in our lives.
Dear lonely,
what is your name?
I will open my front door
and ring it through the streets.”
― Andrea Gibson

"We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open..."

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:15:35 -0400

“We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”

- Ernest Hemingway (via beartrapdreams)

"When I wake up just before dawn and hear the throbbing voices of birds as they echo against the..."

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:08:45 -0400

“When I wake up just before dawn and hear the throbbing voices of birds as they echo against the silence, I am overpowered by yearning. When I ride in the dark on stark roads through dry, bald hills, I ache with desperate longing. I don’t know what I am longing for, maybe for some place of my own within these images, some place where I fit, instead of being the one human being still awake, the only thing moving across the hills in the arid darkness. Maybe that ache is loneliness. I haven’t found a name for the feeling yet, nor do I know exactly what awakes in me. But instinct warns me that it is too potent for me, that my soul is on the verge of cracking when I feel it that way. I cannot handle the sheer power of those wild emotions by myself. I have to find some way to share them. That is why I write. It’s instinctive. I just have to—because it is awake like lava in my blood, and sustains me.”

- Rachel Corrie, Let Me Stand Alone (via awritersruminations)

"No one ever comes into your life and tells you how much they miss you. They just come into your life..."

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:35:17 -0400

“No one ever comes into your life and tells you how much they miss you. They just come into your life and hope that you will miss them instead.”

- (via writingsforwinter)

"I can’t stop watching your mouth and what it does to the vowels in my name."

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:32:25 -0400

“I can’t stop watching
your mouth and what it does to
the vowels in my name.”

- Kristina Hayes (via oofpoetry)

the cinnamon peeler's wife: "The Average Fourth Grader Is A Better Poet Than You, (And Me Too)," Hannah Gamble

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:28:36 -0400

the cinnamon peeler's wife: "The Average Fourth Grader Is A Better Poet Than You, (And Me Too)," Hannah Gamble:

commovente:

While in graduate school at the University of Houston, I supplemented my income by working as a writer in residence for Writers in the Schools (WITS). I was with WITS for three years, during which I visited third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms, and worked with groups of students visiting the…

"Each time I’m asked to tell about myself, I find myself starting the same way: “My name is Kelsey..."

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:17:52 -0500

“

Each time I’m asked to tell about myself, I find myself starting the same way: “My name is Kelsey and I’m nineteen..”
but what I’d really like to say is:
“My name means island of the ships but once
I found a translation that said I’m a burning shipwreck-
not a burning ship but a ship that has caught fire
after the wreckage and well, I’d say that’s more fitting.”

I’ve learned that people don’t have time for about me’s.
They need two things: a name and an indication you’re someone special.

The doctors, they want facts not details.
“I broke my leg when I was three, it’s a funny story actually-“
The right or the left?
Conversation over.

The teachers, they want interests, hobbies.
You’re sad, yes, but what do you like to do?

The adults are a spew of questions.
What school do you go to? What classes are you taking?
What do you plan on becoming? Got a boyfriend?
No, stop.

People my own age are the worst.
“I’m planning on an English degree with a concentration in creative writing.”
Yeah, aren’t we all. So how many times have you, you know,
done it?

I’m pulled apart, my interests travelling highway 2
my goals at a stop light at traffic hour,
my medical history on a billboard for the world to see.
But what about me?

Where’s the chance to say,
“I hang on to fistfuls of poetry like loose change in my pockets,
and I keep waiting for the day that the world turns upside down
so I can swim with the stars.
I’m not afraid of darkness, it’s a loneliness I can empathize with it.
It’s the blackholes like cigarette burns inside of me that get troublesome.
I walk through graveyards and read the dashes between years,
each a story I’ll never know. Sometimes I create my own.”

No one none of us know who we are anymore.

”

- Kelsey Danielle, “I Was Told to Write and About Me and This is What Happened” (via pigmenting)

"once. what does it matter when or who, i knew of love. i fixed my body under his and went to..."

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 22:37:24 -0500

“once. what does it matter
when or who, i knew
of love.
i fixed my body
under his and went
to sleep in love
all trace of me
was wiped away”

- Sonia Sanchez, from “Ballad” (via growing-orbits)

jerismithready: Dorothy Parker’s telegram to her editor. This...

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 22:36:30 -0500

jerismithready:

Dorothy Parker’s telegram to her editor.

This are my thoughts at almost every deadline, but especially with this novel. The story is finally where I want it, but there are still so many rough edges I want to cry. I want every syllable to be brilliant.

Never have done such hard night and day work never have so wanted anything to be good and all I have is a pile of paper covered with wrong words.

David gets turned in tomorrow, wrong words and all.

(PS: Thank God for copyedits.)

Photo

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:46:28 -0500

"I like an ending that’s both a door and a window."

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:14:12 -0500

““I like an ending that’s both a door and a window.””

- Stanley Kunitz (via align)

"I wonder if you know yet that you’ll leave me. That you are a child playing with matches and I have..."

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:46:00 -0500

“I wonder if you know yet that you’ll leave me. That you
are a child playing with matches and I have a paper body.
You will meet a girl with a softer voice and stronger arms and she
will not have violent secrets or an affection for red wine or eyes
that never stay dry. You will fall into her bed and I’ll go back
to spending Friday nights with boys who never learn my last name.

I have chased off every fool who has tried to sleep beside me
You think it’s romantic to fuck the girl who writes poems about you.
You think I’ll understand your sadness because I live inside my own.
But I will show up at your door at 2 am, wild-eyed and sleepless.
and try and find some semblance of peace in your breastbone
and you will not let me in. You will tell me to go home.
”

- Clementine von Radics (via commovente)

commovente: “Scars,” Rudy Francisco,

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:42:59 -0500

commovente:

“Scars,” Rudy Francisco,