fragments.

do you, like me, find grief delectable?

[andrumedus]

I would never tie you down, not even with garlands of roses. I don't want anything from you that doesn't come from your own impulse, like water from the springs.

Dulce María Loynaz, tr. James O’Connor, Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems; “XLVI”

[kisxmesoft]

[valtsv]

it's rotten work, but without the rot nothing can grow

[valtsv]

it's rotten work but decay is an essential part of the cycle of death and rebirth

[andrumedus]

And in the last seconds before the breaking light, when you are nearly broken with the secret antelope of compassion, when the last guardian angel has flown west to the Pacific to see someone else through their nightly death, a homefire is slowly kindled in the village of your body. And the smoke of dawn turns all your worded enemies into ashes that will never rise. Mythic cattle graze in your throat, washing it with milk. And you will sing forever.

Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War; “Healing Animal”

[andrumedus]

I cannot sing song of either staying or leaving unless I know what shape it takes when it leaves my mouth. And which direction, because I forgot to tell you that love changes molecular structure. I am transformed but without a map.

Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War; “Day of the Dead”

[feral-ballad]

Vikram Seth, from Summer Requiem: A Book of Poems; “Sonnet”

[existential-celestial]

Paul Celan, from “Threadsuns,” from BREATHTURN INTO TIMESTEAD: THE COLLECTED LATER POETRY A BILINGUAL EDITION (translated by Pierre Joris)

[metamorphesque]

ALT

— Natalie Diaz, Manhattan Is a Lenape Word

[andrumedus]

but to be alive is to forsake the fear of blood.

Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War; “Bleed Through”

[geryone]

Dig, Bryan Borland

[stuckinapril]

Accepting that life is an endless cycle of clearing space for new people new things and new places

[radicalgraff]

Palestine solidarity graffiti seen around in Saskatchewan, Canada

[andrumedus]

Mohammed el-Makki Ibrahim, tr. & ed. Adil Babikir, Modern Sudanese Poetry: An Anthology; from “The Green October” in “Songs for October”

[Text ID: The land is singing your green name, O October]

[andrumedus]

...but here is a heart betrayed by childhood catastrophe, or tormented by original memory, [...]

Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War; “Original Memory”

[theoptia]

Marguerite Duras, from The Easy Life

Text ID: I was no one, I had neither name nor face. Moving through August, I was: nothing.

[andrumedus]

If you prefer, I'll be pure raging meat, or if you prefer, as the sky changes tone, I'll be absolutely tender,

Vladimir Mayakovsky, tr. Bob Perelman & Kathy Lewis, from "A Cloud in Trousers" in Russian Poetry: The Modern Period, ed. John Glad & Daniel Weissbort

[existential-celestial]

Paul Celan, from “Threadsuns,” from BREATHTURN INTO TIMESTEAD: THE COLLECTED LATER POETRY A BILINGUAL EDITION (translated by Pierre Joris)