days held together by light

student. philosopher. perpetually confused. The thing perhaps is "to eat flowers and not to be afraid"

[havingapoemwithyou]

Defending Poetry, etc. by Adam Zagajewski tr. Clare Cavanagh

[havingapoemwithyou]

I THINK LOVE IS SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS TO OTHER PEOPLE by Michael Gray Bulla

[sailermoon]

“besides, I have a sister.” top contender for one liner that makes me so emotional

[sailermoon]

i can’t explain why that last sentence always feels like a punch to the gut but if you get it, you get it

[q-universe]

How to fall in love with yourself

Step one: Take off all of your clothes, maybe take a bath. Look at all of the parts of you that you love and all the parts of you that you wish to change. Accept that you cannot change them. Pay attention to how the light looks on your skin. Acknowledge that this body has carried you through your hardest days. Feel the pressure in your chest with each breath in.

Step two: Buy yourself something small that you enjoy, maybe new ink pens. Go to a coffee shop you love and order your favorite drink, then spend hours doodling or writing your dreams.

Step three: Have fun when you’re alone. Dance in your underwear while you cook. Have conversations with your cat. Rewatch your favorite movie from when you were a kid.

Step four: On days when you can’t get off the floor, acknowledge that there are people who love you, but sometimes you have to hold yourself. This is okay.

[weltenwellen]

Devin Kelly, from “All That Wanting, Right?”

[q-universe]

The entire poem always gets me emotional

Walk backward out of the room you have made out of your wanting into the room where you are

[andthetreesbreathed]

I read this letter to Susie, and she reminded me that her dreams of Arthur immediately after the incident, were terrible, scorched-earth affairs, full of grief and weeping. She said Arthur visits her sometimes. He is always the same age. Nothing much happens, he simply sits with her. Sometimes she laces his shoes. Sometimes she combs his hair. Sometimes he crawls into her lap and wraps his arms around her neck. She told me that she recently had a dream in which Arthur had a button for a nose, and when she pressed it a little blue light blinked on. There is no despair or remorse in these dreams. They are, instead, an uncomplicated joy.

I’m not sure what else I’ve learned, except that here we still are, living within the radiant heart of the trauma, the place where all thoughts and dreams converge and where all hope and sorrow reside, the bright and teary eye of the storm – this whirling boy who is God, like every other thing.

We remember him today.

Love, Nick

[havingapoemwithyou]

Prayer by Marie Howe

[apoemaday]

Not Anyone Who Says

by Mary Oliver

Not anyone who says, “I’m going to be careful and smart in matters of love,” who says, “I’m going to choose slowly,” but only those lovers who didn’t choose at all but were, as it were, chosen by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable and beautiful and possibly even unsuitable — only those know what I’m talking about in this talking about love.

[havingapoemwithyou]

Love version of by Richard Scott

[havingapoemwithyou]

In my desk by Frank Bidart

[havingapoemwithyou]

Prayer for werewolves by Stephanie Burt

[firstfullmoon]

Gabrielle Calvocoressi, “No Poems Today,” in The New Economy

[lesbianartandartists]

Anna Campbell, After Anne Carson, After Sappho, 2015

This pick – or plectrum, which the lyric poet Sappho is credited with inventing – is foil-stamped with a fragment of Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho’s Fragment 31, also known as the Poem of Jealousy, sourced from If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho (Vintage, 2003).  Each pick is set into a laser-cut mount that still bears the tendriled smoke patterns of its production, pointing back to the burning energy that fueled the poem.

source

[rebelculture]

[the-final-sentence]

Refuse unflinchingly to be embarrassed, and in exchange you get the second star to the right, and straight on till morning.

Katherine Rundell, from Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise

[alwaysbeenjessica]

lets move!

[poetic-questions]

—Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"