free your heart

[sovietnam]

[fashionlandscapeblog]

Yakov Khomich

From the series "Girl in the blue dress", 2024

Oil on canvas.

[fuckass-bird-blog]

[newvision]

— James Baldwin from Giovanni’s Room (1956)

[havingapoemwithyou]

Superbly Situated by Robert Hershon

[heavensghost]

Louise Bourgeois

[malinaa]

Allen Bratton, Henry Henry

[brightdeadthing]

Come. And Be My Baby, Maya Angelou

[soft-butch-cassidy]

i love comforting nihilism. who cares, we’re all gonna die. eat that cake. buy that eyeshadow. be nice to people. you dont owe the world shit. the stars dont care about what we do. give anyway because why spend your eighty years on this rock miserable and making other people miserable. the sun is going to blow up and we’re all gonna die someday. make the most of what time you do have. use the fine china for taco night and microwave lunch. smell the flowers. tell a stranger they are beautiful. 

[havingapoemwithyou]

Postscript by Marie Howe

[thebraveliltoastie]

[feral-ballad]

Hanif Abdurraqib, from A Fortune for Your Disaster: Poems; “The Prestige”

[weltenwellen]

Hanif Abdurraqib, from "Ok I'm Finally Ready to Say I'm Sorry For That One Summer", The Crown Ain't Worth Much

[onetwofeb]

Mark Rothko on the "recipe of a work of art," lecture at the Pratt Institute, 1958:

There must be a clear preoccupation with death—intimations of mortality… Tragic art, romantic art, etc. deals with the knowledge of death.

Sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. It is a lustful relationship to things that exist.

Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire.

Irony. This is a modern ingredient—the self effacement and examination by which a man for an instant can go on to something else.

Wit and Play..for the human element.

The ephemeral and chance…for the human element.

Hope. 10% to make the tragic concept more endurable.

[apocryphics]

[amending-death]

[Image description of Caroline Bird’s poem, “Sanity.” The poem reads:

“I do kind gestures. Remove my appendix.  I put my ear to a flat shell and—nothing. I play the lottery ironically. Get married. Have a smear test. I put my ear to the beak of a dead bird—nothing. I grow wisdom teeth. Jog. I pick up a toddler’s telephone, Hello?—No answer. I change a light bulb on my own. Organize a large party. Hire a clown. Attend a four-day stonewalling  course. Have a baby. Stop eating Coco Pops. I put my ear right up to the slack and gaping bonnet of a daffodil—. Get divorced. Floss. Describe a younger person’s music taste as “just noise.” Enjoy perusing a garden center. Sit in a pub without drinking. I stand at the lip of a pouting valley—sᴘᴇᴀᴋ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ! My echo plagiarizes. I land a real love plus two real cats. I never meet the talking bird again. Or the yawning hole. The panther of purple wisps who prowls inside the air. I change nappies. Donate my eggs. Learn a profound lesson about sacrifice. Brunch. No singing floorboards. No vents leaking scentless instructions. My mission is over. The world has zipped up her second mouth.” End ID] 

[1five1two]

Opeyemi Olukotun.

[thunderstruck9]

Opeyemi Olukotun (Nigerian, 1989), The Weight They Cannot See, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in.

[weltenwellen]

Wildness Before Something Sublime Leila Chatti