with the strength of the unavoidable -

the page/the ink/the poem

[gentlethoughts]

swim with me in the milky sheets

all hills and valleys of honey and sin

I can make you forget anything and

everything

with my fingers wrapped around your pulse.

savor shed layers as you sharpen your

teeth on my bones

watch as she turns stranger, bathed in moonlight

a phantom of a fantasy.

put your fingers in my mouth, pull my hair,

take my holy sacrifice and bow your head

as I pray unto you —

tell me I’m your good girl like

you know who I am at all.

everything I’ve ever wanted is something

just like this

but not this.

[gentlethoughts]

another gin + lime, please.

pucker up,

buttercup,

and bite down to the pith and bitter rind —

I’m at least half as good as you think

(I think)

if you care enough to find out.

I bet you taste like bomb pops and

c i g a r e t t e s

against the mossed alley walls,

coaxing out silent prayers that snake through teeth like

smoke

here we are

all lines and hunger

so

light me up, knock me down —

take blood or bone or both

let’s go toe to toe:

you look like you feel so good,

and I bet you’ve never tasted something so

sweet

[neckkiss]

“So, do it. Decide. Is this the life you want to live? Is this the person you want to love? Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger? Kinder? More Compassionate? Decide. Breathe in. Breathe out and decide.”

— Meredith Grey (via perrfectly)

[neckkiss]

“Even after all this time, The sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with A love like that. It lights the whole sky.”

— Hafiz of Persia (via perrfectly)

[gentlethoughts]

gin drunk, silly girl

head too full of worries for someone

on the Pale Blue Dot

take a moment —

the sunsets’ awful pretty on this poisoned

speck of

dust

[the-phooey]

“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others–the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

[gentlethoughts]

This is my heart. It is a good heart. Bones and a membrane of mist and fire are the woven cover. When we make love in the flower world my heart is close enough to sing to yours in a language that has no use for clumsy human words. My head, is a good head, but it is a hard head and it wirrs inside with a swarm of worries. What is the source of this singing, it asks and if there is a source why can’t I see it right here, right now as real as these hands hammering the world together with nails and sinew? This is my soul. It is a good soul. It tells me, “come here forgetful one.” And we sit together with a lilt of small winds who rattle the scrub oak. We cook a little something to eat: a rabbit, some sofkey then a sip of something sweet for memory. This is my song. It is a good song. It walked forever the border of fire and water climbed ribs of desire to my lips to sing to you. Its new wings quiver with vulnerability. Come lie next to me, says my heart. Put your head here. It is a good thing, says my soul.

This is My Heart, Joy Harjo (via gentlethoughts)

[filledwithlight]

“Love Poem” by Mary Fons

This poem is for the pillow clutchers, for those looking into the imaginary eyes of the person who fills their mind with sugarplum smiles, for those who have a cannon of dreams ready and waiting to blossom, for the men and the women who want to be understood in that way that only someone who kisses you can understand you - this poem is for you. This poem is not for the desperate; the pathetic; the lame; the loser; not for the one who hasn’t gotten laid in awhile. Not for the one who says they’re “choosing not to date” for awhile, there is no such thing. This poem is for the people who cannot bring themselves to admit that they would give their right leg for any length of time with the person on their mind. Forgive me. I am not a brave woman. I do not know what lurks in the hearts of humans and I don’t really want to know if what’s there mirrors memories I show in my face on bad days it holds kisses that are long gone, people who have disappeared, and passions that have faded into the ether of the past. Nothing lasts, that is the one lesson this coward can say she is able to teach. This poem is for all those who wish to say “I’m sorry”. I’m sorry I couldn’t love you, you deserve love. I’m sorry I couldn’t give something to you, something you deserve to be given. I’m sorry that for every person that loves somebody, another person just doesn’t want to. And sometimes we’re the lucky ones, right, we get to feel sweet truth in the night. The bodies we reach out to are miraculously there, but I know the despair that comes when they are not. I know the long nights and the doubt and the fear and that crawling back to a womb that just isn’t there. I know intensity’s address and the letdown that rents there. I’m sorry for it/it takes years off your life and it cannot be avoided. And sometimes these little words are crutches for the crush that we feel, so this poem is a pathetic vehicle for me to tell you, each one of you, that I love you. In so many ways, in the same ways that stay up nights and days, dreaming up the perfect way to be there for someone, meals you would cook for them, poems you would write for them and the things you plan to say when they say no. Well I love you, and you will never know how in the slight of a magician’s hand we could’ve been lovers and grandly in love. Could’ve changed the whole game, written words on the horizon, changed the compromise, but you will know something else instead, bitter as bitter ever gets, more bitter than a rotten peach pit, more bitter than a child’s most terrifying nightmare at night. You will know that I don’t reflect what I see in your eyes, will share some banal recognition, some cordial understanding but have I mentioned that I love you for not lying. So many people lying all the time, I hate them, so I love you. And you will still go home alone, and that is very hard to do. For all the humans with love for those who aren’t their lovers. I love you. And so the poem ends because we know that it will, but before it slips away like everything else, I will attempt the only words I can think of that are a fraction as good as a kiss: When you reach out at night and find not someone, but the cold grey light of day that wakes you up like a slap, like a curse, like an insult - I love you. When you stay at home thinking of those who are long gone or those who are getting kisses from someone that is not you, I love you. For those who want what they probably need and whose bodies are starving not for food, for me and for you and for all the people who never knew or understood what you would do for them - I love you. I love you. I love you.

[gentlethoughts]

sip, sip, swallow, numb

“I don’t wanna sober up”

My shell: empty.

They assure I’m fine, I’m good

The world would be better if my shell

caved in on itself

Let it happen;

I beg.

[gentlethoughts]

selfish bitch —

you, who turns inward while the world implodes

how do you live with yourself?

scarred legs & a broken past mean nothing to those who surround you with their shark teeth & bloodthirst

watch them seethe and writhe with glee at your struggle

you take pleasure in your pain but are

suddenly offended by those who do the same?

find your grave, shell of a woman

disappear into the waves

like you’ve always wanted

make the world a

better

place

[mypaperbook]

[nejli]

[jbearshenkman]

[shisasan]

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

[sleepbby]

[harmed]

[timbllr]

stretch for unknown by flannel feeling