귀신.

the nearest i’d come to feeling anything like god was the plain blue cloudless sky and a certain silence, but how do you pray to that?

[kvothes]

richard siken, in pithead chapel

[archibaldmotley]

–Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

[mehreenkasana]

What’s the kindest thing you almost did? Is your fear of insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you? Are bonsai cruel? Do you love what you love, or just the feeling? Your earliest memories: do you look though your young eyes, or look at your young self? Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent, or that there are people with more talent? Do you walk on moving walkways?

Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong as you were doing it? Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone? How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life? What would you tell your father, if it were possible? Which is changing faster, your body, or your mind? Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis?

Are you in any way angry at your phone? When you pass a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, look at your reflection, or neither? Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it? If you could be assured that money wouldn’t make you any small bit happier, would you still want more money? What has been irrevocably spoiled for you?

If your deepest secret became public, would you be forgiven? Is your best friend your kindest friend? Is it any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is there anything you feel a need to confess? You know it’s a “murder of crows” and a “wake of buzzards” but it’s a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you’re afraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it’s an “unkindness of ravens”?“

 Jonathan Safran Foer, Two-Minute Personality Test

[lifeinpoetry]

remember, getting clean is a form of grief so let go of your own ghost: a wake, every day.

— Scott-Patrick Mitchell, from "binding spell," Clean: Faith, Abuse and George Pell

[lifeinpoetry]

When I go to the doctor, they hand me paperwork with a chart to locate my pain. I can’t pinpoint it. I “X” my whole body. My entire life.

— Glenis Redmond, from "I Stay Sick," The Listening Skin

[orpheuslament]

they hate me for finding romance in the violent & violence in the romantic. also for the killing

[lifeinpoetry]

familiar is only an ache.

— Scott-Patrick Mitchell, from "inner pity poems," Clean: Faith, Abuse and George Pell

[lifeinpoetry]

I feel the desire to pray. I don’t know whom to address.

— Iman Mersal, from "As if the world were missing a blue window," The Threshold, tr. Robyn Creswell

[lifeinpoetry]

— Shelley Puhak, from "portrait of the artist as an artist," Harbinger

[lifeinpoetry]

It is my intention to listen, but my hands keep giggling while reminding me I don’t get to be a human being for very long, as if this were the punchline to a joke whose first half I missed. I arrived too late. I typically arrive about three years too late. I wish I had been able to sit in that white, aromatic kitchen and look you in the face, but I was not ready. I was still on my way.

— Mikko Harvey, from "Wind-Related Ripple in the Wheatfield," Let the World Have You

[luthienne]

Rosanna Warren, from Go Forth: Poems; "Legende of Good Women: I. The Triumph of Death"

[Text ID: Dawn finds you kneeling on stone, calling // again the bleak God you believe / will answer you.]

[lifeinpoetry]

I feel the desire to pray. I don’t know whom to address.

— Iman Mersal, from "As if the world were missing a blue window," The Threshold, tr. Robyn Creswell

[honeylover]

Micah Nemerever, "These Violent Delights"

[lifeinpoetry]

i write my dead name in my father’s obituary. i don’t even think about it.

my dead name doesn’t feel like such a dead name while i’m standing next to my dad’s corpse.

i don’t feel bad about writing my dead name in my dead dad’s obituary. what does it matter which name my dad used to call me when he can’t call me anything anymore.

in this moment, i don’t give a fuck about what my gender is or isn’t. what people think it is or isn’t.

there are some things that are alive, and i am one of them.

and there are some things that are dead.

— Ollie Schminkey, from "i write my dead name in my father’s obituary," Dead Dad Jokes

[lifeinpoetry]

Your fake silver ring had burned its last circle onto your finger and the tulips outside bowed their heads but not for you, no, not for you and— forgive me—but I’m no longer the son I was when I lost you, and I’d rather have you dead than have you in that bed, dying forever.

— Saeed Jones, from "Okay, One More Story," Alive at the End of the World

[lifeinpoetry]

— Joy Harjo, from "Running," Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light

[ID: I was afraid of the dark, because then I could see Everything. The truth with its eyes staring Back at me. The mouth of the dark with its shiny moon teeth, No words, just a hiss and a snap. I could hear my heart hurting With my in-the-dark ears. I thought I could take it. /End ID]

[lifeinpoetry]

“the body as the precipice / the body as the body”

— — Silas Melvin, from “Punished Body,” Grit