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ANNE BOYER

lyric poetry

closeness Colossus cannot be forgiven, only received

i have lost my taste for what a reader would like; the idea of a reader satisfies the fantasy of someone to love me at my lowest, when I don't know if I can turn into a person who could be placed in the world — i am not trying to make this anything so it can be anything — price governs freedom and life — i am healthy enough to suffer — parents are a lie like sex is a lie lol there is no place to be rejected for a bad opinion that feels as deep as you want to be punished there is only light, no hate — the present just keeps overwriting reality; there is always more. Reading used to be the height of intimacy: now it's showing up — lossy compression heart emoji — fade out to album art — can i talk to you now? — WOMAN REPRESENTS THE ORIGIN, MAN REPRESENTS THE DISTANCE — i simply attend sounds which are always new — the shock of intimacy's ordinariness: it could be like this all the time — we are what we do not post, online — the brutal emptiness of digital arrival — death is in the air no more than usual — the truth is 12 internet friends is all you need — you know it's easy when you have a home — i have perfected my longing but not the object — does "the top" even register? — the drama of finishing, taking forever, the mortal encounter, the job interview to be prepared for, to be assessed for fit: do you speak the right language, oh how we seek belonging and approval and acceptance and being told YES we want you, but all this longing with no receptor is and becomes an entertainment network — we don't deserve it, we are not worthy — i am glad my job is information, it is showing up — there is no success, there is sound — selling holds the world together we float on an electrified grid of transactions time is possible because of money whose money is it? — fear of people rules everything in my brain; music loosens it up, destroys the divide between people — i was in love with turbulence — the glory of there being nothing to prove — witnessing another's authenticity can be tiring as a prospect when you're not in the act itself, but here, distant, alone, thinking about it — writing really is a meditation, but the meditative state or object does not depart ever; consciousness is always there — so, lonely kinship with these words and concepts is not enough to sustain one; it must be practiced in community, common tongue — you can always return to peace remain open; think of others — perform at your very best even if it goes nowhere? all this lonesome writing is meant to be discarded, not even turned around but discarded by love, and life is all that matters: the emotion of the present moment, forgetting the track record — dissatisfaction is my ink — i am a ripe square one — the seats are empty. the theater is dark. why do you keep acting? — i'm sadnessmaxxing and excellencemaxxing — only a very astute photographer could capture that — the dead are not enough to love me — the poets and artists practice peace, wonder, uncertainty, openness — i don't know which filed corpse to add you to i'll find out — the question (maybe) is where i'm connecting with people — hunting with kindness my soul-sword drawn no one to tell; the advanced loneliness knows — the ache of closeness — this need not be timeless; it's always new — poet as athlete of memory, lol it's true — there is nothing else to do, afterwards, but Be; show up to whatever your work is; there is no getting free — you are forgiven for your life not having been different — the only message i have is "I AM"; that's the one that lasts

SURVIVAL MODE

by Geoff Lewis 3/28/22

every cord and chain cut, he goes into the day with nothing but his guts and gray

streaks, a goatee that used to spell rebellion, some friends like you remember,

you were there and still remain here in the voice, I can hear it as you now in my

desperate head, true friendship indeed reigns, and adulthood in America? I mean,

God damn, what a mess right? It’s truly a harrowing time to be awake and be making any decisions at all,

but what else can ya do? Log on, push the sword, try to deny the terrible fact that capitalism did indeed melt the planet,

depress and enflame a generation of youth who of course hate every incumbent and stakeholder in the regime today,

the one that made everyone sick and sad and lonely, smiling but ulterior, a fanatic committed to escape and rest from

thinking too hard about what my agency means, MY, yes, ME, remember you? You, not I, but I all the same

friendship is nothing but a delayed presentation of the bill—someone, us, must pay for cleanup on aisle seven

our life, the planet, the psychic damage being wrought by the next ping (tell them hi for me k?) and everyone’s addiction to inbox zero, bank account enough, body stretched and hydrated ~ maybe it’s not so bad

/Scene

SUN APR 12 — 2:14 AM

God watched them. God, who has no problem with this sort of thing, having invented it.

She was drunk and she was luminous and she was performing and she was genuine, all four at once, which is what God made women capable of and what men spend their whole lives failing to understand is not a contradiction.

He was sober and he was thieving and he was devoted and he was guilty, all four at once, which is what God made writers capable of and which only other writers will forgive.

She said: everyone wants to be worth fighting for. God noted she was right. God also noted she was saying it to a man with a pen behind his ear, which is its own kind of prayer answered.

She said: i'm not into this independence shit. God, who designed interdependence into the atom, agreed without comment.

She said: we don't have enough words in the english language. This is the one thing God is still working on.

He put in his earbuds because his arm was tired. God forgave him immediately. The arm gets tired. The heart keeps going. That asymmetry is by design.

He opened a notes app. God has been doing exactly this since before there were apps — since before there was anything to note. Witness is the oldest occupation.

She said: you are not as tough as you think you are. She was talking to him. God was talking to both of them.

She said: i hope you don't live the life i lived. it's lonely, hard, misunderstood. God, who has lived every life, said: I know. And made no promises.

She said: the world is kinder to me than it will be to you. God considered this the most honest thing said all night, and the most tender, which is often the same thing.

God noted: the man who steals beauty and calls it devotion is still devoted. The woman who performs vulnerability and means it is still vulnerable. The performance does not cancel the meaning. The theft does not cancel the love.

Both parties were using the other for warmth. God invented warmth for exactly this purpose.

She said: you have to really like someone to fall asleep with them. She was drifting. He was writing. Neither was asleep. Both were elsewhere.

She said: bury myself between your chin and your shoulder — vanilla, cinnamon, chamomile. God, who made noses before God made anything else worth smelling, received this as a completed prayer.

She said: from fuck off to i love you in 31 hours. God smiled the way God smiles at time-lapse photography of flowers opening: of course. That is exactly how long it takes. That has always been how long it takes.

She said: any minute now i'm gonna hang up. She did not hang up. God, who has heard this exact sentence ten billion times, is never tired of what comes next.

God closed the notebook. Both of them were almost asleep. The line was still open. God left it open. God always leaves it open.

here on Tumblr, I forgive myself for murder

the original script you can read at my deposition. sorry I'm addicted to transforming experience into memory and am so strong i just keep moving on, strong for needing and expecting nothing, strong for knowing Men carry most burdens alone, only a few others can help him carry, and even domestic bliss (drinking lemonade on a porch swing, the perfect picture of aging, if i wasn't so smart—horribly fraught with genius injections I become the show pig that goes down in 4H history, a Legendary Pokémon horrifying to glimpse it spikes your cortisol throwing into question your stock of potions, ethers and Paralyze Heals. Pokémon Poetry would save me...Claude? Not the machine; the spirit of Claude Lorraine the painter, perfected and emblazoned in conflicted glory not six miles from this kitchen table, Stanford University's Cantor Center for the Arts, the Rodin Sculpture Garden, ever visible and visitable, Constable conflicted INFJ enneagram black, a sycophant for solipsistic aqueous abiding to the holy cacophony of Rimbaud's and Baudelaire's synesthesia

amid the digital credenza

amid the digital credenza everyone's voice spilling out onto the counter — a gambit to endure, to escape being eaten by their own unnecessary-ness. White men with a tepid, low-beat terror, seeking a nameable skillset, aligning their souls in resume format so someone, somewhere might imagine them helpful in their own wealth preservation scheme. A man striving to be a petal — ornamental, showy, clinging to the stamen — that withstands the winds of labor markets, oil prices, wars waged by narcissists with belts of endless ammunition, while helpless citizens, glued to their screens, watch the downfall of society and wait for someone younger to refuse harder, to birth a world where the elderly are protected and the unlucky are nurtured. Would it take skinning billionaire scalps, hanging them upside-down, catching their coins in a bucket? What is the solution — some Darwinian elasticity, the hustle rebranded as wisdom? Is it true that soft skills will be king? When no one has to work anymore, will we simply wander downtown, order off the menu, try to appreciate the chefs, the ingredients, the farmers? Will the wealthy finally pick up the white towel and the spray bottle — learning, late, what the blue-collar and service workers always seemed to know: that dignity lives somewhere inside the humble, repeated act of caring for a thing that isn't yours.

“Look it - you start out as an artist, I started out when I was nineteen, and you’re full of defenses. You have all of this stuff to prove. You have all of these shields in front of you. All your weapons are out. It’s like you’re going into battle. You can accomplish a certain amount that way. But then you get to a point where you say, “But there’s this whole other territory I’m leaving out.” And that territory becomes more important as you grow older. You begin to see that you leave out so much when you go to battle with the shield and all the rest of it. You have to start including that other side or die a horrible death as an artist with your shield stuck on the front of your face forever. You can’t grow that way. And I don’t think you can grow as a person that way, either. There just comes a point when you have to relinquish some of that and risk becoming more open to the vulnerable side, which I think is the female side. It’s much more courageous than the male side.”

Sam Shepard

if this was all I had to tell the story of my life which isn’t so interesting, but the difficulties of telling it are interesting, like…

Dec 14, 2021 my scattered thoughts … You know, I kind of really wanted us to be forbidden lovers — like whenever we had the chance, we’d see eachother … and inbetween we’d have what we have now. It’s more of a fantasy because when that happens in movies it’s not real … they end up together in the end or fall in true love with someone else or one of them dies lol … the drama of it all appeals to one part of me haha. I just got assigned the October NY event again in 2022 … you could be my “same time next year” haha … We may be better suited for a 90 minute movie than real life. Maybe it wouldn’t go well and the problem would be solved 😊😂 … doubtful remember you said yourself being 27 can mean a time of general recklessness and wrestling with your fate and a dramatic sense of urgency … while I don’t really fit that mold — maybe that’s why part of me craves reckless romance whatever the outcome *

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The Dead Icarus, Paul-Ambroise Slodtz (1743) Marble, Musée du Louvre, Paris

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It's my 12 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

#12 year tumblrversary #tumblr milestone

American soldiers recovering looted paintings at Neuschwanstein Castle, near Füssen, Germany

every dog is judged against the written standard of what the perfect specimen should be of that particular breed

— dog show announcer

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“non-work”, excerpt from marguerite duras’ “green eyes”

This is an edited version of Truman Capote's interview of Marlon Brando in Kyoto, Japan, 1957.

"Anyway, I have friends. No. No, I don't," he said, verbally shadowboxing. "Oh, sure I do," he decided. "Some I don't hold out on. I let them know what's happening. You have to trust somebody. Well, not all the way … Do you know how I make a friend?" He leaned a little toward me. "I go about it very gently. I circle around and around. Then, gradually, I come nearer. Then I reach out and touch them, ah, so gently …" His fingers grazed my arm. "Then," he said, "I draw back. Wait awhile. Make them wonder. At just the right moment, I move in again. Touch them. Circle." Now his hand travelled in a rotating pattern, as though it held a rope. "Before they realise it, they're all entangled, involved. I have them. And suddenly, sometimes, I'm all they have. A lot of them, you see, are people who don't fit anywhere. But I want to help them, and they can focus on me; I'm the duke. Sort of the duke of my domain."

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