poetry for the soul

Dani - 22 - She/her He/him ✨️🌹🐱

[carfuckerlynch]

hey does anyone have that poem. about the author seeing two boys cuddling on a hotel lobby couch, where he refers to it as something like an island of safe anonymity or smth. its been 5000 years my college boyfriend had it written out and pinned to his wall

[carfuckerlynch]

THANK YOU @witchoflight it is indeed "on traveling together" by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

[hellomyloveis]

Abalone, mother of pearl.

I am the jewel of my mother;

Abalone, my brother.

Inside the shell of an oyster

While he is called sir.

It's dark and cold and smooth

Yet I cannot move

Among the ivory cream.

Bodies are broken in the name of perfection.

They dissect and carve to find me,

And now I'm strung and quartered

While they say I'm beautiful.

My mother wears me around her neck,

And I'm paraded around.

Round and around, I'm here!

Considered by her friends

to be delicate and precious and pure.

But my purpose is to choke

myself and my mother,

My abalone brother.

In fact, I'm naught but baroque.

It's a natural façade, hard and raw,

That hides my softness, my self,

And soothes my flaws.

When I'm coveted and polished,

I lose bits of myself, now dust,

That is swept away, and

returned to the sea.

Over and over

I'm worn and worn out

Until I'm dull and scratched,

then my edges are smoothed once more.

[hellomyloveis]

A first date,

a first sunny day.

Is it too soon for real life,

the I-cant-breathe

and floating joy

of anticipation?

Yellow and purple,

a blue Monet.

His birthday was yesterday,

yet he's so young.

In a movie theater,

it gets dark without

my notice. The air

is fresh and salty

when we emerge.

Will I see him again soon?

[hellomyloveis]

Where is my sleep?

It's deep in the past what-ifs and my box of lost things. Bring back my stars and knight, the only holdover from my youth.

Tooth-pulled, a wandering wounded space l carry with me, aching, and I try to ignore it. But without my knowledge, my body and my soul weep. There is no sleep.

[hellomyloveis]

Sisyphus

The wind approaches from the west

and I'm a bit tired, not my best.

Does it blow just to jest?

Or is it a cross to bear, a test?

Pushing forward, I want a rest

But the it scrapes me. I cannot rest, lest

I lose myself

[hellomyloveis]

11:16

The sky, it grew.

To be seen,

not blue,

keen.

My hue,

it gleams

in my heart. Do

I seem to be new?

[hellomyloveis]

Amoeba

It's a nebulous flow of what makes my heart flutter. It's not cold; it's a fever, this anxiety that makes my hands clammy and wet. I wipe them on my jeans

but it keeps coming and I can't stop it and my hands shake, like there's something wrong with them. My chest hurts.

Why can't they stop, I want it to stop. Please it scares me.

My nail polish is chipped. I see it as I put my head between my knees, under the open windows. It's colder here.

I breathe

and my heart and mind stills. My hands stop shaking.

[hellomyloveis]

I want to go home and wash my hair read a soft story that makes me melt while listening to warm piano dreaming of being in love but missing my cats which isn't longing a form of desire, of love, wanting that which is put of sight reach grasp breath like washing my hair and reading a soft story

Paper Ideas

[lesbianaglaya]

i love translations i love the act of translation i love it so so much

[lesbianaglaya]

translation is so fun because people feel so strongly about it and for good reason because ultimately it’s all about sacrifice. do you sacrifice form for content? content for mood? mood for form? there are no solutions just compromises. as anthony burgess said, “translation is not a matter of words only; it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture”. nabokov referred to a bad translation as giving “the impression that I am witnessing a murder and can do nothing to prevent it”. the husband and wife translators of russian novels, pevear and volokhonsky work in tandem, translating and reading and polishing in a process pevear referred to as “raising questions”. douglas hofstadter asked multiple people he knew to translate a short 16th century french poem and came back with wildly varying results. to use eliot weinberger’s words, “every reading of every poem, regardless of language, is an act of translation” and the actual literal act of translating from one language to another exposes so much about the languages and the author and the translator and the reader of the translation! it’s a deeply intricate analysis that expands continuously outward!

[lesbianaglaya]

#love this love translation its like painting on a wall to show someone what’s on the other side (via @katadesmoi )

[deviika]

Fernando Pessoa // Franz Kafka

[damonalbarngirl]

oh.....

[cbrg00]

Mon Soleil

Durant la journée, le soleil brille dans notre ciel.

Durant la nuit la lune prend sa place, elle brille dans l'obscurité.

Cependant pour briller la lune a besoin du soleil, alors même pendant la nuit, lorsqu'on ne le voit pas, le soleil est présent. Il fait briller nos nuits en faisant briller la lune.

Tu es un peu comme un soleil, tu es présent même lorsque je ne te vois pas. Tu fais briller mes journées et mes nuits, ainsi que la Lune qu'est mon cœur.

—

Tu es mon Soleil.

‎‎‎‎‎

[leonardospoetry]

So much of our suffering is about resistance. Accepting our struggles for what they are, without overthinking them, can be incredibly liberating.

Let it happen. And then let it go.

[hellomyloveis]

[hellomyloveis]

Fahrenheit 451 and A Clockwork Orange have the same vibes and you can fight me on that.

[booksquoteslife]

[jeonchemstudy-closed]

books by asian authors

this by no means is a comprehensive list of books, but this may give you a starter point as to where to start reading more about asian experiences and learning about asian culture. hopefully, you will find something you enjoy!

graphic novels

such a lovely little war: saigon 1961-63 and saigon calling: london 1963-75, marcelino truong: the story of a french-vietnamese boy and his family during the vietnam war

almost american girl, robin ha: memoir of a korean girl who moves to america and experiences racism and sexism in high school 

year of the rabbit, tian veasna: the tale of a family’s drive to survive the brutal khmer rouge regime

banned book club, kim hyunsook, ryan estrada and ko hyungju: memoir of a girl attending college in korea during the 1980s dictatorship and taking part in a banned book club 

cat diary: yon and mu, junji ito: horror comic about a guy who adopts two cats who terrorize him 

nonfiction

why we swim, bonnie tsui: swimming’s history, from olympic champions to japanese samurai swimmers

minor feelings, cathy park hong: essay collection of asian experiences of racism in the US

reading lolita in tehran, azar nafisi: an english professor’s experiences during the iranian revolution

all you can ever know, nicole chung: memoir of a korean girl adopted by white parents

family in six tones: a refugee mother, an american daughter, lan cao: memoir of a mother and daughter, the former of whom was a vietnam war refugee

fiction

on earth we’re briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong: a lovely, poetic letter from a vietnamese son to his mother

little fires everywhere, celeste ng: literary novel about a quiet suburban town and seemingly perfect family that changes once a traveling artist and her daughter move to town

the kiss quotient, helen hoang: super feel good romance featuring an autistic protagonist and a hunky swedish-vietnamese love interest

evil and the mask, fuminori nakamura: thriller novel that blew my head off

the windup bird chronicle, haruki murakami: literary novel about a man’s wife who disappeared suddenly and the mysterious journey he embarks on to find her again

pachinko, minjin lee: the multigenerational story of a family of koreans in japan during the early 20th century

prophecy (the dragon king chronicles #1), ellen oh: ya novel set in a korean fantasy landscape about a girl assigned to be the bodyguard to a prince during a demon invasion

run to me earth, paul yoon: the story of 3 orphans struggling to find their way in laos

in addition, i’d like you to notice these two lovely lists by @papenathys and @gaaaandaaaalf at these two links [x, x]. these lists are of south asian writers specifically, if you’re interested in them! 

add on your favorite books by asian authors if you’d like in the notes :)

[edit: sorry it was incomplete when i queued it. good thing i checked haha]