sometimes we're not legible @keylyn - Tumblr Blog

dear contracontemporopolitan,

i, too, read the César Bruto quote in Cortázar’s “Hopscotch” and was intrigued. the passage above is something i read about it and found interesting. it’s from “Understanding Julio Cortázar” by Peter Standishdear.

-keylyn

i bet this town is in your blood now but it didn’t have to be no it didn’t have to be

and we thought we’d find the answers in the troubadours and dancers brand new

do you think i’ve learned my lesson? did i make a new impression on you?

#jason isbell #we've met #music

10.24.13

late october. this is a month i loved in illinois. the world was gold, red, and orange. i wore jeans and hoodies and loved to lay down in the cold grass and look up at a vast blue sky or bright starry blanket. i’d stay that way until it felt like the cold had sunk deep into my bones. i miss the cornfields and country roads late at night. walking into a warm house, smelling like a bonfire, my nose still cold and red.

today i drove to the causeway on my lunch break. i had all the car windows open and the heat on low. i was listening to transatlanticism. i parked facing the ocean. across the road behind me, a young woman in shorts and a hoodie sat on the guardrail facing away from me. she was looking out at the ocean on her side of the road. she swung her legs back and forth. she looked curious. content. peaceful. i had the sudden urge to go speak to her and know her. then a car parked in front of her, an older man got out, and they embraced. the urge disintegrated. i turned back to the ocean on my side of the road.

the album made me think of an old friend and the love we shared so quietly; how much we have changed and not spoken and no longer know each other. it reminded me of sadness and confusion, of time spent in coffee shops sipping coffee or tea, reading poems and sentences and etceteras, looking for something we didn’t find. it made me feel nostalgia for the long nights spent feeling alone and utterly lost. there was some kind of freedom in it. some kind of love formed between two lost and lonely people who didn’t understand themselves or the love they quietly shared over cups of chai and walks downtown and car rides and picnic blankets. there was comfort in the love that wasn’t spoken. there was no attempt at naming it. it simply was, soft and quiet, and it went on until we left for college and slowly tucked the other away until years had passed and we’d forgotten each other and i was alone and utterly lost again.

#transatlanticism #ocean #nostalgia #love #loneliness

she found a recipe for flying he's growing flowers to understand dying rejoice

#sean hayes #flowering spade

We bury our dead alive, don't we? We hear them every day, they talk to us, they haunt us, they beg us for meaning. Conscience is just the voices of the dead trying to save us from our own damnation.

The X-Files

#x-files #xfiles

other-wordly

keylyn

trying to do this less.

nevver

theantidote-deactivated20141122

— Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems

(via nevver:)

2 of my poems are being published. >_<

poetry, death, dylan...this is just a bunch of stuff i've been thinking about today...it may not all seem related or sensible, but i'm just spitting it all out:

a line of poetry my professor posted a couple of months ago has stayed with me:

Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness Of the Midwest? -James Wright, 1963

he posted it when i was preparing for my move from edwardsville, illinois to palm harbor, florida, so it really spoke to me at the time. and now that i've been in florida for a month, i still think it rings true. the beauty of the ocean calms me and takes my breath away. its largeness and unrelenting force frightens me. how can you feel lonely when the enormity of the sea is surrounding you?

i've since looked up the whole poem and was struck by the epigraph the poet used:

And how can I, born in evil days And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate? -Po Chu-i, A.D. 819

i've also since looked up that whole poem and i also enjoy the last lines of the poem:

Often I fear that these un-talented limbs Will be laid at last in an un-named grave! -Po Chu-i, A.D. 819

i am struck that i am reading these lines now that were written so long ago by someone who feared that even his grave would be unnamed. it reminded me of the inscription keats wanted on his grave:

Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water. -John Keats, 1821

we all die and turn to dust, but we leave a mark, whether big or small. keats died believing that he was a complete failure, yet his writing remains part of our literary canon today. chu-i wrote his poems in the 9th century, yet it spoke to something keats wrote over a thousand years later. and now i'm reading and thinking about them both today in 2012.

the following lines also made me think about the idea of death:

Or the other notion that, because there is in this world no one thing to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds, a word is elegy to what it signifies. We talked about it late last night and in the voice of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone almost querulous. After a while I understood that, talking this way, everything dissolves ... -Robert Hass, 1979

some lines of poetry make me weep. "and in the voice / of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief" brought tears to my eyes. it's those kinds of lines that keep me coming back to it when i feel i've given up writing it, that keep me reading it when i feel i've read all that could be as beautiful, all that could move me as much.

some songs make me weep. i cry every time i read the lyrics to dylan's "a hard rain's a-gonna fall". it's haunting and terrifying and heart breakingly sad. but someone wrote that. someone poured their heart out for me to hear and feel. that's what makes it beautiful. that's why i love poems. that's why i love music. that's why i love expression.

but all this singing and writing and mourning over death and darkness and brokenness...it makes me think about life and who i am and what i'm doing here. i feel a kindred spirit with these poets. i wonder the same things. my heart burns for the same things. it breaks for the same things. but is writing enough? is singing enough? is reading and listening and feeling their words enough? what am i to do? i think of the last part of dylan's song:

And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son? And what'll you do now, my darling young one? I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin', I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest, Where the people are many and their hands are all empty, Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, And the executioner's face is always well hidden, Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten, Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I'll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it, And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it, And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin', But I'll know my song well before I start singin', And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

those words always make me feel like i have to do something, even though it'd never be enough. or else what am i doing here? what is this life for if not to make something better? my sister is going back to africa in a couple weeks. she'll be helping run a medical clinic there. her part in this world is small, but it is something. it's always an emotional trip for her. it makes her feel small and powerless, it makes her wonder if her contribution really helps when the injustice and brokenness in the world just continues all around her. but i admire her for her strength and compassion. i admire her for her heart. i need to find a way to contribute to the brokenness around me, too.

#poetry #dylan #death

years pass, sleeping in winter's place waiting deep underground

diving away, following birds of prey like an old friend you're losing again gentle are days covering warm at dusk the moon sings to stars that he lost

each day passes by like a cloud in the sky you can't be found

take your time coming home such a clear night summer feels right

#remembrance #cmr