☉

the sea is roaring, roaring

[kotohba]

-“Watching autumn arrive, it really does feel like I’m part of some greater plan.”

[sunsetpinks-deactivated20220109]

inspired by posts like this one  e.e cummings,”i carry your heart with me”// margaret atwood, selected poems (1965-1975) // virginia woolf, “night and day”

[264571956-deactivated20210621]

ada limón, “accident report in the tall, tall weeds”, from ‘bright dead things’ / porco rosso (1992), dir. hayao miyazaki (1) (2) (3) / @heartcountry y.z., halfway across the world

[soumal]

(Left to right) 1.Contemporary Finish Poetry, Risto Ahti // 2. The Complete Poems, Emily Bronte // 3. Invitation, Mary Oliver // 4. It is raining in my room…, Homero Aridjis // 5. The Seine At Dawn, Charles Angrand // 6. The morning song, book cover detail // 7. Life, the Universe, Everything, Douglas Adams // 8. Like Flowing Wine, Faiz Ahmad Faiz // 9. Long Life: essays and Other Writings, Mary Oliver // 10. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster // 11. Whisper of the Heart (1995)

[kotohba]

-the ocean foamed at her feet, like the top layer of boiled milk.

excerpts from a book inside my head

[soumal]

You open your mouth and out fall pieces of early September, your breath still tinged with honey- you have not quite let go of summer and she’s letting her hands slide gradually off of your eyes, your brow, her golden touch turning to red like the crescents of indented skin where you have pinched and pursed your apprehension and your face and mine are bathed in grapefruit; 

the sun is drinking to her wane- your lids are thick and uneven, fleecen lashes stirring with the rise of kitchen steam. even sleep has become engulfed so it seeks to engulf you and your blush nostalgia and your fear of throwing away tea bags. your knuckles and the insides of your wrists are soft and raw and now you will start to find the evening sky mimics them.

there were days towards the end when your breath would catch at the glimpse of wrinkled leaf skin and nights when you told yourself the wilting roses were because the sun had burned too bright. you wore an extra-layer and your glasses were copper-tinted- idealism was beyond you or rather you were beyond it as you dipped your fingers again and again into those stagnant, cloud-infested waters.

i’m not here to reassure; i want you to know i was once like you but now i wear viburnum behind my ears and there is a smudge of russet on my upper lip. i felt i had replaced the sun, the froth, with an oven of a heart- the kiln of the kiln is in your mind and yes, your fingers are still tender but they will harden soon. 

you should look up more and if you would only stop unfocusing your gaze, you would find that autumn too has her own gossamer curtains and a cup for your soul.

[kotohba]

I watched my neighbours grow old, listened to them cough and yawn into endless, lamplit evenings.

excerpts from a book inside my head

[kotohba]

Adulthood was an uncomfortable metamorphosis for me. I think I became an adult when I deluded myself into believing that rain belonged to the evening and her successors. I became cynical when I then believed that it ought to. And then she came, a spring shower, a drenching fistful to the face. I was devastated.

excerpts from a book inside my head

[artfoli]

Sea Landscapes by Japanese artist Fujishima Takeji (1867-1943)

The Sea at Sunrise l Oarai l Waves l Sunrise at the Port of Kobe

[kotohba]

Stop for a minute. Put your hands to your ears. Listen to the sound of your rushing blood, your thrumming heart.

[kotohba]

The water shattered the moonlight into a crooked path of glowing orbs, skimming from horizon to shoreline. I was overcome by a sudden pull to set off on it-such light would surely hold the weight of my weary feet.

excerpts form a book inside my head

[kotohba]

-a funny child, you know. I took her out to a garden for the first time-out under the magnolia tree. She’d never seen those great big blossoms before. The first thing she did upon being presented with a daisy was to kiss it.

excerpts from a book inside my head

[kotohba]

A man on a train. On his way back from work; dark suit, briefcase. He periodically and absently steps on the heels of a young boy’s shoes. The woman on his left thinks he kind of smells. He throws his cigarette butts on the floor when he’s done. He feeds stray cats. He leaves newspapers on benches and tosses stale bread to pigeons. There are two unpaid parking tickets on his record and two missed calls from his mother in his log. In a fit he stuffed twenty pounds into the penny box outside the station. If he dies today, around fifteen people will attend his funeral, seven if it happens to rain. He is utterly insignificant to every living thing on the carriage. He is the centre of the universe.

excerpts from a book inside my head

[kotohba]

Is it utterly naive to want an effortless love-? Does it exist? Am I fool for waiting to have my heart taken?

excerpts from a book inside my head

[soumal]

Water melon

You are incessant like,

Watermelon seeds,

Between my teeth-

I spit out pieces of you,

Yet still,

I aim for soil.

[kotohba]

My grandmother, the setting sun.

My fingers stretch and clench,

I hold the last of her beams,

Twisted round my wrists

I hope the rope burns turn to scars,

                                                                              I hope she will be giant and red

                                                                              For a long time to come.

[kotohba]

In every puddle, in every spit of water she looked for the sky’s reflection. I told her once-

“You should just look up.”

“No,” she said, “no, no-” and then quietly, 

“-I’ll fall”