poems i can't stop thinking about

hi, it's lucy diamond biederman

[mythologyofblue]

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer (via mythologyofblue)

[elizabethellenfastmachine-deact]

satanic panic, teen suicide, 1984

just listened to The Moth while mopping the floor and one of the Moth story tellers was a (former) member of The West Memphis Three, young men accused of murdering three young boys in a Satanic ritual in the 80s. 

i’ve been doing research on the years 1984-1985 for the memoir i’m working on and a lot of my ‘research’ has been reading copies of Rolling Stone magazine from that time period (when it was published twice a month!). There are articles on Teen Cluster Suicides and on Suburban Teen Cult/Devil-Worshipping Killers. 

and i was thinking while listening to The Moth that we have to be careful when swept up in any big moral panic, or in any big new movement, because invariably, innocent people (like the young men wrongly convicted and put in prison for decades for the murder of the children in West Memphis) are falsely accused and punished in an effort to rid the world of evil, and in an effort to make ‘us’ feel safer. 

in the 80s ‘we’ feared young men/boys who read Stephen King books and listened to Iron Maiden and looked like they might worship the devil and dig up graves and kill little children in the woods. we feared day care centers because one in California was accused of being a cult and of sexually abusing babies/children in the name of Satan and devil worship. 

we feared heavy metal music would make young men kill themselves or each other or ‘us.’ 

when you feel fearful today, take any other time period in world history, do a small amount of research, and you’ll find fear is the most common way of controlling/political swaying/undermining confidence and autonomy, creating hysteria and irrational thinking. it also is usually based on very little ‘truth.’ maybe fear of the unknown is too scary and the fear of something more tangible - be it heavy metal music or devil worshippers - is more manageable. 

but the old Rolling Stones have articles on Russia and nuclear war and the divide of the economic classes and immoral politicians, just like today. And somehow we all survived. (or, the same amount of ppl survived as survive any given year in history)

[jellobiafrasays]

from the back of the bus (1962)

[afrosonics]

Visit Original Link

[lucybiederman]

Twelve

by Lynne Melnick

When I was your age I went to a banquet. When I was your age I went to a barroom and bought cigarettes with quarters lifted from the laundry money. Last night I did all your laundry. I don’t know why I thought this love could be pure. It’s enough that it’s infinite. I kiss your cheek when you sleep and wonder if you feel it. It’s the same cheek I’ve kissed from the beginning. You don’t have to like me. You just have to let me keep your body yours. It’s mine. When I was your age I went to a banquet and a man in a tux pinched my cheeks. When I was your age I went to a barroom and a man in a band shirt pinched my ass. There is so much I don’t know about you. Last night I skipped a banquet so I could stay home and do your laundry and drink wine from my grandmother’s glass. When I was your age boys traded quarters for a claw at my carcass on a pleather bench while I missed the first few seconds of a song I’d hoped to record on my backseat boombox. When I was your age I enjoyed a hook. You think I know nothing of metamorphosis but when I was your age I invented a key change. You don’t have to know what I know.

[bostonpoetryslam]

You who don’t understand poetry           Of course you do           Stand in the shadows in a dream           Write from where you are           Write what you want to read

Brenda Hillman, “Poem for a National Forest,” published in Lana Turner (via bostonpoetryslam)

[lucybiederman]

“You’re a smart, beautiful woman.” I can’t stand to be called a woman. I’m a girl. I’ll always be a girl.

Mary Miller (”Dirty,” from Always Happy Hour)

[lucybiederman]

The great Frank Bidart 

“...for 

you    chip of the incommensurate 

closed world     A n g e l”

[mentaltimetraveller]

Sergej Jensen

[elizabethellenfastmachine-deact]

We need to be able to be in situations where you can be irresponsible. That’s one of the great privileges of an artist. An artist should be irresponsible in a way - a 3 year old.

Kanye West, NYT article (via elizabethellenfastmachine)

[elizabethellenfastmachine-deact]

I set the video game on the hardest setting possible, the most hate possible.

Kanye West, NYT article (via elizabethellenfastmachine)

[spidermirror-blog]

Start your day off right with a few poems from @rustbeltjessie … Part of a complete breakfast. https://www.spidermirror.com/blog/poetry-jessie-lynn-mcmains

[rustbeltjessie]

a soul radio soft n’ low, small enough to fit inside the whorl of your ear. an aria circus-whistled, chorus of horsehooves and spangled ladies shaking feathered behinds. o sing a song of spira mirabilis. o sing a song of furled fiddlehead fronds, wildthings so spring-young. -from “fiddlehead song (small good things)”

[kdecember30-deactivated20201130]

The truth has to be melted out of our stubborn lives by suffering. Nothing speaks the truth, nothing tells us how things really are, nothing forces us to know what we do not want to know except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love.

Aeschylus (via kdecember30)

[justanotherliteratureblog]

A Family Transition

Reading The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson has been mentally taxing. This is not because it’s a bad read, it’s just so dense and written stream-of-consciousness. Nelson’s words are great, she makes wonderful arguments, and is able to describe how she thinks now while also crediting those who have led her to think the way that she does. I’m particularly fond of a few paragraphs from pg 50 to the top of 52. The ending quote here reads: “As if I do not know that, in the field of gender, there is no charting where the external and the internal begin and end – “(52).

This passage stuck with me because it is centered around trans identities and changes, which I can relate to, being trans myself. I can really relate to the beginning of 50 when Nelson writes about one of her students, who is ftm, and that student’s mother who was publishing articles in a newspaper speaking about her child’s transition. The mother is having a difficult time, having raised a daughter and now having a son where that daughter once stood. My parents are struggling with the same things. Nelson gets upset by the mother’s response, and the fact that it was published in the newspaper. I can understand being upset by the publishing of it, but those thoughts need to be expressed. When a child transitions, the family surrounding the child have to transition as well. Using new nouns and pronouns, a new name, getting used to external changes from hormones and surgeries, everyone around a trans person has to get used to these new things, and it can be incredibly difficult. I think that it’s important for family members to be able to talk about their feelings without being judged for them, so long as those feelings aren’t insulting or disrespectful. Everyone deserves to be heard in their own ways, and I heard this mother, because it is my mother.

[lucybiederman]

I have been assigning blog posts for years & years in my lit courses; I have read so many gorgeous posts, but this one stands out for me as entirely special, brilliantly beautiful--in its critique & and its lyric, head & heart. “Everyone deserves to be heard in their own ways, and I heard this mother, because it is my mother.” 

[bibliomancyoracle]

we still say        keep fighting,

& love me again—   don’t the pines die, too

& exactly          with our names

*

from “THE WORLD SAYS NOT TO EXPECT THE WORLD” by KHADIJAH QUEEN

[artsyloch]

Yves Klein | Monochrome rose

executed circa 1960 dry pigment and synthetic resin on canvas 40 x 35 cm (15 ¾ x 13 ¾ in.)

[start-anywhere]

“I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED GENOCIDE TO STOP I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND REACTION I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED MUSIC OUT THE WINDOWS I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED NOBODY THIRST AND NOBODY NOBODY COLD I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED I WANTED JUSTICE UNDER MY NOSE I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED BOUNDARIES TO DISAPPEAR I WANTED NOBODY ROLL BACK THE TREES! I WANTED NOBODY TAKE AWAY DAYBREAK! I WANTED NOBODY FREEZE ALL THE PEOPLE ON THEIR KNEES! I WANTED YOU I WANTED YOUR KISS ON THE SKIN OF MY SOUL AND NOW YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I STAND DESPITE THE TRILLION TREACHERIES OF SAND YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I HOLD THE LONGING OF THE WINTER IN MY HAND YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I COMMIT TO FRICTION AND THE UNDERTAKING OF THE PEARL YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I HAVE BEGUN I BEGIN TO BELIEVE MAYBE MAYBE YOU DO I AM TASTING MYSELF IN THE MOUNTAIN OF THE SUN”

— “Intifada Incantation: Poem 38 for b.b.l,” June Jordan (via dorothea-rising)