Meus Grifos

I should go now quietly; for my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep. Where all my layers can become reeds, all my limbs can become trees, all my children can become me

[nemfrog]

Marbled endpaper.

internet Archive

[meusgrifos]

I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do. Do cats pray, while they sleep half-asleep in the sun? Does the opossum pray as it crosses the street? The sunflowers? The old black oak growing older every year? I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can’t really call being alive. Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not. While I was thinking this I happened to be standing just outside my door, with my notebook open, which is the way I begin every morning. Then a wren in the privet began to sing. He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, I don’t know why. And yet, why not. I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe or whatever you don’t. That’s your business. But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be if it isn’t a prayer? So I just listened, my pen in the air.

— "I happened to be standing", from Mary Oliver.

[transistoradio]

Jean Parrish posing for “Stars” (1926) by her father, Maxfield Parrish.

[meusgrifos]

If porcelain, then only the kin you won't miss under the shoe of a mover or the tread of a tank; if a chair, then not too comfortable, lest there be regret in getting up and leaving; if clothing, then just so much as can fit in a suitcase, if books, then those which can be carried in the memory, if plans, then those which can be overlooked when the time comes for the next move to another street, continent, historical period or world: who told you that you were permitted to settle in? who told you that this or that would last forever? did no one ever tell you that you will never in the world feel at home in the world?

— "If porcelain, then only the kind", by Stanislaw Baranczak. (transl. by Frank Kujawinski)

[arte-artem-artibus]

Alexander Calder - Sunburst, 1974, colored lithograph, 19 1/8 x 25 1/4 in

[meusgrifos]

We love what we have, no matter how little, because if we don't, everything will be gone. If we don't, we will no longer exist, since there will be nothing here for us. What's here is something that we are still building. It's something we cannot yet see, because we are part of it. Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we, we will be the trees that protect it from the fierce wind, the trees that will give shade to children sleeping inside or playing on swings.

— "We love what we have", by Mosab Abu Toha.

[70sscifiart]

A Wayne Barlowe illustration from Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the A.D. 2358 Voyage to Darwin IV, 1990

[meusgrifos]

The days come and go like waves on pebbles. She the sea will not wear the coat made from flame, made from the flag of combustion. She will not dress herself in fire. Nor can she wear the galloping world she dreams of. The days do not touch her, she has the shell of a snail. She cannot see clearly the way her wounds are shaped. She will not dress herself, she will not dream. She cannot see her way clearly over the cold cinders. To sleep she ventures out under a rowboat to a ship at sea. The nights come and go in the waves beneath the ship, she will not wear the canvas sails, she will not dress herself in salt. The nights do not touch the sea. The sea touches night in her rest.

— "She will not dress herself", from Laura Jensen.

[perimodern]

YEAR OF GLAD

[apoemaday]

For M

by Mikko Harvey

​I don’t want you to be nervous. Maybe thinking of a walrus would help. Have you seen the video of the penguin accidentally stepping on a sleeping walrus? It thought it was a rock. The walrus wakes up like what the fuck and the penguin scurries off like oh shit. Sometimes it’s funny watching a surprise happen, and not just funny but kind of amazing—like, you never really know what’s what when it comes to this planet. Then again, when it’s you getting surprised, that’s different. Especially for tender ones like us. What are we supposed to do? It’s bad for our hearts, you know. I hope you won’t need pills like I do. I think I get so scared because I’m greedy— I want to hold onto everything, the world wants to take it away. What the fuck. The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it. 

[vladj]

source

[meusgrifos]

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

— "The poet compares human nature to the ocean from which we came", from Mary Oliver.

[ghw-archive]

light of Aurora, Anastasia Trusova, acrylic, 2021

[meusgrifos]

Devagar escreva uma primeira letra escreva nas imediações construídas pelos furacões; devagar meça a primeira pássara bisonha que riscar o pano de boca aberto sobre os vendavais; devagar imponha o pulso que melhor souber sangrar sobre a faca das marés; devagar imprima o primeiro olhar sobre o galope molhado dos animais; devagar peça mais e mais e mais

— Ana Cristina César, em "Flores do Mais"

[meusgrifos]

source: Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Can't Keep Checking My Phone (Official Video)

[meusgrifos]

We can set fire to the memory of the house unlearn a language word by word we can forget a city its streets bridges general stores warehouses cranes cable cars and if it has a river we can forget the river even against the stream but we cannot protect with the body another body from aging by throwing ourserlves upon its memory

— Ana Martins Marques, published in "O livro das semelhanças" [the book of similarities]. Translated on the house.

[nevver]

Emerald City, Seth Armstrong