Where a smile lives

[notjustcookies]

Will never get enough of this. Photograph: mine / @notjustcookies

[headlesssamurai]

“I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me.”

— Haruki Murakami

[tapiwamugabe]

Stay, kindly.

[huariqueje]

Evening by the sea  -  Marcel Schelekens, 2019.

Dutch b. 1954-

Oil on canvas, 200 x 130 cm.

[rootsandwings]

Symphony

Solitary Japanese plum

scarlet plumage rustling softly

wore out her sleeves as a geisha 

from April to Autumn 

When the season takes its leaves 

passion cooling

umeshu sours to vinegar

rumors ripen on 

The grapevines, a chorus joins in,

no longer marooned, each soliloquy

burnishes its tenor, ruby throats of turncoats 

crescendo in symphony.

©️Sophia Naz

[notjustcookies]

This is not a great photograph, it’s not a recent one. I took this in October 2017 in southern Crete. It’s important to me :-)

(c) photo @notjustcookies Don’t remove this. It matters.

[notjustcookies]

And I am about a lot of things besides cookies

@randomlyjay

[lamelancoly-deactivated20160226]

Man Ray- Masques, 1946 negatif

[maldarchive]

AFTER WITNESSING THE DOWNFALL OF OUR GENEROUS MOVEMENTS

once-feral crawl    hopeless deranged (again) the shock restrained

taking pride unbridled     in our sex its  unending fascination with itself

*

     having had a life that shuttled by without at best a wink of pause, this

familiarity of skin     is my ultimate  luxury

*

of you I thought of little      else           

[rootsandwings]

Dividend

(After Naomi Shihab Nye)

And here I was, so proud to be

the proverbial promethean

wordsmith so volatile as to fire

off lines like shooting stars

the light of lines captive as

fireflies in a summer’s night jar

Little did I know it was the dark

earth that was flammable beyond

wild imagination, that it would lay

my years of toil to waste

And so for the sins of humanity

or rather the oily oligarchs

I have paid richly in the coin of loss

The sole dividend of this pain

is poetry.

Naz

[notjustcookies]

I was kind of sad-face but! that’s not me right now cuz that’s a novel I’m not in yet!

Jay

[lonequixote]

[stilled]

Picasso - Reclining Woman Reading

[frank-jaspers-blog]

Change in a Coffee Cup

It’s 1998 and you’re in New York. You sit Buddha-style          Like a beggar’s cup          On a cold Brooklyn sidewalk. The passersby stuff coins in you          Like a karma slot machine;          They measure their generosity          Against your God-bless-you’s. 

Raised, reared, reviled in Texas —          That’s where you’ll return to;          Less welcome than a polished          Thief dry-drifting through                    Oil-rich streets. You are a blood-warm stain on the sidewalk;          Bitter as wormwood, pale as pigeon          Shit, dirty like a soiled rubber, pleading          Like an empty coffee cup           For greenbacks and silver.

So, you’ve sown roots in a shelter          Like a soup-bowl monk;          Eating yesterday’s bagels,          Sleeping on threadbare mats,          And smelling the lozenges                     In a sick man’s cough,

Now cold night unpeels white           Stripes from the sky, Glass giants electrified stab          At the moon like spears, Brick-red daggers plunge           Deep into the black, And twilight bleeds rain bright           As falling stars. 

It’s bleak October and the wind          Rolls musty sewage down          The gasoline avenues. The towers rise in the distance          And rise like twin Babels. You walk among the gray           Metroplex-catacombs, among          The coffin-cars and the           Multitudes, the split atomic           Families, and through the           Nuclear waste allies. 

Solitude calls your name          Like a number in a           Food stamp line. The Hudson          Washes with toxins and tears                    Your shattered eyes. Ocean ice-streams flow          Between your bones.                    Brain electricity           Ignites hot billboards,                    Subway lines,                    Buzzing bulbs —          Soul thrilling and brilliant. 

You know too much not to laugh          At loneliness,           Even communal solitude. You are a shadow          Indistinguishable from night. 

Soon — winter          Streets too impoverished,          Too feverish, too           Congested with white           For your vagabond boots.  Your weak roots will be pulled out          Like weeds between sidewalk slabs. 

So, bundle-up your carriage in Glad bags. Return south, thin as a greyhound,          Sick as a cigarette butt. 1998 falls fast behind your           Footsteps … leave  Nothing else … save an empty coffee cup.

(This poem is written about my own life As a homeless teen on the street of New York..)

[markhorststudio]

mark horst “here in this place, we flesh no. 1” 24" x 24" oil on canvas.

here’s a beautiful passage from Toni Morrison's Beloved: “She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it. “Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver–love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet.More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.” Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened heir mouths and gave her the music.”  ― Toni Morrison, Beloved

[fakesurprise]

101 Laments: 047

We find a home in silence Not knowing it is a prison

[purplemonkeysexgod69]

this poem

is nipples

[wordrummager]

when the moon takes the place

of conversation

when bodies heave

when music is night’s wind

when the eyes no longer have it

but answers are somewhere else

on the body

when the walk becomes a fall

when quiet is blue