I am Woman Giving Birth to my own Self

 

[sbbrody]

“Adrift” by Mark Nepo

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. In the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we’ve lost face each other. It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

[sbbrody]

[dk-thrive]

I love you. I’m glad I exist.

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange  The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all my jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some time over. I love you. I’m glad I exist.

~ Wendy Cope, “The Orange” in Serious Concerns (Faber & Faber, 1993)

[leguin]

not a lot, just forever intertwined sewn together as the rock bears the weather not a lot, just forever

[thedefinitionofaface]

Raymond Meeks’ photographs are magic

[sbbrody]

Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love  with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then  of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch; to live and let go again and again. It pesters to remember  the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. 

I can’t do it, you say it’s killing  me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing  on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate  diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have  and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced. 

—Marge Piercy, To have without holding

[missed-exit]

[sbbrody]

Lark - Angel Olsen

[asuddenline]

Sorry

I can’t remember the 2nd  time I hurt you— it was dark & someplace in that darkness was the thing I did.  You weren’t the target, I know that, though you might’ve been the bow & the tension I really think is love. Nothing ever sends me away. I’ve got your pain in my pocket & it glows in the dark and in the light it’s the softest kind of singing woman’s voice. That’s who you are. To me, I mean. Let me hold your shoulders back so you look arrogant & beautiful welcoming me into the warm sad party. Let this be the unfortunate hat I hang outside the door if only you will allow me to come in. [1979]

Eileen Myles

[loqura]

Visit Original Link

And you will hurt me And I deserve it It’s late You are not awake And it’s nothing I want you so bad it’s devouring me And I think I love you But you’ll never find out

[transoptic]

Hilma af Klint, Group IXUW, No. 25, The Dove, No. 1. 1915.

[salemwitchtrials-deactivated202]

Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices, Sylvia Plath 

[ID: I wait and ache. I think I have been healing.]

[oofpoetry]

I’m doing a balancing act with a stack of fresh fruit in my basket. I love you. I want us both to eat well. We’re not allowed to buy blackberries anymore because they’re mean to their workers and you read left-wing news sites. Till when? I asked and you said nothing. So that’s one healthy food off the list. I’m still buying pineapples and you’re still eating them. I guess you’ve never seen the websites about those. Nobody in this supermarket knows that I am a puma. This morning our cat rolled on the floor showing me her belly which I leaned down and rubbed. Beneath a backyard pine tree the neighbor’s cat was eating one of our cat’s moles—at least the moles we rent from the landlord for her. It’s so complicated staying alive sometimes. The voices of the collection agencies on the answering machine sound menacing. They’re paid to sound that way and they’re not paid much more than the people they’re menacing, which can get you thinking if you’re the sort of person who likes to think about that sort of thing. Other people subscribe to adventure cycling magazines and read about men who rode across Turkey in the late 1800s before anything was happening in the world. Before cantaloupes probably existed. When you could get an honest wage for an honest day’s blackberries. When we loved like fierce mountain storms, with the blood of eagles in our hearts, exchanging grocery lists that just said you you you you all the way down.

Christopher Citro, “Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shrieks” (via oofpoetry)

[americansquirrel-blog]

Visit Original Link

[sbbrody]

Danny’s Song - Loggins and Messina

[kafk-a]

I think about this poem all the time.

[apoemaday]

Animals

by Frank O’Hara

Have you forgotten what we were like then when we were still first rate and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it’s no use worrying about Time but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal we didn’t need speedometers we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn’t want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days

[nobrashfestivity]

Andy Warhol, Cats, 1954

Artists Rights Society-ARS

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[antigonies]

In my best moments, looking back, this is what I tell myself: I’ve wanted only to sleep and dream and wake in some country my heart could call home. […] I never belonged in a world but this world. It rained. Every room was a borrowed room.

Cecilia Woloch, ‘Postcard Beginning with a Quote from Mark C., Avenue de l’Opera’, in Narcissus (via antigonies)