inspirations

[spilledmo]

To Live in the Zombie Apocalypse

Burlee Vang

The moon will shine for God knows how long. As if it still matters. As if someone

is trying to recall a dream. Believe the brain is a cage of light & rage. When it shuts off,

something else switches on. There’s no better reason than now to lock the doors, the windows.

Turn off the sprinklers & porch light. Save the books for fire. In darkness,

we learn to read what moves along the horizon, across the periphery of a gun scope—

the flicker of shadows, the rustling of trash in the body of cities long emptied.

Not a soul lives in this house & this house & this

house. Go on, stiffen the heart, quicken the blood. To live

in a world of flesh & teeth, you must learn to kill

what you love, & love what can die.

[spilledmo]

Give me the heart of an archeologist, That I may dig until I prove that I exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdUhHNcuEYE

[spilledmo]

Thought Poem for Victor Martinez (Undelivered)

- Juan Felipe Herrera

You said:

What you wrote (at this moment—here) was being written by someone somewhere else at the same time (this is the question) some country some town on stilts—in a broken concentration bus or a polished make-believe desk a cheap jungled-up clinic an empty one no supplies for the sickly aged children deep

in the rain soaked burnt tree forest slapped together hut smoked with holiness with festered branches and malaria strings just maybe a promotor school that short snout bus that takes us to a new arrangement you said that

would you be writing that there would you be living that there why would you care to write that there in that in that  message without a message that hunger known as life stuff where every damp speckle and mud twig is the shout mouth hunger and that fulfillment i do not know— knowledge let us call it that right now what else

could it be could it be that this gut water inside burning its alphabet incomplete calling for something you and i have bread is it bread is it ink is it simply placement the empty yellowing floor office

across from my 15th floor as I tiptoe into the edge of it all tomorrow i read at the university i stand up and read someone else is standing up and reading someone else is tiptoeing in a circle a palaver a crossing station in Talisman en route to Guatemala halted halfway by soldados a variety a synonym where life splits and fissions mind sequence pattern—reproduction silence

you move your arm and put letters down on paper you move your lips as you (but you are not here—are you—anymore)

spell it as you drink it as you breathe it from that second galaxy (ah yes) halfway down as I

breathe it up half ways up as she ambles with an ancient rifle (the kind sold to Indians) through the shadow greenness mildew heat selva in that

human landscape spiraling no one knows

[writingsforwinter]

Playing Hide and Seek with Knives

I read once about a drunk driver who killed his own wife and children

while speeding down a highway late at night

but didn’t figure out who the victims were

until he was asked to identify their bodies at the morgue.

I’ve taken an inventory of all the things I wish I could change

about myself, and I’ve come to the conclusion

that the only way to rid myself of this constant weight,

weight like the stones in Virginia Woolf’s pockets,

is to hop in a time machine and somehow

slip cyanide into my grandfather’s wine.

But I love my grandfather too much to want to kill him;

I simply need a way to eradicate my own existence.

When we go out for dinner you have to hold me back

from the all the serving knives; so many times you’ve

hidden them in your napkin, under your lap.

I kick your legs under the table. You trace my mouth

with your thumb. We kiss so hard our backs crack,

but I still can’t get you to show me where they’re hidden,

fumbling over one another like a driver searching for the steering wheel,

like the last few seconds before the dashboard explodes.

If I don’t give these to you, will you still want me? you ask.

Every time, I say.

[wnq-writers]

There are words I wish I’d said to you first, words I wanted to say to you louder, words I should have said to you more often, and words I should never have spoken at all. So here they are; too late, too quiet, not enough, and silently written…. I love you

Ranata Suzuki (via wnq-writers)

[bookmania]

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (via bookmania)

[ramonameisel]

i. Asterion’s body falls silently to the ground everything stops and falls quiet in the labyrinth

ii. the sword glistens in the setting sun silver metal with rusty blood Theseus shivers

iii. Ariadne weeps for her fallen brother tears hot like acid on his chest fists clenched around his shoulders the labyrinth weeps too bushes swaying softly in a tender song Theseus watches from afar with a heavy heart

iv. Ariadne grabs the sword ravished, silver and red she will never forgive him

v. Theseus realizes, too late, what will come

vi. he tries to hide but the labyrinth traps him inside bushes growing out of rotten earth Ariadne slays him and drags his head to the entrance of the labyrinth his blood a red tread  a warning

vii. Asterion has never been the monster after all

- the death of Asterion | r.m

[ipoetried]

How much does it cost to take a look into your soul? An arm and a leg? Or will you swallow me whole? Do you want me to touch you, to hold you, to graze you? You push me away because that’s not how she raised you. You want me to be here but to not make a sound. You don’t want me to leave but you can’t stand me around. I want you to tell me what you’re thinking and to talk to me. But I guess it’s hard to make sounds when you can’t even breathe. I’m sorry, I’ll remove my fingers from your throat. But you need to be hurt and I know I can hurt you the most.

June 27th, 2016 (K.P.K)

[spilledmo]

Ennui

Marianne Moore, 1887 - 1972

He often expressed A curious wish, To be interchangeably Man and fish; To nibble the bait Off the hook, Said he, And then slip away Like a ghost In the sea.

[writingsforwinter]

A WARNING TO POTENTIAL FUTURE MEN ONLY INTERESTED IN SLEEPING TOGETHER

I am all kindling and firecrackers with the kind of body

that if touched, burns. Long ago I decided I’d never let it be

a bomb shelter- I am no one’s safe haven.

I am no place for refuge.

I am blood mixed with salt water and a burial ground

that used to be a heart before too many failed loves

forced me to hold a funeral for everything I used to feel.

The saying goes that time heals all wounds,

but what if hidden inside the wound is another one?

My hands are more callouses than soft skin

from letting the last vestiges of all I’ve held dear

slip through my fingers like minnows.

Forgiveness is not in my toolbox, or even in my intentions.

If you hurt me, be prepared for a gutting

because I am the fish that lies belly-up, pale and exposed,

until danger strikes; then I am the knife stuck

inside that fish’s skin.

Blood trails are what lead to the remains

of the person I used to be, before love broke me

like a stained glass window.

But stained glass windows still know how to let the light in

in so many more beautiful ways than before.

[spilledmo]

"Let me not die while I am still alive."

[writingsforwinter]

Not Your Girl

I come from a grandmother who holds up her c-section

as a trophy, says her skin was so thick her daughters

had to jacknife it open in order to climb out.

All my names mean harbor & surrender.

All my names mean touch me

& you will die.

I don’t mean by way of hemlock or overdose,

not even by way of an axe to the gut,

but by way of poetry.

I’ll write about your trespasses so often you’ll beg,

standing there with dirty mouth & weeping hands,

grief spinning down like motor oil.

Every morning a line of crows comes to the window.

They know not to steal,

to keep their distance, to wait for the scraps

I offer up to them through the pane.

Cherry stems, bitter skins of ginger, breadcrusts

still steeped in butter.

They know not to ask

for what is not yet theirs.

All the ending lines of my poems

will end you too.

Don’t you forget I fought to be here.

Don’t you forget survival runs in the family.

[inkskinned]

[conwant]

"Have you ever been in love?"

❝Have you ever been in love?  <…> It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness <…> Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love. ❞

Neil Gaiman, The Sandman #65

[writingsforwinter]

Because you were dawn and he was yellow twilight, the kind that rises like oil into the oak trees and cups the roses like breasts, because he was dark and syrup and you were sugar and ashes, because his mother had a caesarean and he couldn’t bear to split another woman in...

[mingdliu-deactivated20210422]

I think some day this heart will belong to you the way your oversized shirts will belong to me. I’ll wake at midnight to find your face, and maybe we’ll have to search for a coffee place that’s still opened because we can’t fall back asleep, especially when your lips are constantly tickling me. And you’ll have to rush in the morning for sleeping in too late. You’ll be in trouble if you make breakfast so you just grab a pear and while you eat, I’ll fix your tie and comb your hair. Saturday nights will be a dance party, just you and I; and maybe it’ll be a city outing with our friends because you know how much I love to dance wildly until the night ends. Then we shall wake up on a Sunday, a little too late for brunch, but too early for supper. We’ll make up for it by staying under sheets like new lovers, to finally get up and eat desserts as a meal instead. I will kiss you until your lips are bruised, until your cheeks are red, and you will call me all the pretty words in the dictionary, all the words no one’s ever said to me and I used to never believe them but when this some day comes, I will. You will tell me how grateful you are to have me by your side but I can only think of how lucky I am to have you by mine.

March 5th, 2015 by Ming D. Liu

[spilledmo]

(via

mingdliu

)

[writingsforwinter]

The Man Who Hurt Me, and the Man Who Loved Me

What you’re looking for in this poem is a resolution.

There isn’t one.

Once I drove through a night dark as an anchor

with a boy’s hand pulsing in the cup of my own,

Moses somewhere partying on the Red Sea,

the entire thing between us a trust fall,

so I took it- didn’t just fall, I leapt.

Til he unlocked me. No, not so much an unlocking

as a trespass.

You can say the only reason I lived through

what he did to me is so I could write about it.

I didn’t.

I lived through it so I could write out of it.

He left me a box. Of tulips, of cypresses split in two,

of graffiti meant to translate into love, of all the animals

in the kingdom. I should have burned it.

Instead, I gave it back.

Each time my new lover touches the hollow of my throat,

I worry my old lover will move through him,

holding a knife.

That beneath the second one’s body

I will turn from prayer

into prey.