Go ahead, bore me.

the gods wait to delight in you

[teamong]

For You, Kim Addonizio

For you I undress down to the sheaths of my nerves. I remove my jewelry and set it on the nightstand, I unhook my ribs, spread my lungs flat on a chair. I dissolve like a remedy in water, in wine. I spill without staining, and leave without stirring the air. I do it for love. For love, I disappear.

[teamong]

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – (372), Emily Dickinson

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’

And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –

A Wooden way

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

Regardless grown, 

A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

[teamong]

The Forgotten Odysseus, Ben Okri

Odysseus never finds the same woman He left behind. He lost her in the songs Of the bird-like sirens, under the belly Of the sheep, in the one-eyed sleep Of Polyphemus, and the dreams of Calypso.

When he finds her again, woven into The hallucinations of his dangerous Homecoming, the old dog, as much travelled In dreams as its master, remembers when Time was new, without the war love started.

Penelope, veiled and hiding from lusting Suitors, remembers a man less old, less Wily, less haunted by the endless seas, The alien suns and pullulating wars:

A man unknown for whom Ithaca is not Homecoming, but the first broken journey Toward a forgotten way of dying.

[teamong]

Museo del Prado, After Goya

When Goya caught Saturn eating

his son, imagine his surprise

at this sudden intrusion. Imagine

his attempt to inhale a gasp of air

as chunks of flesh push against the walls

of his mouth. His blood-stained lips

spell of aghast, the unspeakable

horror of his doing. Imagine him clutching

his now dead son. His hands clasped in prayer

like a devotee in an oracle.

We are told to pray with our eyes closed

convince ourselves we are elsewhere.

But the eyes never lie: Goya should know.

He painted Saturn’s eyes as big white orbs

the look of shock permanently fixed on canvas

the gaze that touches the soul of its viewers

with cold clammy hands. But Saturn

has no soul: his eyes tell you so.

A god has no need for a soul-

he sees everything all at once.

Seeing this, Goya must have excused himself

went about his mortal life

and did what does best: painted a god

looking at him with startled eyes.

In the end, it was Goya

who saw it all.

[teamong]

Click, Cyril Wong

when I tell you that together our heads lock I do not mean

like bulls or elks or some Nat Geo analogy I mean an actual click

every night when our brows meet briefly before we fall apart in sleep

a sound I still hear echoing long into my dreams

[teamong]

Kinukumutan Ka Ng Aking Titig, Ruth Elynia Mabanglo

Kinukumutan ka ng aking titig – Isang siyudad ng pag-ibig: Dilim na binabagtas ng mga hipo, Liwanag na kaakibat ng mga pangako. Nililiyo ako ng mga haplos, Binubura ng mga alaala. Ay, tila ugat akong nabubunot, Umaangat, Lumilipad, Mga mata’y nag-uulap.

Nilalakbay ko ang katawan mo, Buwan akong umiikot Sa iyong sinukob, Nilulukob kita hanggang panaginip, Nilalagok ang iyong tinig, Natitigmak ako hanggang buto, Humahagod sa ligamgam ng iyong hininga, Humihimlay sa iyong mga halik Hanggang alaala’y mapaknit At sa pusod ko’y sumanib.

Mahal, ako’y napapapikit.

[shinji--moon-deactivated2017123]

after Nan Goldin’s “C putting on her make-up at Second Tip” 1992 because double:: your high cheekbones trill at the glass edge under the perfect brush because artifice:: the secret of hips when in heels one foot placed in front of the other makes sway don’t say tightrope say silk say along a single hair say dust motes in stage lights because desire because performance because transformation:: touch me here and here and here my caught breath at your face’s turn and we move, a stunned symmetry because gender becomes water becomes body becomes mirror:: to learn the camera’s tricks press light onto film makes shapes almost real because what makes me the body dancing twin beyond blue smoke a woman with arms that bend like light

"Between Body Between Mirror," Tamiko Beyer (via commovente)

[teamong]

An Inventory of a Year

[themostfamousreindeer-blog]

[thefakeoriginal]

[1000drawings]

Amanda Lanzone

[teamong]

Sacrifice, Rilke

How my body blooms from every vein more fragrantly, since you appeared to me; look, I walk slimmer now and straighter, and all you do is wait-:who are you then? Look: I feel how I'm moving away, how I'm shedding my old life, leaf by leaf. Only your smile spreads like sheer stars over you and, soon now, over me. Whatever shines through my childhood years still nameless and gleaming like water, I will name after you at the altar, which is blazing brightly from your hair and braided gently with your breasts.

[teamong]

You Wanted To Know Me So Here's a Knife

You wanted to know me so here's a knife:

            open me up like a book

tenderly, of course, as you peel, page by page,

            my skin with your hands

your soft, soft hands which became talons

            as you thrust your fingers through

my chest. "Am I near yet? Is this where you keep

            my name?" You wanted to know

me so here's a heart, only a mirror is lodged

            in its place. A secret is there, somewhere.

You inspected it with squinted eyes, as you always

            did with your hands. You always said

that the world is mean to you but you

            wanted to know me so here's my hand:

a closed fist. Do not look 

            away. We are always looking the other way.

I want you to know me so here

            are shards of glass. Did you find

what you were looking for? You wanted

            to know me but there is blood

on your hands, and a thousand

            squinted eyes stare back at you.

(Note: Edited. Prof said yes to the final version of the poem so yay)

[lyxdelsic-deactivated20150201]

i think my art snapchats are hilarious

[teamong]

Morning in Tagaytay

The wind passes and the fronds sway like women in gossip- a shroud obscures Taal.

Somewhere, a man gathers coconuts. I strain my neck to look closer but my eyes land softly on a blanket of mist.

[teamong]

The Archipelago of Kisses, Jeffrey McDaniel

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't grow on trees, like in the old days. So where does one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy,  like being unleashed with a credit card in a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss. The sloppy kiss. The peck. The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss. The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss. The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad sometimes kiss. The I know your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get older, kisses become scarce. You'll be driving home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,  with its purple thumb out. If you were younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's red door just to see how it fits. Oh where does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile. Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling. Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.  Now what? Don't invite the kiss over and answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspicious and stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whiskey.  It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,  but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of your body without saying good-bye,  and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left on the inside of your mouth. You must nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a special beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow,  then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C. But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss. The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss.  Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,  like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones. 

[teamong]

i want to tell you that the world has been good to me since you left, that right here, someone had taken me out of the abyss of despair and held out a hand, telling me i'm special, that I am more than the accumulated years of regret and sadness, each finger pointing the direction to where the sun is always ripe and where it is always summer and how my fingers slip easily into the spaces as if this is where I should have been all along.

i want to tell you this now because the future has never been kind to us.

i want to tell you this because this is the only way i know how.