it's unendurable, unendurable

[wildfairy]

what does the sky look like in his world?

                                                                               whole. even after you left it.

excerpt from For the Birds, Angelea Lowes                        

[191195-deactivated20240210]

this is me putting my hands on your cheeks — each one of you and looking through your eyes into everything you have ever been and everything you wish to be: don’t betray yourself. Do not ever betray yourself. Do not ever, not one second, betray yourself.

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

What I mean is—when I see your face in the dusk I understand the desire of the rain. Each time you happen to me all over again:

Aleda Shirley, from “A Dwelling in the Evening Air,” Long Distance: Poems (Miami University Press, 1996)

[lifeinpoetry]

But how to explain my obsession with destruction? Not self-immolation, / but more of a disintegration, slow, like…. sugar in water. // I dissolve.

Erika Meitner, from “Big Box Encounter,” Copia (via weltenwellen)

[lifeinpoetry]

how does one scream in thunder?

Sonia Sanchez, from “Elegy (for MOVE and Philadelphia),” Of Poetry and Protest (via weltenwellen)

[weltenwellen]

I know we never meant to hurt each other now the sky clicks from black to blue and dusk looks like a bruise

Andrea Gibson, from “Photograph” (via weltenwellen)

[poeticallyemm]

This pensive flood that Pools in my lungs is never Enough to drown you.

poeticallyordinary // random haiku (via poeticallyordinary)

[lifeinpoetry]

I realize that being a woman is a lot like being a planet—I can’t decide what my gravity attracts. I am as helpless as I am powerful. I am very powerful.

— Rita Feinstein, from Life on Dodge

[existential-celestial]

Though you have never possessed me I have belonged to you since the beginning of time And sleepily I sit on your chair beside you Leaning against your shoulder

Mina Loy, from “One O'Clock at Night,” in Three Moments in Paris (via existential-celestial)

[lifeinpoetry]

“You do not know / How little I loved / Before I loved you.”

— Joan Naviyuk Kane, from “Love Poem,” Hyperboreal

[alrightgood]

your eyes were open all night

I’ve been feeling really strange lately and I want something more specific and concrete to share with you other than “strange” but I think I’m gripping my own heart too tightly for fear of losing it. If I poured myself out, I know someone would collect my tears and wash my feet with them, but I am afraid of having nothing. I’m worried I’ll leave him for myself. And then I’ll be alone. And I’m afraid that’s not actually what I want. But if it’s not what I want, if I don’t want myself, then what more can I want? I sit in the same room everyday and wish the walls would cry. I am so tired of standing but I sleep all the time. I remember turning off the light but when I touched him, my eyelids illuminated. He wasn’t in the mood, told me I should just say something out loud and it’s only 10pm, why are you going to sleep. Sometimes, I get high but I don’t actually want to be high, so I wonder what I’m actually chasing. This year started out with so much potential and promise and I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how I end up in the same room everyday, wishing I would cry. I really would like to believe and find that glow within me again. I always think I know what self love is, what a life guided by love not fear is. All I’ve learned about it, is it’s hard work and slippery. Once you take a step forward, the whole landscape changes and you have to start a new direction. I am a constantly changing landscape. I am a fissure in the wall. Do I have that kind of power? Do I own that kind of strength? If I want to come home to you every night does that make me weak? I have patience for your pain. I have hands willing to find you in the dark. My heart looks like the leaves outside: crunchy and dried. I want to explore my fears without being led by them.

[gazanarchive]

I overthink. I over love. I over feel. I’m the sea or I’m nothing.

Juansen Dizon

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

You’re always leaving. Please stop leaving, it kills me every time.

Margarita Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, from “Rien ne va Plus,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[babymoonpoet-deactivated2020042]

overload feels like exclamation marks carnivoring my brain

               there’s always blood in the water             when im swimming, the                     sharks know         im coming undone.        my peach slice ears battle to ignore            the solid explosions of the day.                i am a             shivering squint into           the sun, biting for             the morning to jumpstart           my         heart.           i drive                 through town and see the church                message board proclaiming, “if you feel       like                 garbage, jesus can              recycle you.”      me,             feeling like trash    jesus wouldn’t touch.                     only watching the kissing             scenes in the celebrity sex tape.           crunching the            ice in my mcdonald’s iced         water.                                   licking             cheeseball dust off my            imposter fingers.                      recording the             football game onto a        video tape for my father who i will           always resent.           dreaming about using             a chef’s knife to hack               into my father’s neck                while my brothers are in the room.                     calling the electrician to beg.                  the lights in my brain are                   all            lit up,          sparking everywhere                     and could he just shut it         down?                i could electrocute myself                in the shower and        no one would notice             the blood in the water.

[lifeinpoetry]

the first time i talked about depression with my parents, they said but you’re so happy here—could not marvel the sight of their radiant home in flames—i fear a horizon free of crimson, i wanted to say, my mind is a country who sets itself ablaze.

— George Abraham, from “Song of Ash,” al youm: for yesterday & her inherited traumas

[lifeinpoetry]

I say it hurts to exist like this and the world says stop existing like that.

— Jill Mceldowney, from “The Swimming Pool,” published in Moonchild Magazine

[fuselii]

“My God, my God, whose performance am I watching? How many people am I? Who am I? What is this space between myself and myself?”

— Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet (via luthienne)