Rewritten

- M. just an archive of whatever helps me feel seen at the moment. '94 liner.

[homoquartz]

i’ve warmed up significantly towards the concept of small talk ever since i learned that its sole purpose is to make friendly noises.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

i am motivated by wanting the other person to know i am friendly, so i have gotten pretty decent at small talk when i used to hate it.

[usersieun]

Everything Everywhere All at Once — 2022, dir. Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert

[cannibalings]

why are all the actual real human jobs like baker and florist and childcare worker barely paying livable wages but the fake jobs like ai specialist boot licker or marketing campaign dick sucker making six figures

[havingapoemwithyou]

Here by Grace Paley

[havingapoemwithyou]

How to Be a Poet by Wendell Berry

[havingapoemwithyou]

Attending the Party by Hieu Minh Nguyen

[havingapoemwithyou]

Swimming, One Day in August by Mary Oliver

[fuckyeahchinesegarden]

summer in china

[havingapoemwithyou]

The Summer You Learned to Swim by Michael Simms

[apoemaday]

Running Orders

by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

They call us now, before they drop the bombs. The phone rings and someone who knows my first name calls and says in perfect Arabic “This is David.” And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies still smashing around in my head I think, Do I know any Davids in Gaza? They call us now to say Run. You have 58 seconds from the end of this message. Your house is next. They think of it as some kind of war-time courtesy. It doesn’t matter that there is nowhere to run to. It means nothing that the borders are closed and your papers are worthless and mark you only for a life sentence in this prison by the sea and the alleyways are narrow and there are more human lives packed one against the other more than any other place on earth Just run. We aren’t trying to kill you. It doesn’t matter that you can’t call us back to tell us the people we claim to want aren’t in your house that there’s no one here except you and your children who were cheering for Argentina sharing the last loaf of bread for this week counting candles left in case the power goes out. It doesn’t matter that you have children. You live in the wrong place and now is your chance to run to nowhere. It doesn’t matter that 58 seconds isn’t long enough to find your wedding album or your son’s favorite blanket or your daughter’s almost completed college application or your shoes or to gather everyone in the house. It doesn’t matter what you had planned. It doesn’t matter who you are. Prove you’re human. Prove you stand on two legs. Run.

[havingapoemwithyou]

from let July be July by Morgan Harper Nichols

[gowns]

man the crazy thing about babies is that like, some people would think that reading a baby a book about farm animals is teaching them about farm animals, but really it’s teaching them about the concept of a book and how there’s new information on each page of a single object, but really, beyond that, it’s teaching them how language works, and beyond that it’s really actually teaching them about human interaction, and really really it’s them learning about existing in a three-dimensional space and how they can navigate that space, but actually, above all it is teaching them that mama loves them.

[stars-bean]

The Princess Bride (1987) dir. Rob Reiner

[globalworship]

Sometimes the myrrh is leaking (Epiphany poem)

Sometimes the myrrh is leaking and other complaints ... by Rev. Maren C. Tirabassi

Sometimes the myrrh is leaking.

Sometimes the camels need stones pried out of their hooves, and they bite, because it hurts first when things get better.

Stars are usually most clearly visible in the very deepest night, so, if someone you love is in the lostness, remember – they may be taking it 'one night at a time.'

There will be a day we ask directions from the wrong people. Also our gifts won't seem to shine as much as we thought when they were in our camel bags, but someone needs the gold anyway for the getaway donkey.

Most of all some consequences we leave behind us may be terrible,

and yet we find a new way to travel, tell the good story we know to everyone we meet, and pray for everyone's journey in the night,

because that's what Epiphany means.

Published online at https://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/2025/01/06/sometimes-the-myrrh-is-leaking-and-other-complaints-wisdom/

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Rev. Maren C. Tirabassi is a United Church of Christ pastor who serves churches in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. She is the author of 20 books and a former poet laureate of Portsmouth, NH.

She blogs at ‘Gifts in Open Hands’ https://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/

Follow Maren’s writings at https://www.facebook.com/maren.tirabassi

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(window in St Joseph Roman Catholic Church by Susan Pratt Smith)

[apoemaday]

The God Who Loves You

by Carl Dennis

It must be troubling for the god who loves you To ponder how much happier you’d be today Had you been able to glimpse your many futures. It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings Driving home from the office, content with your week — Three fine houses sold to deserving families — Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened Had you gone to your second choice for college, Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted Whose ardent opinions on painting and music Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion. A life thirty points above the life you’re living On any scale of satisfaction. And every point A thorn in the side of the god who loves you. You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments So she can save her empathy for the children. And would you want this god to compare your wife With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus? It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight Than the conversation you’re used to. And think how this loving god would feel Knowing that the man next in line for your wife Would have pleased her more than you ever will Even on your best days, when you really try. Can you sleep at night believing a god like that Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is And what could have been will remain alive for him Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill Running out in the snow for the morning paper, Losing eleven years that the god who loves you Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend No closer than the actual friend you made at college, The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight And write him about the life you can talk about With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed, Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.

[apoemaday]

Crows

by Mary Oliver

It is January, and there are crows like black flowers on the snow. While I watch, they rise and float toward the frozen pond, they have seen some streak of death on the dark ice. They gather around it and consume everything, the strings and the red music of that nameless body. Then they shout, one hungry, blunt voice echoing another. It begins to rain. Later, it becomes February, and even later, spring returns, a chorus of thousands. They bow, and begin their important music. I recognize the oriole. I recognize the thrush, and the mockingbird. I recognize the business of summer, which is to forge ahead, delicately. So I dip my fingers among the green stems, delicately. I lounge at the edge of the leafing pond, delicately. I scarcely remember the crust of the snow. I scarcely remember the icy dawns and the sun like a lamp without a fuse. I don’t remember the fury of loneliness. I never felt the wind’s drift. I never heard of the struggle between anything and nothing. I never saw the flapping, blood-gulping crows.

[apoemaday]

Kissing in Vietnamese

by Ocean Vuong

My grandmother kisses as if bombs are bursting in the backyard, where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes through the kitchen window, as if somewhere, a body is falling apart and flames are making their way back through the intricacies of a young boy’s thigh, as if to walk out the door, your torso would dance from exit wounds. When my grandmother kisses, there would be no flashy smooching, no western music of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe you inside her, nose pressed to cheek so that your scent is relearned and your sweat pearls into drops of gold inside her lungs, as if while she holds you death also, is clutching your wrist. My grandmother kisses as if history never ended, as if somewhere a body is still falling apart.