Common Frank Bidart banger (from "In the Ruins," in Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016)

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@thewordslam
Common Frank Bidart banger (from "In the Ruins," in Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016)
archy and mehitabel, don marquis (1927)
A poem by Hanna Yerushalmi.
[Image Description]
Black text on white. It reads:
In his pockets
The rabbis advised: keep two truths in your pocket, one should read: I am but dust and ashes and the other should read: the entire world was created for me.
And 8-year-old has something else in his pocket.
Confetti.
Why?
It's his emergency confetti, he says, during these raw days he carries it with him everywhere just in case there is good news.
(c) Hanna Yerushalmi
[End ID]
i need a poem by Kyla Jamieson
from I Am An AI Hater by Anthony Moser
You once told me I was the kind of woman They made myths about
And you were right In every good religion There is a god of war
“How do you ruin a people? Is it with fire? Is it with bullets? You can drag a man through the street tied to the back of a horse. You can incinerate a village. Can line families up in rows against a brick wall and fell them, one by one, like a forest. But all it takes is one survivor, and the story lives on. One survivor to carry the poems and the songs, the prayers, the sorrows. It isn’t just taking a life that destroys a people. It’s taking their history.”
GennaRose Nethercott, Thistlefoot
Player of games.
Good.
Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things.
Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change.
We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a player.
The player was you.
Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was information from a star, and it could burn your skin from a hundred and fifty million kilometres away.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was lost in a story.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the player woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third.
Sometimes the player dreamed it watched words on a screen.
Let's go back.
The atoms of the player were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A woman gathered the atoms; she drank and ate and inhaled; and the woman assembled the player, in her body.
And the player awoke, from the warm, dark world of its mother's body, into the long dream.
And the player was a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And the player was a new program, never run before, generated by a sourcecode a billion years old. And the player was a new human, never alive before, made from nothing but milk and love.
You are the player. The story. The program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love.
Let's go further back.
The seven billion billion billion atoms of the player's body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the player, too, is information from a star. And the player moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a man called Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the player, who inhabits a universe created by…
Shush. Sometimes the player created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes it built a model of the universe in its head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes it called those flecks “electrons” and “protons”.
Sometimes it called them “planets” and “stars”.
Sometimes it believed it was in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes it believed it was playing a game. Sometimes it believed it was reading words on a screen.
You are the player, reading words…
Shush… Sometimes the player read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realised it was alive, it was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, the player was alive
You. You. You are alive.
and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees
and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again
and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream
and the universe said I love you
and the universe said you have played the game well
and the universe said everything you need is within you
and the universe said you are stronger than you know
and the universe said you are the daylight
and the universe said you are the night
and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you
and the universe said the light you seek is within you
and the universe said you are not alone
and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing
and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code
and the universe said I love you because you are love.
And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.
You are the player.
Wake up.
-End Poem, Julian Gough
Perfume and milk, the body in bloom
The falling leaves, the fallen fruit
The rot and the ruin, the earth and the worms
The seasons change, the world turns
Trees turn grey and the land turns brown
In a house in the woods on the edge of town
Bury it deep, swallow it down
Taking the herbs, a laurel crown
Doing the work and sleeping alone
Downloading "Revelations of Divine Love" on my phone
Trying to read, but getting distracted
Trying to live, but feeling so damaged
And all shall be well
All shall be well
Miracles are often inconvenient
And a prayer is a spell
I packed my bags and I got in the car
A pilgrimage to wherever you are
April comes with its blossoms beaten by rain
Oh, the hope and the horror, singing daffodils again
The land, it thaws, and the leaves turn green
And the blue stars of snow glories with the winter jasmine
Clothes of silk and satin, lace and leather
The one pink ribbon that holds me together
And all shall be well
All shall be well
Miracles are often inconvenient
And a prayer is a spell
And I am changing, becoming something else
A creature of longing, tending only to myself
Licking my wounds, burrowing down
In a house in the woods on the edge of town
Well, healing is slow, it comes and it goes
A glimpse of the sun, then a flurry of snow
The first green shoots and a sudden frost
Oh, something's gained when something's lost
The rot and the ruin, the earth and the worms
The seasons change, the world turns
The world turns
Perfume and milk, the body in bloom
The falling leaves, the fallen fruit
The rot and the ruin, the earth and the worms
The seasons change, the world turns
The world turns
The world turns
The world turns
--Perfume & Milk by Florence Welch
Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
By John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Susan Hahn // "Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur" (1991)
it is july and no one loves me, 2022
Joy Sullivan, “Even If”, Instructions for Traveling West
Mary Oliver, Everything
embarrassment has good bones
When everything is embarrassing, that’s a sign that your passion is waking up, and it wants more. Your desire is a tender sprout that wants more water, more sunshine. It wants you to give up on SEEMING happy and in control and to start FEELING joy instead, even when it feels a little too big, even when it makes you cry, even when it forces you to question where you are and why.
Passion and desire and shame and sadness don’t signal that you have to change everything immediately, though. These are sensations that don’t require solutions. Your primary job, in the face of renewed lust for life, is to tolerate the shame of joy.
Because embarrassment is sometimes just a sign that you’ve never lived out in the open before, you’ve never cared more about a feeling than you care about how you’re coming across, you’ve never prioritized happiness over control.
This is why it’s good to take risks that might embarrass you regularly. Because every time you dare to embarrass yourself for the sake of who you are, you’re teaching your body to prioritize joy. You’re teaching yourself to let go of seeming better than the things you love. You’re showing yourself how to feel where you are — to soak in the cool fall air, to breathe in the moon, to love every lopsided moment of your glorious, flawed life.
Shame is a Side Effect of Desire, Heather Havrilesky
the thing is that childhood doesn't just end when you turn 18 or when you turn 21. it's going to end dozens of times over. your childhood pet will die. actors you loved in movies you watched as a kid will die. your grandparents will die, and then your parents will die. it's going to end dozens and dozens of times and all you can do is let it. all you can do is stand in the middle of the grocery store and stare at freezers full of microwave pizza because you've suddenly been seized by the memory of what it felt like to have a pizza party on the last day of school before summer break. which is another ending in and of itself