heavenfaced - the national
shelby lee adams
L-Dopa - Laura Stevenson
Never tame your words,
teach them to sit, clip
their chin hairs. Or cup your hands
beneath their lolly tongues,
catch their drool. You must be a madman
held in cloth skin,
ballerinas dancing in your mouth.
When the hounds wail
inside your body no one
must hear them.
John Rybicki, “Animal Sounds Off Pavement”
(Source: ahuntersheart, via otherworldliness)
vampire weekend - ya hey
“Let us make a compact, here, at Ilusha’s stone, that we will never forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens later in life, even if we don’t meet for twenty years, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones…Afterwards we all grew so fond of him…Perhaps we may grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from evil, may laugh at men’s tears… But however bad we may become—which God forbid—yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends together, at this stone, the cruelest and most mocking of us—if we do become so—will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good in this moment! What’s more, perhaps, is that one memory may keep us from great evil and we will reflect and say: ‘Yes, I was good and brave and honest then.”
The Brothers Karamazov
“I draw circles around me and holy boundaries” – Nietzsche
I chose this man, consciously, deliberately.
I thought on his desire for three days
and then said yes. In return, it was summer.
We lay on the grass in the dark and he placed
his hand on my stomach while the others
sang quietly. It was prodigious to know
his eagerness. It made me smile calmly.
That was the merging of opposite powers.
He followed me everywhere, from room to room.
Every single thing was joyous: storms, meals,
the story about the face that was the world.
There was the sound of Chicago buses stopping
near my house according to winter, summer,
raining. Shadows moved over the floor
as the sun went across the sky. I was a secret
there because you were married. I am here
to tell you I did not mind. Existence
was more valuable than that. When I was
a very young woman. I wrote: A new spirit/
I have a new spirit/I made it myself/I dance
now alone before the mirror/There is a flower.
The leaves are a little sad/No light comes
out of the black part/with its five purple
dots of color/near the center/Oh, my dead thing/
I have a new spirit/I made it myself. In Chicago,
a police siren ran through my heart even though
it was not for me. I was strong, I knew where
I was. I knew what I had achieved. When the wife
called and said I was a whore, I was quiet,
but inside I said, “perhaps.” It has been raining
all night. Summer rain. The liveliness of it keeps
me awake. I am so happy to have lived.
Linda Gregg “I Thought on His Desire for Three Days”
I want everything.
Everything is a naked thought that strikes…
Do you know that in the deepest part of the sea everything goes transparent?
asks my husband’s friend Corrado and I say Do you know how afraid I am?…
I came out of the clinic, a clinic for people who want everything,
everything I see everything I taste everything I touch
everyday even the ashtrays and at
the clinic I had only one question What shall I do with my eyes?
Anne Carson, Decreation
What is beautiful alters, has undertow.
Otherwise I have no tactics to begin with.
Femininity is a sickness. I open my eyes
out of this fever and see the meaning
of my life clearly. A thing like a hill.
I proclaim myself whole and without blessing,
or need to be blessed. I belong to no one. I do not move.
Am not required to move. I lie naked on a sheet.
and the indifferent sun warms me.
I was bred for slaughter, like the other
animals. To suffer exactly at the center,
where there are no clues except pleasure.
Linda Gregg “Whole and Without Blessing”
LONGING
Not that I want to be a god or a hero.
Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
I drink to our ruined house,
to the dolor of my life,
to our loneliness together;
and to you I raise my glass,
to lying lips that have betrayed us,
to dead-cold, pitiless eyes,
and to the hard realities:
that the world is brutal and coarse,
that God in fact has not saved us
— Anna Akhmatova, The Last Toast, trans. Kunitz
The saxophonist Colin Stetson infuses his solo records with an unsettling rumble, while still making room for alternately grandiose and guttural moments that awe and unnerve.
Stream New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light now.
(via nprmusic)
What things are steadfast? Not the birds.
Not the bride and groom who hurry in their brevity to reach one another.
The stars do not blow away as we do.
The heavenly things ignite and freeze.
But not as my hair falls before you.
Fragile and momentary, we continue.
Fearing madness in all things huge
and their requiring. Managing as thin light
on water. Managing only greetings
and farewells. We love a little, as the mice
huddle, as the goat leans against my hand.
As the lovers quickening, riding time.
Making safety in the moment. This touching
home goes far. This fishing in the air.
Linda Gregg “We Manage Most When We Manage Small”
It was like being alive twice.
