Survival

 

The first time

you took off your clothes
in front of me, you slid
the white fabric of your blouse
off your arms and revealed
the pale ladders
of scars.
You never referenced them
directly. You said you were
lost, once. You said you
did things, once, and you
did them because they
helped you survive yourself.
I didn’t say anything,
but you took my hand
and pressed it to the
ridged rows of your flesh
and for every line you left
upon yourself and healed,
I found another reason
to call you beautiful.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Oct 7, 2012

"Hurt people hurt people. That’s how pain patterns gets passed on, generation after generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future."


Yehuda Berg

Osho

“Remember one thing always - that there is no cause to be anxious in life, and all causes are just excuses. If you decide not to be anxious, then nothing will make you anxious; there is nothing worth it. Life is such a fleeting phenomenon that is going to disappear one day. Why be bothered too much about it? We are only here for so few days. Just play the game and remain aloof. If one can remain a witness, aloof, distant from things, then anxiety is not possible. Anxiety comes into existence only when we become identified with small things. And they all pass.

Sunday poem: Jorge Luis Borges

BARUCH SPINOZA

Like golden mist, the west lights up
The window. The diligent manuscript
Awaits, already laden with infinity.
Someone is building God in the twilight.
A man engenders God. He is a Jew
Of sad eyes and citrine skin.
Time carries him as the river carries
A leaf in the downstream water.
No matter. The enchanted one insists
And shapes God with delicate geometry.
Since his illness, since his birth,
He goes on constructing God with the word.
The mightiest love was granted him,
Love that does not expect to be loved.

                          Jorge Luis Borges
                         (translated by Yirmiyahu Yovel)

Gillian Hanscombe, from An Intimate Wilderness: Lesbian Writers on Sexuality.

“It’s when two women fall in love with each other that lives are transformed, mountains moved, dormant strengths discovered, enhanced and magnified. And falling in love can’t be manipulated, either by one’s own wiIl, or by a culture of erotica. Falling in love has little to do with what is outside us. Nothing falls on me from above. I do the falling; and so does she. We fall towards one another, trusting in trust, believing that the nakedness of the body indeed images the nakedness of the dreams and theories, the tempests and the narratives, that we are prepared to reveal. And the mystery of the continuity of passion lies in the capacity of the other, the partner, and in oneself, to be endless, to be never completely claimed, to be never utterly known. That capacity for endlessness, for change, is what is energised by passion. Truly shared sexuality changes us, over and over, more powerfully than almost anything else.” — “In Among the Market Forces?”

Phyllis McGinley said in Ballade of Lost Objectsin 1954

Sticks and stones are hard on bones Aimed with angry art, Words can sting like anything But silence breaks the heart.

Joss Whedon

When I say, “I love you,” it’s not because I want you or because I can’t have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I’ve seen your kindness and your strength. I’ve seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You’re a hell of a woman.”


-Joss Whedon

-Charles Bukowski

If I never see you again
I will always carry you
inside
outside

on my fingertips
and at brain edges

and in centers
centers
of what I am of
what remains.

-Charles Bukowski

Procrastination

Oop, hello ground
it’s been a while
you look well
gritty and hard
like I remember

good old ground
we’ve always got on right?
me and you

ground I promise
I never forgot about you
it’s why I thought
we wouldn’t meet again

alas here we are
toe-to-toe
hold on a sec
my heels want to say hello

oop, alright sky
how you been?
I just saw the floor
and I’m sure he’d send
his regards

I guess you two
see each other all
the time though
I wouldn’t know

been looking at
the horizon for ages
it changes you know
but it doesn’t get
any closer

I’ll stay here a minute actually
me and you have got some
catching up to do.

-Tumblr

Anais Nin

Anxiety is loves greatest killer.
It makes others feel as you might
when a drowning man holds on to you.
You want to save him, but you
know he will strangle you with his panic.

More winter

White Noise
by ~black-flame

Outside
Feels numb.
Too cold
To think.
Rush to
Get there.
Somewhere
Nowhere.

I thought
I heard
In the distance calling
Howling
With the wind
Somewhere
Nowhere

In the dark
In the cold.
Through the white
Thorugh the noise
Through the frost
Through my eyes
Somewhere
Nowhere.

Incomplete
Faded words.
Like a dream you know is real
You won't
Wake up.
Somewhere
Nowhere

Somewhere...
Nowhere...
Somewhere...
Nowhere...
Somewhere...
Nowhere...

Well, I guess I have turned back into a poet.

But I have no voice. I've got three weeks of free time on my hands and dammit I don't want to spend it trying to find that missing sound.

2:10 am, still early I see.
Question of the night, why are all the fucking clocks wrong in this room.

You are a poet if...

Have an irregular sleep pattern

Don't think you have a habit but drink coffee or smoke cigarettes religiously

Is neurotic

Is a bit out of touch with reality

Thinks odious and pious are cool words

Have a list of cool words

tv makes you bored

Thinks 20th century modernist poets had the right idea about life

Prone to depressing thoughts about life

Your own worst critic

Notice small details

Make bizarre connections with random stuff

Introverted

Hates and needs to be alone

Neurotic

Eccentric, quirky, or just weird

Wandering Star

Please could you stay awhile to share my grief
For its such a lovely day
To have to always feel this way
And the time that I will suffer less
Is when I never have to wake

Wandering stars, for whom it is reserved
The blackness of darkness forever

Portishead

Fake wings

Shine, bright morning light now in the air the spring is coming
sweet blowing wind, singing down the hills and valleys
Keep your eyes on me,
now we are on the edge of hell,
Dear my love, sweet morning light,
wait for me we have gone much further, too far.

-See Saw

Pablo Neruda

Sonnet 17
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

in which there is no I or you
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand
so intimate that when you fall asleep it is my eyes that close


Pablo Neruda

Elizabeth Bishop

"Love should be put into action!"
Screamed the old hermit.
Across the pond an echo
tried and tried to confirm it.
-Elizabeth Bishop
"Chemin de Fer"
[House of Leaves]

Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet. ~Judith Martin

But can you really define what morality and immorality? And why they could be used?

Silence

Have you heard the silent night
The earth is always singing
Praises of the morning sun
Even before the morning

And the whole world is singing of
Its beauty all day long
And even the quiet dark
That silence is a song

Weep not for the day of gray
For the heavens are not weeping
The Roses are still red and gay
They are even blooming

And the whole world is singing of
Its beauty all day long
And even the quiet dark
that silence is a song
that silence is a song

Lizz Wright

Stand By Me

Oh this shit is gonna be my fucking wedding song maybe. Actually there are a few but this is in the fucking tops. Pure fucking poetry Ben.

Thievery Corporation

The Time We Lost Our Way :


My mind is full bursting over
With all these things I can’t remember
Every little single memory reminds me of you

My eyes were weary with all these tears
You left your shadow in my dreams
And all my doubts seem to disappear when you came along

Flowers melting up into the sky
Hear my heart where our love colides
We hear the songs we found in the times we lost our way

Gentle memories replace our tears
All the love we had is still right here
We hear the songs we found in the time we lost our way

From without words can not describe
What caused the stars to fall deep inside
Every little single memory reminds me of you

Our days are gone lost forever
Reflecting light glistening under water
Naturally this could be everything that seems so unreal

Flowers melting up into the sky
Hear my heart where our love colides
We hear the songs we found in the time we lost our way

Gentle memories replace our tears
All the love we had is still right here
We hear the songs we found in the time we lost our way

Flowers melting up into the sky
Hear my heart where our love colides
We hear the songs we found in the time we lost our way

Gentle memories replace our tears
All the love we had is still right here
We hear the songs we found in the time we lost our way