Mother, I cannot mind my wheel;
My fingers ache, my lips are dry:
Oh! if you felt the pain I feel!
But oh, who ever felt as I?
No longer could I doubt him true;
All other men may use deceit:
He always said my eyes were blue,
And often swore my lips were sweet.
Walter Savage Landor (1775 - 1864)
just because you are afraid, it does not mean you aren’t ready.
i am ready to explore.
come,
come and find me
i dare you.
wait no
you can’t.
i’ll jump inside myself,
never to give anything a chance.
you’ll wonder where i went
one moment
you’ll enter my legs that bend
around your waist,
only for me
at a second moment
to pack up and run with haste
where will you find me?
alone.
balled like a python
ready to strike
but who wants someone
who always breaks to their knees
and rubs their blood about their flesh
to stink and rot in loneliness?
not even i,
even when this is who i create
i am involved with such disgrace
when i wear the weight of the world upon my face.
4 freakouts
kmw 11.10.12
Writers are often ashamed at who they are and what they do. Other people are out there fighting wars and fixing cars and destroying our country with poisonous loans — and here we are, sitting around in our footy-pajamas, writing about vampires and unicorns, about broken hearts and shattered jaws. A lot of the time we won’t get much respect, but you know what? Fuck that. Take the respect. Writers and storytellers help make this world go around. We’re just as much a part of the societal ecosystem as anybody else. Craft counts. Art matters. Stories are important. Freeze-frame high-five. Now have a beer and a shot of whisky and shove all your shame in a bag and burn it.
The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction
the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.
Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human—
looks out of the heart
burning with purity—
for the burden of life
is love,
but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.
No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love—
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
—cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:
the weight is too heavy
—must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.
The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye—
yes, yes,
that’s what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.
San Jose, 1954
Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse (via summerinthecountryside)
(Source: odetofemininity, via thatonehomojoe)
for the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
In my dreams I feel you
Providing messages my conscious is too stubborn to heal.
To honor you, to describe your guidance, I can only use my words in a short prayer.
May this prayer be used to guide, cleanse, and restore my soul
Let this mantra heal me, as your awakened sympathies would have done decades ago.
May my toes grow roots in the soil of my ancestors
May my legs be strong, so i can follow Te with insight from long ago
May my stomach be full with the guidance from the wind, for she requires retention.
May my lungs breathe in the lessons of the universe, for they require absorption.
Let my chest nurse the wounds of my future, weaved by the lessons from my grandmother.
May my arms be strong, so I can carry the weight of the past while embracing change
Let my hands grasp encouragingly to the branches of my future.
May my heart bleed the truth of my being.
Let my neck stand tall, aligning my spine to the confidence of existence
May my chin be raised to no one and my nose keen to the smells of truth.
Let my mouth speak nothing but what is real, flowing from the river of peace
May my eyes feed my mind with the experience of a lifetime
Let my brain permit forgiveness,
And let my hair grow long to honor my great grandmother
Allow my ears to hear her voice
Walk with me lost grandmother
Lost only to places other than my heart
Let your repressed identity flow through me to gain what you could not
May the path I walk be guided, to win the war we never forgot.
ibanowa-li ippokni
I place my hands behind my head to rest, only to hear the ticking of my watch edging me to move on, go forward, but you’ve got me stuck in the past.
waiting, in truth, features bitter skin; yet the sweetness of it’s interiority requires dedication upon my tired soul.
I wasn’t waiting for you
I had you
In the trees
In the wind
In my newly adopted mannerisms
Which ached a familiarity like I created them myself.
I wasn’t waiting for you.
You came and slyly handed me a box
I wasn’t expecting anything
I opened it
And received myself
Shiny
New
Wrapped in a natural confidence
Not afraid of change
I wasn’t waiting for you.
But I got to have you
And together we remembered ourselves
We planted a forest for our souls to dance
And we took their saplings
And rebirthed them in the soil of our hearts
I wasnt waiting for you
I was waiting for me
And you were the beautiful conduit
someone taught me something without knowing it.
sometimes you may not agree with patriotism. but that has nothing to do with who fights for us. those HUMANS who fight for US. those who are brave enough to do so deserve validation. it makes them feel like their hardwork was worth it. all the personal and social turmoil, all of the moments where you thought “I am falling apart,” so have they. but they have had to do so wearing 100+ pounds of gear while looking behind a rifle and choking on sand storms, all while trying to survive.
so thank you. I may not like my government the majority of the time, but that doesn’t mean “the man” lives in each and every service person.
In 1966, Eliot Wigginton began assigning quarterly writing projects to his secondary students in Rabun County, Georgia to document the lives, skills, and stories of Southern Appalachia. In 1972, their work was published as The Foxfire Book, an immediate classic that would eventually expand to 12 volumes.
A rare mix of beauty, ethnography, and practical skill — you should collect the entire series.
Find the (more handsome) first edition here.
Photo by Taylor Sizemore.
iwantit
“Labels are for soup cans, not for people!”
“I don’t SEE gender”
“I’m not xyz-phobic, but needing five terms to describe yourself is a bit much.”
“We all bleed red!”
“REAL men”
“REAL women”
“We all bleed red” - fuck you I bleed rainbow
(via thatonehomojoe)
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