April 2011
16 posts
so much happiness | naomi shihab nye
it is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. with sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion & cloth. when the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change. but happiness floats. it doesn’t need you to hold it down. it doesn’t need anything. ...
kindness | naomi shihab nye
before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. what you held in your hand, what you counted & carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. how you ride & ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize & chicken will...
i wish in the city of your heart | robley wilson
ljm:
i wish in the city of your heart you would let me be the street where you walk when you are most yourself. i imagine the houses: it has been raining, but the rain is done & the children kept home have begun opening their doors.
cartoon physics, part one | nick flynn
children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know that the universe is ever-expanding, inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies swallowed by galaxies, whole solar systems collapsing, all of it acted out in silence. at ten we are still learning the rules of cartoon animation, that if a man draws a door on a rock only he can pass through it. anyone else who tries will crash into the rock....
in blackwater woods | mary oliver
… to live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; &, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
famous | naomi shihab nye
the river is famous to the fish. the loud voice is famous to the silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so. the cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse. the tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. the idea you carry close to your bosom is famous to your bosom. the boot is famous to the earth, more famous than the dress...
for the dead | adrienne rich
i dreamed i called you on the telephone to say: be kinder to yourself but you were sick & would not answer the waste of my love goes on this way trying to save you from yourself i have always wondered about the left-over energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill long after the rains have stopped or the fire you want to go to bed from but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down the...
when you are old | w.b. yeats
when you are old & grey & full of sleep, & nodding by the fire, take down this book, & slowly read, & dream of the soft look your eyes had once, & of their shadows deep; how many loved your moments of glad grace, & loved your beauty with love false or true, but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, & loved the sorrows of your changing face; & bending down...
the rider | naomi shihab nye
a boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him, the best reason i ever heard for trying to be a champion. what i wonder tonight pedaling hard down king william street is if it translates to bicycles. a victory! to leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never...
that the science of cartography is limited | eavan...
—& not simply by the fact that this shading of forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam, the gloom of cypresses, is what i wish to prove. when you & i were first in love we drove to the borders of connacht & entered a wood there. look down you said: this was once a famine road. i looked down at ivy & the scutch grass rough-cast stone had disappeared into as you told me in the...
the negro speaks of rivers | langston hughes
i’ve known rivers: i’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. my soul has grown deep like the rivers. i bathed in the euphrates when dawns were young. i built my hut near the congo & it lulled me to sleep. i looked upon the nile & raised the pyramids above it. i heard the singing of the mississippi when abe lincoln went down...
one art | elizabeth bishop
the art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
lose something every day. accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. the art of losing isn’t hard to master.
then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. none of these will bring...
the laundry can wait | cyril wong
the laundry can wait. so can the dishes. our emails & mobile phones too. we could sit out naked by the window if we dared, or we could catch the news. i could watch you struggle not to doze off during the sports announcements. there will be plenty of time for sleep. since you asked, the plants are watered. the light has stopped flickering, since i replaced the bulb. who knows, the...
love after love | derek walcott
the time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, & each will smile at the other’s welcome, & say, sit here. eat. you will love again the stranger who was yourself. give wine. give bread. give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart....
we are hard on each other | margaret atwood
iii a truth should exist, it should not be used like this. if i love you is that a fact or a weapon?
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this weekend was a good weekend: 4.01.11 - 4.03.11
“goodnight routine: shake out your sheets, lay in bed on your back, think of 5 positives from your day, concentrate on your breathing, dream.”
— YOUAREREMARKABLE’s twitter
1. a setlist full of favorites from front row center + plenty of long-sleeved plaid thanks to cooler weather that sure beat...
