Love Poem, Richard Brautigan
Jan. 8th, 2010 | 05:01 pm
posted by: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
handsabove in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
theysaid
it's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.
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Wood | Sarah Arvio
Jan. 8th, 2010 | 01:09 pm
posted by: memorywillrust in theysaid
The last thing I ever wanted was to
write again about grief did you think I
would your grief this time not mine oh good
grief enough is enough in my life that is
enough was enough I had all those
grievances all those griefs all engraved
into the wood of my soul but would you
believe it the wood healed I grew up and
grew out and would you believe it I found
your old woody heart sprouting I thought
good new growth good new luxuriant green
leaves leaves on their woody stalks and I said
I’ll stake my life on this old stick I’ll stick
and we talked into the morning and night
and laughed green leaves and sometimes a flower
oh bower of good new love I would have it
I would bow to the new and the green
and wouldn’t you know it you were a stick
yes I know a good stick so often and then
a stick in my ribs in my heart your old
dark wood your old dark gnarled stalk
sprouting havoc and now I have grief again
and now I’ve stood for what I never should
green leaves of morning dark leaves of night
write again about grief did you think I
would your grief this time not mine oh good
grief enough is enough in my life that is
enough was enough I had all those
grievances all those griefs all engraved
into the wood of my soul but would you
believe it the wood healed I grew up and
grew out and would you believe it I found
your old woody heart sprouting I thought
good new growth good new luxuriant green
leaves leaves on their woody stalks and I said
I’ll stake my life on this old stick I’ll stick
and we talked into the morning and night
and laughed green leaves and sometimes a flower
oh bower of good new love I would have it
I would bow to the new and the green
and wouldn’t you know it you were a stick
yes I know a good stick so often and then
a stick in my ribs in my heart your old
dark wood your old dark gnarled stalk
sprouting havoc and now I have grief again
and now I’ve stood for what I never should
green leaves of morning dark leaves of night
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La Seine a rencontré Paris, Joris Ivens (1957)
Jan. 8th, 2010 | 01:22 pm
posted by: sleepsleeper in film_stills
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In the Vicinity of Orion's Arm | Linda Nemec Foster
Jan. 7th, 2010 | 06:25 pm
posted by: fallenback in theysaid
"like the star beaming outward past its death"
-Robert Wrigley
Every day we die
a little more.
My young son
doesn't believe me;
with the telescope
he got for Christmas
he points to the stars,
unfailing lights of the past,
as examples of how difficult
it is to kill anything.
Infinity has not yet
begun to trouble him.
As if Pascal's true
fear of the eternal
silence of the heavens
was all a hoax.
How can I tell him
he's wrong. That death
is one theory of celestial
movement. And there
is no other. That what
we see in the sky
are ghost images:
the moon a blank
mirror, the galaxy
an open wound,
the universe a thin
veil of dust hiding
the empty mind of God.
I only know what
I know. How the universe
looks the same in every
direction. Layered petals
of rose or bleeding
womb. I only know
this night in late
January, sub-zero
temperatures, his
father positioning
a telescope in the frozen
snow of the backyard.
As if he could count
the endless blur of stars.
Imagining the faces
of everyone he's ever
loved who has died.
--
I also have a question:
I've had the vague idea of a poem stuck in my head and I swear it's one I've read, not one I want to make up. It's about a man whose wife left him/died and it chronicles how he begins to be able to live without her. He always finds black hairs around his house but he knows they aren't his wife's, but rather his maids as it's been years, etc. but one day he is repotting an avocado plant and finds one long strand of hair tangled in the soil.
Anyone have an idea?
-Robert Wrigley
Every day we die
a little more.
My young son
doesn't believe me;
with the telescope
he got for Christmas
he points to the stars,
unfailing lights of the past,
as examples of how difficult
it is to kill anything.
Infinity has not yet
begun to trouble him.
As if Pascal's true
fear of the eternal
silence of the heavens
was all a hoax.
How can I tell him
he's wrong. That death
is one theory of celestial
movement. And there
is no other. That what
we see in the sky
are ghost images:
the moon a blank
mirror, the galaxy
an open wound,
the universe a thin
veil of dust hiding
the empty mind of God.
I only know what
I know. How the universe
looks the same in every
direction. Layered petals
of rose or bleeding
womb. I only know
this night in late
January, sub-zero
temperatures, his
father positioning
a telescope in the frozen
snow of the backyard.
As if he could count
the endless blur of stars.
Imagining the faces
of everyone he's ever
loved who has died.
--
I also have a question:
I've had the vague idea of a poem stuck in my head and I swear it's one I've read, not one I want to make up. It's about a man whose wife left him/died and it chronicles how he begins to be able to live without her. He always finds black hairs around his house but he knows they aren't his wife's, but rather his maids as it's been years, etc. but one day he is repotting an avocado plant and finds one long strand of hair tangled in the soil.
Anyone have an idea?
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A Kind of Loss by Ingeborg Bachmann
Jan. 7th, 2010 | 01:49 pm
posted by: deer_bones in theysaid
Shared: seasons, books, and music.
Keys, teacups, the breadbasket, linens and a bed.
A dowry of words, of gestures, carried along,
used up, spent.
House rules followed. Said. Done. And always
the extended hand.
In winter, in a Viennese septet, and in summer
I have been in love.
With maps, in a mountain hut, on a beach
and in a bed.
A cult made up of dates and irrevocable promises,
enraptured before something, reverent over nothing.
( -- to the folded newspaper, the cold ashes, the note
on a piece of paper)
fearless in religion, for the church was this bed.
From the sea view came my unstoppable painting.
From my balcony I greeted the people, my neighbors, below.
By the open fire, in safety, my hair took on its deepest color.
The doorbell’s ring was the alarm for my joy.
It is not you I have lost,
but the world.
Keys, teacups, the breadbasket, linens and a bed.
A dowry of words, of gestures, carried along,
used up, spent.
House rules followed. Said. Done. And always
the extended hand.
In winter, in a Viennese septet, and in summer
I have been in love.
With maps, in a mountain hut, on a beach
and in a bed.
A cult made up of dates and irrevocable promises,
enraptured before something, reverent over nothing.
( -- to the folded newspaper, the cold ashes, the note
on a piece of paper)
fearless in religion, for the church was this bed.
From the sea view came my unstoppable painting.
From my balcony I greeted the people, my neighbors, below.
By the open fire, in safety, my hair took on its deepest color.
The doorbell’s ring was the alarm for my joy.
It is not you I have lost,
but the world.
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The Dark Chamber | Louis Untermeyer
Jan. 7th, 2010 | 01:02 pm
posted by: gethenian in theysaid
The brain forgets, but the blood will remember.
There, when the play of sense is over,
The last, low spark in the darkest chamber
Will hold all there is of love and lover.
The war of words, the life-long quarrel
Of self against self will dissolve into nothing;
Less than the chain of berry-red coral
Crying against the dead black of her clothing.
What has the brain that it hopes to last longer?
The blood will take from forgotten violence,
The groping, the break of her voice in anger,
There will be left only color and silence.
These will remain, these will go searching
Your veins for life when the flame of life smolders:
The night that you two saw the mountains marching
Up against dawn with the stars on their shoulders--
The jetting poplars' arrested fountains
As you drew her under them, easing her pain--
The notes, not the words, of a half-finished sentence--
The music, the silence... These will remain.
There, when the play of sense is over,
The last, low spark in the darkest chamber
Will hold all there is of love and lover.
The war of words, the life-long quarrel
Of self against self will dissolve into nothing;
Less than the chain of berry-red coral
Crying against the dead black of her clothing.
What has the brain that it hopes to last longer?
The blood will take from forgotten violence,
The groping, the break of her voice in anger,
There will be left only color and silence.
These will remain, these will go searching
Your veins for life when the flame of life smolders:
The night that you two saw the mountains marching
Up against dawn with the stars on their shoulders--
The jetting poplars' arrested fountains
As you drew her under them, easing her pain--
The notes, not the words, of a half-finished sentence--
The music, the silence... These will remain.
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A Model for the Priesthood | Tomás Q. Morín
Jan. 6th, 2010 | 06:31 pm
posted by: her_rabbits in theysaid
In thigh-deep water we lashed the air with our rods
and re-examined the eternal questions: tongue, eye, nose—
which one has the shortest route to the brain, the heart:
which nails would you release first if it were given to you,
the feet or the hands: if Chickamauga meant river of the dead
then what were the implications for all bodies of water?
He filled the sink with the trout who hit our lines,
crossed himself once, twice, then renamed and cut each one
—their vague eyes rolling—while I made ready to gently knuckle
each flayed beloved with garlic and thyme, an American John
to his American Jesus, humming my crazy songs
over the black faces of the pans I baptized in butter.
“The dead will only suffer butter,” he liked to say,
as I dropped a shoulder and tumbled each head into a basket
for the tabby in the woods who never failed to pick up
the scent of resurrection in our mouths, who would chirp
and follow us even unto the shaky outhouses where we rocked
and returned the dead to the earth from where they came.
and re-examined the eternal questions: tongue, eye, nose—
which one has the shortest route to the brain, the heart:
which nails would you release first if it were given to you,
the feet or the hands: if Chickamauga meant river of the dead
then what were the implications for all bodies of water?
He filled the sink with the trout who hit our lines,
crossed himself once, twice, then renamed and cut each one
—their vague eyes rolling—while I made ready to gently knuckle
each flayed beloved with garlic and thyme, an American John
to his American Jesus, humming my crazy songs
over the black faces of the pans I baptized in butter.
“The dead will only suffer butter,” he liked to say,
as I dropped a shoulder and tumbled each head into a basket
for the tabby in the woods who never failed to pick up
the scent of resurrection in our mouths, who would chirp
and follow us even unto the shaky outhouses where we rocked
and returned the dead to the earth from where they came.
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Io la conoscevo bene, Antonio Pietrangeli (1965)
Jan. 6th, 2010 | 10:42 pm
music: Justine. flying
posted by: sleepsleeper in film_stills
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Directive | Robert Frost
Jan. 6th, 2010 | 03:07 pm
posted by: hangthemj in theysaid
(I saw that this wasn't posted yet so I figured I ought to add it!)
Back out of all of this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a down.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry –
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart experience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
Their height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no biggest than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring yet so near its source,
Too lofty and too original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
Back out of all of this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a down.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry –
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart experience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
Their height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no biggest than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring yet so near its source,
Too lofty and too original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
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Continent's End | Robinson Jeffers
Jan. 6th, 2010 | 12:42 pm
posted by: songandcheer in theysaid
At the equinox when the earth was veiled in a late rain,
wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring,
The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary,
the ground-swell shook the beds of granite.
I gazing at the boundaries of granite and spray, the
established sea-marks, felt behind me
Mountain and plain, the immense breadth of the continent,
before me the mass and doubled stretch of water.
I said: You yoke the Aleutian seal-rocks with the lava
and coral sowings that flower the south,
Over your flood the life that sought the sunrise faces
ours that has followed the evening star.
The long migrations meet across you and it is nothing
to you, you have forgotten us, mother.
You were much younger when we crawled out of the womb
and lay in the sun's eye on the tideline.
It was long and long ago; we have grown proud since then
and you have grown bitter; life retains
Your mobile soft unquiet strength; and envies hardness,
the insolent quietness of stone.
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars,
life is your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye
that watched before there was an ocean.
That watched you fill your beds out of the condensation
of thin vapor and watched you change them,
That saw you soft and violent wear your boundaries down,
eat rock, shift places with the continents.
Mother, though my song's measure is like your surf-beat's
ancient rhythm I never learned it of you.
Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both
our tones flow from the older fountain.
wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring,
The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary,
the ground-swell shook the beds of granite.
I gazing at the boundaries of granite and spray, the
established sea-marks, felt behind me
Mountain and plain, the immense breadth of the continent,
before me the mass and doubled stretch of water.
I said: You yoke the Aleutian seal-rocks with the lava
and coral sowings that flower the south,
Over your flood the life that sought the sunrise faces
ours that has followed the evening star.
The long migrations meet across you and it is nothing
to you, you have forgotten us, mother.
You were much younger when we crawled out of the womb
and lay in the sun's eye on the tideline.
It was long and long ago; we have grown proud since then
and you have grown bitter; life retains
Your mobile soft unquiet strength; and envies hardness,
the insolent quietness of stone.
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars,
life is your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye
that watched before there was an ocean.
That watched you fill your beds out of the condensation
of thin vapor and watched you change them,
That saw you soft and violent wear your boundaries down,
eat rock, shift places with the continents.
Mother, though my song's measure is like your surf-beat's
ancient rhythm I never learned it of you.
Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both
our tones flow from the older fountain.
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The City Planners by Margaret Atwood
Jan. 6th, 2010 | 08:40 am
posted by: dromo_zangano in theysaid
The City Planners
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on a brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;
guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air
tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows.
-Margaret Atwood
[this poem so affirms my decision to leave the comacozy suburban life and be a city boy again]
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on a brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;
guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air
tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows.
-Margaret Atwood
[this poem so affirms my decision to leave the comacozy suburban life and be a city boy again]
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I Would Steal Horses | Sherman Alexie
Jan. 6th, 2010 | 02:39 am
posted by: hangthemj in theysaid
I would steal horses
for you, if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father, the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born
and where he will die in the dark.
I am afraid of his hands, which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.
I would offer my sovereignty, take
every promise as your final lie, the last
point before we start refusing the exact.
I would wrap us both in old blankets
hold every disease tight against our skin.
for you, if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father, the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born
and where he will die in the dark.
I am afraid of his hands, which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.
I would offer my sovereignty, take
every promise as your final lie, the last
point before we start refusing the exact.
I would wrap us both in old blankets
hold every disease tight against our skin.
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Keira Knightley by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue US December 2005
Jan. 6th, 2010 | 12:01 am
posted by: ecstasy_lover in foto_decadent
( More )
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Those of Us Who Think We Know - Stephen Dunn
Jan. 5th, 2010 | 07:13 pm
posted by: ohleeveeah in theysaid
Those of Us Who Think We Know
By Stephen Dunn
Those of us who think we know
the same secrets
are silent together most of the time,
for us there is eloquence
in desire, and for a while
when in love and exhausted
it's enough to nod like shy horses
and come together
in a quiet ceremony of tongues
it's in disappointment we look for words
to convince us
the spaces between stars are nothing
to worry about,
it's when those secrets burst
in that emptiness between our hearts
and the lumps in our throats.
And the words we find
are always insufficient, like love,
though they are often lovely
and all we have
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by Ryan Adams
Jan. 5th, 2010 | 04:47 pm
posted by: kissorsleep in theysaid
and the sun
and the light
and the orange
and the bright
i boycott today
and the skin
and the girls
and the feet
stomping curls
in exchange
for my bed
and a screen
and a nap
and naked
and still
with caveman feet
and
a soft blanket
and
no s o u n d
or
no a r t
or
no t u n e s
and
no t h o u g h t
because
this is the first sun of spring
and
i will only think of you
and
i
don’t
feel
like
feeling
sick
today
ghost
ghost
ghost
ghost
ghost
ghost
ghost
ghost
ghost
go
away
ghost
ghost
ghost
ghost
i
am
not
allowed
go
play
somewhere
else
ghost
ghost
ghost
ghost
ghost
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Christina Ricci for Pop Magazine'2004
Jan. 5th, 2010 | 09:11 pm
posted by: zvezdad in foto_decadent
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Amber Valletta by Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia October 2001
Jan. 5th, 2010 | 07:26 pm
posted by: ecstasy_lover in foto_decadent
( More )
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Wishbone - Richard Siken
Jan. 4th, 2010 | 08:36 am
posted by: maerhys in theysaid
- WISHBONE
You saved my life he says I owe you everything.
You don’t, I say, you don’t owe me squat, let’s just get going, let’s just get gone, but he’s
relentless,
keeps saying I owe you, says Your shoes are filling with your own damn blood,
you must want something, just tell me, and it’s yours.
But I can’t look at him, can hardly speak,
I took the bullet for all the wrong reasons, I’d just as soon kill you myself, I say.
You keep saying I owe you, I owe… but you say the same thing every time.
Let’s not talk about it, let’s just not talk.
Not because I don’t believe it, not because I want it any different, but I’m always saving
and you’re always owing and I’m tired of asking to settle the debt.
Don’t bother.
You never mean it anyway, not really, and it only makes me that much more ashamed.
There’s only one thing I want, don’t make me say it, just get me bandages, I’m bleeding,
I’m not just making conversation.
There’s smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. It’s a Western, Henry,
it’s a downright shoot-em-up. We’ve made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon.
It’s another wrong-man-dies scenario
and we keep doing it, Henry, keep saying until we get it right…
but we always win and we never quit, see, we’ve won again, here we are at the place
where I get to beg for it
where I get to say Please, for just one night, will you lay down next to me, we can leave our
clothes on, we can stay all buttoned up?
or will I say
Roll over and let me fuck you till you puke, Henry, you owe me this much, you can indulge me
this at least, can’t you? but we both know how it goes. I say I want you inside me
and you hold my head underwater, I say I want you inside me
and you split me open with a knife. I’m battling monsters, half-monkey, half-tarantula,
I’m pulling you out of the burning buildings and you say I’ll give you anything.
But you never come through.
Give me bullet power. Give me power over angels. Even when you’re standing up
you look like you’re lying down, but will you let me kiss your neck, baby? Do I have to
tie your arms down?
Do I have to stick my tongue in your mouth like the hand of a thief, like a burglary
like it’s just another petty theft? It makes me tired, Henry. Do you see what I mean?
Do you see what I’m getting at?
You swallowing matches and suddenly I’m yelling Strike me. Strike anywhere.
I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search
my body for the scars, thinking
Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in? I know you want me to say it, Henry,
it’s in the script, you want me to say Lie down on the bed, you’re all I ever wanted
and worth dying for too
but I think I’d rather keep the bullet this time. It’s mine, you can’t have it, see,
I’m not giving it up. This way you still owe me, and that’s
as good as anything.
You can’t get out of this one, Henry, you can’t get it out of me, and with this bullet
lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because
it’s all I have,
because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. I’ll be your
slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this
bullet inside me
‘cause I couldn’t make you love me and I’m tired of pulling your teeth. Don’t you see, it’s like
I’ve swallowed your house keys, and it feels so natural, like the bullet was already there,
like it’s been waiting inside me the whole time.
Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground
like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands?
If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.
Do you know how it ends? Do you feel lucky? Do you want to go home now?
There’s a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of the Chevy and a dead man at our feet
staring up at us like we’re something interesting.
This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard,
and make a wish.
Richard Siken
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Strawberry | Paisley Rekdal
Jan. 4th, 2010 | 02:23 am
posted by: redcliches in theysaid
I am going to fail.
I'm going to fail cartilage and plastic, camera and arrow.
I'm going to fail binoculars and conjugations,
all the accompanying musics: I am failing,
I must fail, I can fail, I have failed
the way some women throw themselves
into lover's arms or out trains,
fingers crossed and skirts billowing
behind them. I'm going to fail
the way strawberry plants fail,
have dug down hard to fail, shooting
brown runners out into silt, into dry gray beds,
into tissue and rock. I'm going to fail
the way their several hundred hearts below surface
have failed, thick, soft stumps desiccating
to tumors; the way roots wizen in the cold
and cloud black, knotty as spark plugs, cystic
synapses. I'm going to fail light and stars and tears.
I'm going to fail the way cowards only wish they could fail,
the way the brave refuse to fail or the vain fear to,
believing that to stray even once from perfection
is to be permanently cast out, Wandering Jew
of failure, Adam of failure, Sita of failure; that's the way
I'm going to fail, bud and creosote and cloud.
I'm failing pet and parent. I'm failing the food
in strangers' stomachs, the slender inchoate rings
of distant planets. I'm going to fail these words
and the next and the next. I'm going to fail them,
I'm going to fail her-- trust me, I've already failed him--
and the possibility of a we is going to sink me
like a bad boat. I'm going to fail the way
this strawberry plant has failed, alive without bud,
without fruit, without tenderness, hugging itself
to privation and ridiculous want.
I'm going to fail simply by standing in front of you,
waving my arms in your face as if hailing a taxi:
I'm here, I'm here, please don't forget me,
though you already have, I smell it, even cloaked
with soil, sending out my slender fingers for you,
sending out all my hair and tongue and brain.
I'm going to fail you
just as you're going to fail me,
urging yourself further down to sediment
and the tiny, trickling filaments of damp;
thirsty, thirsty, desperate to drown
if even for a little while, if even for once:
to succumb, to be destroyed,
to die completely, to fail the way I've failed
in every particular sense of myself,
in every new and beautiful light.
I'm going to fail cartilage and plastic, camera and arrow.
I'm going to fail binoculars and conjugations,
all the accompanying musics: I am failing,
I must fail, I can fail, I have failed
the way some women throw themselves
into lover's arms or out trains,
fingers crossed and skirts billowing
behind them. I'm going to fail
the way strawberry plants fail,
have dug down hard to fail, shooting
brown runners out into silt, into dry gray beds,
into tissue and rock. I'm going to fail
the way their several hundred hearts below surface
have failed, thick, soft stumps desiccating
to tumors; the way roots wizen in the cold
and cloud black, knotty as spark plugs, cystic
synapses. I'm going to fail light and stars and tears.
I'm going to fail the way cowards only wish they could fail,
the way the brave refuse to fail or the vain fear to,
believing that to stray even once from perfection
is to be permanently cast out, Wandering Jew
of failure, Adam of failure, Sita of failure; that's the way
I'm going to fail, bud and creosote and cloud.
I'm failing pet and parent. I'm failing the food
in strangers' stomachs, the slender inchoate rings
of distant planets. I'm going to fail these words
and the next and the next. I'm going to fail them,
I'm going to fail her-- trust me, I've already failed him--
and the possibility of a we is going to sink me
like a bad boat. I'm going to fail the way
this strawberry plant has failed, alive without bud,
without fruit, without tenderness, hugging itself
to privation and ridiculous want.
I'm going to fail simply by standing in front of you,
waving my arms in your face as if hailing a taxi:
I'm here, I'm here, please don't forget me,
though you already have, I smell it, even cloaked
with soil, sending out my slender fingers for you,
sending out all my hair and tongue and brain.
I'm going to fail you
just as you're going to fail me,
urging yourself further down to sediment
and the tiny, trickling filaments of damp;
thirsty, thirsty, desperate to drown
if even for a little while, if even for once:
to succumb, to be destroyed,
to die completely, to fail the way I've failed
in every particular sense of myself,
in every new and beautiful light.
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Malgosia Bela by Bruce Weber for Vogue Paris May 2006
Jan. 3rd, 2010 | 01:10 pm
posted by: ecstasy_lover in foto_decadent
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