You can
die for it -
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. but
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of china,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
-mary oliver, “sunrise”
If a man once loved you,
he’s turned you into a moth.
That’s how he’ll remember
the flutter: that numinous,
that beating, that winged.
Angels and moths:
that’s who men love.
But I don’t recollect like that.
I don’t think I ever loved
that gently. And I’ve never
flown toward a burning
house, hoping, maybe
my faith lay in that
single thing left,
in that smoldering filigree.
I never reminisce
a sorrow that delicately shaped.
But sometimes I feel someone remembering
me that way: translucent,
crazy, awake only at night.
He’s regretting his fingertips
were not wide or soft enough.
He’s mourning me now.
He’s imagining me eating away
at someone else’s light.
And that’s perfect.
That’s exactly how
he always wanted to love
me. My wings,
my hair-like antennae
hanging;
my frenulum
between his forefinger
and his thumb.
-olena kalytiak davis, “angels and moths”
(Source: crushedfingers)
In spring the blue azures bow down
at the edges of shallow puddles
to drink the black rain water.
Then they rise and float away into the fields.
Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy,
and all the tricks my body knows―
the opposable thumbs, the kneecaps,
and the mind clicking and clicking—
don’t seem enough to carry me through this world
and I think: how I would like
to have wings—
blue ones—
ribbons of flame.
How I would like to open them, and rise
from the black rain water.
And then I think of Blake, in the dirt and sweat of London—a boy
staring through the window, when God came
fluttering up.
Of course, he screamed,
and seeing the bobbin of God’s blue body
leaning on the sill,
and the thousand-faceted eyes.
Well, who knows.
Who knows what hung, fluttering, at the window
between him and the darkness.
Anyway, Blake the hosier’s son stood up
and turned away from the sooty sill and the dark city—
turned away forever
from the factories, the personal strivings,
to a life of the the imagination.
-mary oliver, “spring azures”
I don’t know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better
I dont know how much wine and whisky
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after
splits with women-
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone to ring
waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later
when my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth
they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:
“what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!”
the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very little beer
because she knows its bad for the figure.
while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing
with horney cowboys.
well, there’s beer
sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles
and when you pick one up
the bottle fall through the wet bottom
of the paper sack
rolling
clanking
spilling gray wet ash
and stale beer,
or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
in the morning
making the only sound in your life.
beer
rivers and seas of beer
the radio singing love songs
as the phone remains silent
and the walls stand
straight up and down
and beer is all there is.
-charles bukowski, “beer”
