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I Go Back to May 1937 By Sharon Olds I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks, the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its sword-tips aglow in the May air, they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody. I want to go up to them and say Stop, don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman, he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do, you are going to do bad things to children, you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of, you are going to want to die. I want to go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it, her hungry pretty face turning to me, her pitiful beautiful untouched body, his arrogant handsome face turning to me, his pitiful beautiful untouched body, but I don’t do it. I want to live. I take them up like the male and female paper dolls and bang them together at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to strike sparks from them, I say Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

i go back to may 1937 by sharon olds #poetry

go birds!! 🦅

me: thank you for changing my life
my dyson airstrait: i’m literally a hair tool

Just once I knew what life was for. In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood; walked there along the Charles River, watched the lights copying themselves, all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening their mouths as wide as opera singers; counted the stars, my little campaigners, my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love on the night green side of it and cried my heart to the eastbound cars and cried my heart to the westbound cars and took my truth across a small humped bridge and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home and hoarded these constants into morning only to find them gone.

"Just Once," Anne Sexton

photo courtesy of @patrycjasara.bsky.social

lorelai gilmore was so right about snow

"What a lucky sack of stars."

We have not long to love./Light does not stay./The tender things are those/we fold away./Coarse fabrics are the ones/for common wear./In silence I have watched you/comb your hair./Intimate the silence,/dim and warm./I could but did not, reach/to touch your arm./I could, but do not, break/that which is still./(Almost the faintest whisper/would be shrill.)/So moments pass as though/they wished to stay./We have not long to love./A night. A day....

we have not long to love by tennessee williams #poetry

happy snow day to all and to all a good night

new year's: a day for cleaning to start the year off right

All the parties you spent watching the room from a balcony where someone joined you to smoke then returned. And how it turns out no one had the childhood they wanted, and how they’d tell you this a little drunk, a little slant in less time than it took to finish a cigarette because sad things can’t be explained. Behind the glass and inside, all your friends buzzed. You could feel the shape of their voices. You could tell from their eyes they were in some other place. 1999 or 2008 or last June. Of course, it’s important to go to parties. To make life a dress or a drink or suede shoes someone wears in the rain. On the way home, in the car back, the night sky played its old tricks. The stars arranged themselves quietly. The person you thought of drove under them. Away from the party, (just like you) into the years.

the years by alex dimitrov #poetry

slow down, you're doing fine/you can't be everything you want to be before your time

eye masks are a cheat code for sleeping

i hope i die/warmed/by the life that i tried/to live

RIP nikki giovanni #poetry

chamomile tea with lemon

Please one more/kiss in the kitchen/before we turn the lights off.

wish by w. s. merwin #poetry

grateful, grateful, grateful

Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape and the little churchyard with its lamenting names and the terrible reticent gorge in which the others end: again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and again among the flowers, and look up into the sky.

again and again, even though we know love's landscape, rainer maria rilke #poetry

MyRetroTVs Tune in to the lost decades with these nostalgic TV simulators.

just wasted 30 minutes scrolling through old tv. why is nostalgia so comforting??

me: in the new sims pack, my sims can write wills!
h: ……..

muppets christmas carol…save me…save me muppets christmas carol

In my dream you ask me if I’m gone and I say no, I’m right here, you’re the one who’s gone. You laugh. You laugh and you say, look at me. You laugh and you say, how can I be gone? And I echo it back, I echo it back. I look at you and I say, how can you be gone?

in my dream, kristina mahr #poetry

And how mostly we say, Remember that time and we will nod because we do remember that time. Except for the few times we’ve forgotten, like that one time when H was trying to remind us of something and when we asked her what, she said, I don’t know, but you were there and I was there. And we were.

from blowing on the wheel by ada limón #poetry

RIP louise glück #poetry

"But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I'm saying? Does it feel this way to you?" — Kazuo Ishiguro, in his Nobel prize (2017) acceptance speech. (via smiththeteacher)

#poetry #storytelling

THE TWO-HEADED CALF Laura Gilpin Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum. But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.

laura gilpin #poetry

Matthew Olzmann MOUNTAIN DEW COMMERCIAL DISGUISED AS A LOVE РОЕМ Here's what I've got, the reasons why our marriage might work: Because you wear pink but write poems about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell at your keys when you lose them, and laugh, loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol, gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming. You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents of what you packed were written inside the boxes. Because you think swans are overrated. Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence. Because you underline everything you read, and circle the things you think are important, and put stars next to the things you think I should think are important, and write notes in the margins about all the people you're mad at and my name almost never appears there. Because you make that pork recipe you found in the (cont’d)

#poetry

The Thing Is BY ELLEN BASS to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

really need this one today #poetry