at all.

 

They came in vignettes. Words sung

sacredly with the only holy I knew,

wounds from the tip of the angels arrow

growing like bruised flowers, why an angels

arrow would pierce at all.

may the wolves

 I wanted to write “stay”
on your sides, surround
your bed with oceans
of salt. I hope he folds you
into a fox, loves you
like a splintered arrow,
brandishes the kill
of your lips. May the bouquet
of your hips wither.
May the wolves
forget your name.

- J. Bradley 

love wild

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
- African proverb

(Image: Lion drawing by JuRo on Etsy)

this is what really happened

I am the one who took you inside & wrote you down,

the shovel that dug the dirt of skin & cracked at white bones. I am heavy with the weight of living: I carry my own truths in my fingertips.

embroidered twitter 'poetry'

by Iviva Olenick

with memory of taste

but even when sleeping you could feel
him traveling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows
- from For Women who are Difficult to Love by Warsan Shire

an island never sleeps

How like an island we are in love encouraging
moss & like an island we are barely moving Just
to exist takes much concentration & like an island
in love we have a house in our two imaginations &
they intersect It strengthens the house & our feelings
Unlike an island we wake up An island never sleeps
That is its duty & ours to remain in love barely moving
We do not want to disturb the house Do not want it
to fall into the ocean that is always so nearby It surrounds us & is moving Like an island the ocean does not see us or care why though we persist in loving it at one rate or another & are waking close together in the dark

- "How Like An Island" by Heather Christie

the unsayable

Every poem holds the unspeakable inside it. The unsayable... The thing that you can't really say because it's too complicated. It's too complex for us. Every poem has that silence deep in the center of it.

- Marie Howe via Royal Quiet Deluxe

all the softness a rock dreams of being

So yes, I will gladly take on your ocean
just to swim beneath you
so I can kiss the bends of your knees
in appreciation for the work they do
keeping your head above water.
- Mike McGee

summer down

to love secrecy

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

in one wash of memory

I sometimes think my vision of the sea is the clearest thing I own. I pick it up, exile that I am, like the purple ‘lucky stones’ I used to collect with a white ring all the way round, or the shell of a blue mussel with its rainbowy angel’s fingernail interior; and in one wash of memory the colors deepen and gleam, the early world draws breath.

- Sylvia Plath via Royal Quiet DeLuxe. 

Photo by Tracy Nolan

heart

wherever your secret heart is buried
- Stephen King

i don't know any beautiful words

& gravity caught my love around

West Side Sunset

on the farm

Seth & his amazing animals at the Manisses Farm, Block Island.

happy fourth

Independence love from Block Island

Photo by Justin Farrar

oak plank rib cage

(source: je te veux. n'arrete pas.)

like pale gold

You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.
- Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

that lightning in the chest

She takes the dreams out of his skull--a small boat, its departure from the harbor, the gradual loss of land.  She can smell the hull wood baked into brittleness by the sun, the drop over an edge into nothing but water & horizon, the slackening of time that accompanies the absence of spatial direction.
She sits there for awhile, culling through his brain.
- Dawn Clifton Tripp, Moontide

(image: Patterson Maker)

summa in the city

& the heat is on!

a certain sacrifice

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

Marlon

& a cat -- love.

full of secrets

 

superior air of the sea, the salt patches on my skin, 

the taste of salt on his lips, his neck, 

dark romance driven deep into white bones, 

disastrous shipwreck.   

The images are sudden, as is he. He trusts suddenness, lives on rash, momentary impulses, lives in a world too fast for thought.   

Salt is always on his neck.   

He is always in the sea.

 (image: aubreyrd)

letters to a young poet

Things aren’t all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
- Rilke