so much joy it hurts

dictionaryofobscuresorrows:

n. the instinctive tendency to see someone as you knew them in their youth, a burned-in image of grass-stained knees, graffitied backpacks or handfuls of birthday cake superimposed on an adult with a degree, an illusion formed when someone opens the door to your emotional darkroom while the memory is still developing.

My limbs murmuring for black coffee.

The problem (if there was one) was simply a problem with the question. He wants to paint a bird, needs to, and the problem is why. Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all? Not how, because hows are easy, series or sequence, one foot after the other, but existentially why bother, what does it solve? Be the tree, solve for bird. What does that mean? It’s a problem of focus, it’s a problem of diligence, it’s supposed to be a grackle but it sort of got away from him. But why not let the colors do what they want, which is blend, which is kind of neighborly, if you think about it. Blackbird, he says. So be it. Indexed and normative. Who gets to measure the distance between experience and its representation? Who controls the lines of inquiry? He does, but he’s not very good at it. And just because you want to paint a bird, do actually paint a bird, it doesn’t mean you’ve accomplished anything. Maybe if it was pretty, it would mean something. Maybe if it was beautiful it would be true. But it’s not, not beautiful, not true, not even realistic, more like a man in a birdsuit, blue shoulders instead of feathers, because he isn’t looking at a bird, real bird, as he paints, he is looking at his heart, which is impossible, unless his heart is a metaphor for his heart, as everything is a metaphor for itself, so that looking at the page is like looking out the window at a bird in your chest with a song in its throat that you don’t want to hear but you paint anyway because the hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not and the hand wants to do something useful. Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart, says the heart. Answer: be the heart. Answer: be the hand. Answer: be the bird. Answer: be the sky.

(via claytoncubitt) (via Nikola Tamindzic)

I’ve had two pieces of micro-fiction published for Vibewire’s December Love anthology. Friends Who Were Lovers and A Stray Kiss. You may have read A Stray Kiss on my Tumblr previously - the tone of the piece has changed because I had to edit out the word “fuck”. The publication has strict publishing rules for their youth audience. I don’t mind compromising - the feedback I got from the editor was really helpful and it was a great experience, especially as this is the first time I’ve ever submitted anything. Click through to read them.

I’ve spent over a decade not submitting my writing and I’ve wasted so much time not even letting my friends read it. I think because the two cities I’ve lived in have had no real literary scene to speak of, I’ve always felt isolated as a writer. Tumblr and Twitter changed that for me in 2010. My head was clearer and I started to write more and sneak it onto my Tumblr. I discovered a literary and poetry community on Tumblr that inspires me daily. Tumblr and Twitter have helped me connect with people I consider “real” writers (I’ve never thought of myself as a real writer) whose encouragement and feedback has given me confidence. Thank you.

Tell the truth: no key appeared in your mouth,
no sound like mum, which wouldn’t help anyway.
Give me a word to get through the night.
Something spontaneous, fluid:
see the hand’s unintended imprint on the shore,

fireworks dissolving into the black sky—

Try now. Ripple. Yes.
Put the two of us in a boat on the gray river;
keep rowing in a circle while on the hazy banks
clumps of grass swarm and echo the rhythm of words
we had once spoken: after this, mistake me for someone else.
Sleep no more. Wave. Wave. That’s love enough.

(via ahuntersheart)

The deer come out in the evening.
God bless them for not judging me,
I’m drunk. I stand on the porch in my bathrobe
and make strange noises at them—
language,
if language can be a kind of crying.
The tin cans scattered in the meadow glow,
each bullet hole suffused with moon,
like the platinum thread beyond them
where the river runs the length of the valley.
That’s where the fish are.
Tomorrow
I’ll scoop them from the pockets of graveled
stone beneath the bank, their bodies
desperately alive when I hold them in my hands,
the way prayers become more hopeless
when uttered aloud.
The phone’s disconnected.
Just as well, I’ve got nothing to tell you:
I won’t go inside where the bats dip and swarm
over my bed. It’s the sound of them
shouldering against each other that terrifies me,
as if it might hurt to brush across another being’s
living flesh.
But I carry a gun now. I’ve cut down
a tree. You wouldn’t recognize me in town—
my hands lost in my pockets, two disabused tools
I’ve retired from their life of touching you.

claytoncubitt:

iPod-to-watch conversion Kickstarter project asks for $15,000, receives $950,000, an amount which could have kept this low-income health clinic operating in New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward for another 15 months. Instead, it will close on December 31.

Enjoy your iPod watches, though.

Nothing was left of me
But my right foot
And my left shoulder.
They lay white as the skein of a spider floating
In a field of snow toward a dark building
Tilted and strained by wind.
Inside the dream, I dreamed on.
 
A parade of old women
Sang softly above me,
Faint mosquitoes near still water.
 
So I waited, in my corridor.
I listened for the sea
To call me.
I knew that, somewhere outside, the horse
Stood sadled, browsing in grass,
Waiting for me.

Cradling a bag of cherries like they’re diamonds. You blood thief, licking red evidence off your teeth.

The weight of your love, the weight of your body; I have no means of escape. Fold my limbs into a white paper boat, a paper plane. Fold me into a fugitive.

Before you were I loved you
and when you were born
and when you took your first step
Although I did not know
good luck I want to say

lone penguin keep sturdily waddling
in the direction of those frozen mountains sister
of desolate sanctity
I want to scream
Although I did not know you

I loved you later on
as just a weedy thing
a little skeleton I loved
Both long pre-you a child myself
and as a man in retrospect

I loved and I was there
while they were raping you
I loved although
like God
that’s all that I could do—

Nothing was left of me
But my right foot
And my left shoulder.
They lay white as the skein of a spider floating
In a field of snow toward a dark building
Tilted and strained by wind.
Inside the dream, I dreamed on.
 
A parade of old women
Sang softly above me,
Faint mosquitoes near still water.
 
So I waited, in my corridor.
I listened for the sea
To call me.
I knew that, somewhere outside, the horse
Stood sadled, browsing in grass,
Waiting for me.

Look back at me
from his death, from the feminine side, he asks me
to touch him on his throat, his breastbone,
to touch the spots that have the life in them. His voice
is closer to me than I am to myself.
Unknowable, beginning in joy, his voice
is closer to me than I am to myself.

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dining room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about
how all the stars in the sky are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-chord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a sheer white dress
covered in a million beads
slinks toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scraping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.

(via poemdays)