January 2011
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Survivor, Vijay Seshadri
We hold it against you that you survived. People better than you are dead, but you still punch the clock. Your body has wizened but has not bled its substance out on the killing floor or flatlined in intensive care or vanished after school or stepped off the ledge in despair. Of all those you started with, only you are still around; only you have not been listed with the defeated and the drowned....
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“Against all poeticizations, I say there is a poem only if a shape of life...”
– X Poetics: A Rhythm Party Manifesto by Henri Meschonnic (via writeaction)
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Address to an Absent Lover, Sarah Manguso
The boy speaks in Russian (I understand him neither in the dream nor real life). He opens his eyes and looks at me, apologizing in English for keeping them closed. When I wake up I think he must have seen me. But when I kiss him he looks surprised, as if he were blind. That night I met you I wrote: It is possible I have imagined my entire life. * My great-grandmother’s lamp is mine now. It is...
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miss rosie, Lucille Clifton
when I watch you wrapped up like garbage sitting, surrounded by the smell of too old potato peels or when I watch you in your old man’s shoes with the little toe cut out sitting, waiting for your mind like next week’s grocery I say when I watch you you wet brown bag of a woman who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia used to be called the Georgia Rose I stand up through your...
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Vade Mecum, Billy Collins
I want the scissors to be sharp and the table perfectly level when you cut me out of my life and paste me in that book you always carry. (via ahuntersheart) (via bon-bon)
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Class, Cairo and Catalonia « SOUTH / SOUTH →
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January 29th Prayer
I think the images from Egypt that haunt me the most are those of people kneeling and praying in the street with riot police standing behind them. The Internet allows us to express and feel solidarity in real time. I’m praying with you, my heart is racing with yours, I’m crying with you. Our lives aren’t on the line.
I am not religious, but last night I lit candles and prayed....
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I Need Help, Edward Hirsch
For all the insomniacs in the world I want to build a new kind of machine For flying out of the body at night. This will win peace prizes, I know it, But I can’t do it myself; I’m exhausted, I need help from the inventors. I admit I’m desperate, I know That the legs in my legs are trembling And the skeleton wants out of my body Because the night of the rock has fallen. I want someone...
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Are We Witnessing the Start of a Global... →
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“Dazed Digital: Do you think there are certain things one can reach for in music...”
– Dazed Digital | Saul Williams: Explain My Heart Video Exclusive
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“Dazed Digital: Sadly, most artists don’t share that conviction, even hip hop has...”
– Dazed Digital | Saul Williams: Explain My Heart Video Exclusive
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“Dazed Digital: Would you say that wanting to switch people on to something...”
– Dazed Digital | Saul Williams: Explain My Heart Video Exclusive
Prescient
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“Music is the weapon of the future.”
– Fela Kuti
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I’ve tried so many makeup testers today my hand looks like I’ve been punching rainbows.
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“And then. This silence. This horrible silence of an entire nation wiped off the...”
– Brian Whitaker’s blog, January 2011
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“He who allows oppression shares the crime.”
– Desiderius Erasmus
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Egyptian slogans (copied from the Angry Arab)
Dalia kindly translated those Egyptian slogans that I posted yesterday: “ا مبارك ارحل غور أحسن بكره تموت مقتول “Oh Mubarak leave for good, or else tomorrow you’ll be killed” • الهلال ويا الصليب بيقولوا لأ يا حبيب“The crescent and the cross say “no” my love / darling” (Jonathan sent me this: “Just FYI the Habib in الهلال ويا الصليب بيقولوا لأ يا حبيب is surely Interior Minister Habib el-Adly,...
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I’ve been thinking a lot about how your world must change when everyone you know becomes a revolutionary overnight, a potential martyr.
Egypt, Tunisia, my heart is in my mouth.
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The Boy, Marie Howe
My older brother is walking down the sidewalk into the suburban summer night: white T-shirt, blue jeans— to the field at the end of the street. Hangers Hideout the boys called it, an undeveloped plot, a pit overgrown with weeds, some old furniture thrown down there, and some metal hangers clinking in the trees like wind chimes. He’s running away from home because our father wants to cut his hair....
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The Sound, Kim Addonizio
Marc says the suffering that we don’t see still makes a sort of sound—a subtle, soft noise, nothing like the cries of screams that we might think of—more the slight scrape of a hat doffed by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back to let a lovely woman pass, her dress just brushing his coat. Or else it’s like a crack in an old foundation, slowly widening, the stress and slippage going on unnoticed...
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“I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still...”
– Herman Hesse, Demian (via nightmarebrunette)
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Ice cube melting on my tongue while I lie in the dark. My enemy throat is hushed. Teeth cracking ice like Spring.
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Small Countries, Dennis Nurkse
A man and a woman are lying together listening to news of a war. The radio dial is the only light in the room. Casualties are read out. He thinks, “Those are people I no longer have to love,” and he touches her hair and calls her name but it sounds strange to her like a stone left over from a house already built.
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Art Poétique, Jacques Roubaud
What the poem was saying, I’ve forgotten I had known what the poem was saying, but I’ve forgotten The poem was saying this, but this that the poem was saying, I’ve forgotten That the poem was saying this, is this what the poem was saying? If that’s what the poem was saying, I’ve forgotten Perhaps, without knowing what the poem was...
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Ash Ode, Dean Young
When I saw you ahead I ran two blocks shouting your name then realizing it wasn’t you but some alarmed pretender, I went on running, shouting now into the sky, continuing your fame and luster. Since I’ve been incinerated, I’ve oft returned to this thought, that all things loved are pursued and never caught, even as you slept beside me you were flying off. At least what’s never...
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“Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap...”
– Arundhati Roy (via alphabetasoup)
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The Two Elizas, 2009 by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
(after ‘Two Fridas’, 1939)
Be near me & tell where the blood is going. Too often bull-bellied clouds slow drag our hips, fracturing both girl & woman. Barbed ideals conjoin & coil their righteous dreams through arteries, thick as autumn vines that keep light out. And I must take my own hand, must hold my own hand, as if it were a stave of notes scattered from a razed...
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Myth, Ekoko Omadeke
Any swan could put his wings around your neck; hold you down against the river while he honks and flies. If you’re lucky, the baby will be a demi-god or soldier. If you’re unlucky the baby will become an old woman. Some wolves eat grandmothers. Some girl wears the canines’ favorite color, hands them napkins and finger food at dinner parties, trains to be a lady while her father...
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“Are you aware that you are conditioned? That is the first thing to ask yourself,...”
– J. Krishnamurti (Thank you, buffleheadcabin & themagnificentlifeofplants)
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“It is too easy to demonise Israel, in part because the government, the army and...”
– Israel: The ugly truth - as it slides further into open and violent racism, Israel offers the Western world a reflection of itself. (via thenoobyorker)
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nightmarebrunette:
Catherine A.D. — The Wolves...