so much joy it hurts

Click here to find me out

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:19:43 +1000

I peach controversy. Preoccupy me. Translate my dirty mouth. Braille my skin. Braid my hair like plaited sweet bread. Rib each of my fingers with silver rings. Brown sugar and butter me. Dust icing sugar on to me. Pipe pink sugary roses on my nipples. Pierce my ears with silver cachous. Transfuse my blood with honey. Shoulder my erogenous zones. Lift up my tongue to check for a choir. Read my body to sleep. Wishbone me. Spoon with me in a sleeper cell. Preach sin to me and drag me across a cold floor by my hair. Peach sin me.

termina sunt

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:50:51 +1000

termina sunt

My feelings for you were a photoshopped-in lens flare.

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:23:38 +1000

My feelings for you were a photoshopped-in lens flare.

"Follow writers on twitter, or at least those writers crass enough to use that slightly boastful,..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 21:27:00 +1000

“Follow writers on twitter, or at least those writers crass enough to use that slightly boastful, thoroughly vulgar ‘#amwriting’ tag, and you’ll see proud iterations of wordlengths, in thousands of words, as if that’s what matters. Books are more than a certain thickness of spine, after all. People mistake length for heft; that latter quality is the crucial one.”

- Adam Roberts (via zipfinger)

The writers I follow on Twitter don’t even care about calling themselves writers. They aren’t like this. We write poems together in 140ch across timelines. Surrealists tell funnier jokes than the professional comedians with hundreds of thousands of followers, and invent memes that you’ll never see on Facebook. Whenever I see the #amwriting hashtag, it’s exactly what Adam Roberts describes. I realise these aren’t the people whose writing I want to read anyway.

accidentalformalist: Francis Alÿs The Nightwatch Surveillance...

Mon, 21 May 2012 23:27:06 +1000

accidentalformalist:

Francis Alÿs

The Nightwatch

Surveillance cameras observe a fox exploring the Tudor and Georgian rooms of the National Portrait Gallery at night.

To record my joy, two photos. After Prince, and the Love Symbol...

Sat, 19 May 2012 04:30:00 +1000

To record my joy, two photos. After Prince, and the Love Symbol necklace.
(One of the greatest nights of my entire life. There was Prince in concert…then the after party…was the jam.)

Siren Song, Emily Rosko

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:39:58 +1000

Baited it-that’s what we did. One big
mess. Slick fat of a leopard seal, a mermaid
curse in inky waters, places we’ll never
return to. I’m as part of the anchored
ship as any. I’m as reddened by hands
and murderously known. The songs
stars play clear out in the crystalline
heavens. Some lasting mention of the end
repeated each day we feast. When the seal
was hacked open, it thrashed first
like a bear, opened its jaw to show fangs
whiter than snow We heaved it up. Suspended, it
looked priest-solemn, frozen in wondrous
content we’ll never have. My saints
above me forgave nothing. We dread things.
We met the greater without cause or care.

Over the Wall, Refaat Alareer

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:05:46 +1000

‘There,’ points Grandma.

She had a tent that was a home.

She had a goat and a camel.

She had a rake and a fork and a trowel.

She had a machete and a watering can.

She had a grove and two hundred plants.

She had a child and another one and another one.

***

‘There,’ she insists.

I could not see

Because of the wall.

I could not hear

Because of the noise.

I could not smell

Because of the powder.

***

But I can always tell,

I am sure of Grandma

Who always was

And is still

And will always be.

She smells like soil.

And smiles like soil.

And blinks like soil

When touched by rain.

***

She has a house that is a tent

She has a key

And a memory.

She has a hope

And two hundred offspring.

***

Grandma is here

But lives there.

Our Bodies Break Light, Traci Brimhall

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:41:21 +1000

We crawl through the tall grass and idle light,
our chests against the earth so we can hear the river

underground. Our backs carry rotting wood and books
that hold no stories of damnation or miracles.

One day as we listen for water, we find a beekeeper—
one eye pearled by a cataract, the other cut out by his own hand

so he might know both types of blindness. When we stand
in front of him, he says we are prisms breaking light into color—

our right shoulders red, our left hips a wavering indigo.
His apiaries are empty except for dead queens, and he sits

on his quiet boxes humming as he licks honey from the bodies
of drones. He tells me he smelled my southern skin for miles,

says the graveyard is full of dead prophets. To you, he presents
his arms, tattooed with songs slave catchers whistle

as they unleash the dogs. He lets you see the burns on his chest
from the time he set fire to boats and pushed them out to sea.

You ask why no one believes in madness anymore,
and he tells you stars need a darkness to see themselves by.

When you ask about resurrection, he says, How can you doubt?
and shows you a deer licking salt from a lynched man’s palm.

Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:26:55 +1000

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

The moon is trespassing on you but I saint light, thurible in my lungs, terrible smoke and...

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:50:37 +1000

The moon is trespassing on you but I saint light, thurible in my lungs, terrible smoke and trespassing light. Robed, robbed, scented.

sigil to boys ratio

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:18:43 +1000

sigil to boys ratio

residue.

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:25:36 +1000

warsanshire:

i give myself five days to forget you.

on the first day i rust.

on the second i wilt.

on the third day i sit with friends but i think about your tongue.

i clean my room on the fourth day. i clean my body on the fourth day.

i try to replace your scent on the fourth day.

the fifth day, i adorn myself like the mouth of an inmate.

a wedding singer dressed in borrowed gold.

the midas of cheap metal.

tinsel in the middle of summer.

crevice glitter, two days after the party.

i glow the way unwanted things do,

a neon sign that reads;

come, i still taste like someones else’s mouth.

Untitled.

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:45:55 +1000

babybirch:

I.

There is something about how we love each other.
The different ways. I read about it.
My hand turned into you means this, or doesn’t.
Like chilies there is a secret to the heat.
How I can only stomach them
when they are still green and new.

None of my love is old enough for history.

II.

I suppose to truly understand it all,
we need to go back.

How did we grow into this?

I get down on my knees in the earth
the earth of my childhood.
I smear my face with it. My face dust.

I interview your mother.

If we were some myth
you’d be the potter,
I’d be the heat that warps
all the clay in your hands.

III.

If we are talking about it,
I was not taught the usual ways of love.

I want to trust you
but as much as I love a body it betrays me.
Your arms. Your thick waist.
The way your legs root to the spot
like something for me to climb
that will eventually crumble.

IV.

I have to ask: what do we do with this love? This love in conflict.
This love that wanders off
like an unleashed dog.

Make plans. Make maps, make blueprints. In a house a thousand rooms
to be alone together.

And there is something to be said for hard work.

We fall asleep in silence,
but I sleep.

V.

I talk to a friend about repetition.
The comfort there is in it.
I tell every man about the size of my hands.

When we met, yours opening and closing on them
until they disappeared.

VI.

I don’t know how to touch someone
without trying to see through them.

I will always be bold in this way.

VII.

I think of all the ways we talk about love.

I lay down belly up
in an attempt to hand myself over to you.
I roll over and get up and walk away.

VIII.

I try to explain our differences to my psychiatrist.
She says, Close your eyes and picture all of your problems
sailing down a stream.

You are standing in the water barefoot. You are plucking smooth pebbles from the bed.

You get in the way of my calm.

IX.

At first when we begin to falter,
I will walk you through the days.
See this wall? Remember the beginning?
Where you held me roughly and took me.

Bring your hand to my cheek. This is where it burns.
On our skin, the scent of mud and fire.
The dampness that makes me ache. If you have to leave me
at least leave me your body.

X.

My hunger is always desperate.
I know how to starve and I know how to feed.

XI.

This nose I inherited
surely makes me a liar. To speak to you,
I put my mouth to every sad place
I can possibly think of.

XII.

There is meaning in the silence when we don’t talk.
The sound of our bodies hammering out of themselves
and into each other. If we were wild
we would be wearing each others’ skins.

What does language mean anyway? I can’t speak
sometimes, and I can’t speak another.

XIII.

I feel like I don’t ask for much.
In therapy, once you are gone I will say again,
If only they knew
what I was trying to tell them.
For every moment I am painted a monster
There is another when I am learning how to be tender.

XIV.

In your absence
I wear only the clothes that you have touched.
When the horses ride
they ride west away from us.
I am sure it means something
that there are deserts out there.

illllllllllllli: Yoko Ono, Glass Hammer and Glass Sphere. 1967

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:57:43 +1000

illllllllllllli:

Yoko Ono, Glass Hammer and Glass Sphere. 1967

Daynight, With Mountains Tied Inside, Alice Fulton

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:29:19 +1000

Chandelier too full of brilliance to be indolent.
            Your prisms enunciate the light
and don’t need rain to break it into rainbows.
Snow with six crutches in each crystal.
            Your livery your glitter, your purring
made visible. Only inanimate things can sparkle
without sweat. My spinet, the threat of music
            in its depths and miniature busts of men composers
carved of time on top. The hollow bench

held sheet music. Sing me
            Charm Gets In Your Eyes. I hear you best
when undistracted by your body. In headspace
technology, where flowers are living
            in glass globes, their fragrance vivisected.
Anything that blooms that long
will seem inanimate. Heaven. Grief
            like the sea. Keeps going. Over the same wrought
ground. The whole spent moan. Praise dies

in my throat or in the spooky rift
            between itself and its intended. Like a wish-
bone breaking. The little crutch inside
is not a toy. There is no night asylum.
            A restless bed, a haunt preserve,
a blanket rough as sailcloth. But sing me, was it kind
snow sometimes? With true divided lights and nothing
            flawed about it? If song goes wrong,
be dancerly. Dance me, at what point

does west turn to east as it spins?
            I’ve never understood. Perspective.
How charm gets to yes. Dance me Exile
and the Queendom, by request.
            It is a ferocious thing
to have your body as your instrument.
Glove over glove, let your dance express
            what I’ve been creeping like a vein of sweat
through a vastness of.

This tune with mountains tied inside
            and many silent letters
can be read as trackers scan the spaces
between toes and birders read the rustle
            left by birds. As any mammal
in its private purr hole knows,
the little crutch inside
            is not a crutch. More a sort of
steeple. Neither silver to be chased

nor gold to be beaten.
            You were==you are
more than ever like that too.
Noon upon noon,
            you customize this solitude
with spires
that want nothing from me
            and rise with no objective
as everything does when happy.

"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my..."

Tue, 08 May 2012 23:19:59 +1000

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

- Maurice Sendak (via bobulate)

Made You Die, Yasiin Bey, Dead Prez, and mikeflo’s tribute...

Tue, 08 May 2012 09:20:23 +1000

Made You Die, Yasiin Bey, Dead Prez, and mikeflo’s tribute to Trayvon Martin

Commenter diegoscp says it best: “Hip-Hop has spoken, no disrespect to the other emcees that have made tracks for Trayvon. This is fire though.”

Regarding Wave, Gary Snyder

Mon, 07 May 2012 19:41:15 +1000

The voice of the Dharma
       the voice
          now

A shimmering bell
       through all.

Every hill,    still.
Every tree alive. Every leaf.
All the slopes flow.
       old woods, new seedlings,
       tall grasses plumes.

Dark hollows; peaks of light.
wind stirs    the cool side
Each leaf living.
       All the hills.

         The Voice
         is a wife
            to



         him still.

When you undress me, take god off last.

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:17:09 +1000

When you undress me, take god off last.