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The world grows dark, I grow mad.
Oh, how the time grows near!
It growls in my ear.
Black fan travels side to side,
head to toe, tide to tide.
Hair like the leaves of trees
waves in the curling fingers of the breeze.
I lie in bed, I paint my head,
I drape my body in black and red.
Cigarettes, money
Cellphone, I.D..
A knock at my door:
“are you ready?”
(What is it about the scent of you
that is so very sudden, arresting?
Dark smoke, a hint of sex,
the damp, humid, swollen night
clinging to your wet hair.)
We follow the music, and we arrive,
we watch the streetlamps come alive:
yellow beats on blackened streets.
“Welcome to Mobius,
the night that continuously folds in upon itself.
The rules are:
Always show respect for those around you,
Shake that fine-ass booty of yours whenever humanly possible,
and, of course,
This shit ain’t over ‘til the last record spins!”
And it’s the beat of a drum in your wild heart,
And it’s electric shocks from neck to knees.
It spins, it burns, it hears, it sees.
Hand reaches for sweat-soaked belt loops,
Lips find primal pulse raging
in veins of throat.
Upon drinking heavily and staying up all night long,
dawn creeps in, bathed in breath and soothed by song.
We hurry home.
When the sun comes up I lose my powers,
I count the seconds, I count the hours-
-but today I stay awake and pray.
Today you watch me remove the bones
of emotion, extracting them slowly
from their thin & cracked skin veil.
You tell me that I’m self-destructive.
I’m telling you, it’s more productive.
“This is a song to open the curtains to,”
I say, rising,
(a crescendo)
yanking the cord,
light tumbling in.
How dim it had been!
“Time is the cure,” they said.
I wanted to believe.
I no longer believe in the beautiful mirage that was december,
nor the helpless agony that was january.
It never happened.
I must tell myself: I am not diposable. Really.
I must tell myself: I am worthy of love.
Time is the cure.
In time, I will come to breath fire when arrogant boys push me out of their path on the way to the bong.
In time, I will be the one called, not calling at three in the morning out of loneliness and need.
In time, I will respond to attacks not with anger and hurt, but with the knowing smile of one above it all.
In time, all around me will be infused with the love I radiate.
In time, I will be a force to be reckoned with.
The time is now.
for sanity’s sake:
e.e. cummings, allen ginsberg, frank o’hara, ambient grooves, people with nurturing natures, generosity, hugs, eye contact, sincerity, sex, fuck buddies, kissing, massage oil, my skillet, pot, concerta, words, little wings, led zeppelin, badly drawn boy, frank sinatra, ella fitzgerald.
trees, color, sight, taste, touch, hearing, listening, understanding, empathizing, sympathizing, holding, breathing, playing, reaching.
alive. instants. flashes of insight. epiphanies. change.
sleep, dreams, stories, holding hands, crushes, ecstatic poetry, beaches, napping like a kitten in a sunray, waking up to a warm breeze, the sound of rain, letting go, moving on, random acts of kindness, friends&good movies&pot&candy, dancing without rhyme or reason, inspiration, playing hooky, cooking eggs&fucking&being high and giggly, weshop, coffee, swooning, surprises, gifts, the ground beneath my feet.
the sky above my head.
love.
these things exist.
“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
Mozart
“We are never so helplessly unhappy as when we lose love.”
Sigmund Freud
“Platonic love is like an inactive volcano.”
Andre Pevost
“Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is.”
Duke Ellington
“The story of a love is not important – what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.”
Helen Hayes
“To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.”
Francois Mauriac
“To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.”
Karen Sunde
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Love is not blind — it simply enables one to see things others fail to see.”
Anonymous
“The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.”
J. Krishnamurti
“All you need is love.”
John Lennon
“One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.”
Romain Rolland
“Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses.”
Thomas Robert Dewar
“We cannot tell the precise moment when love is formed. As in the filling of a vessel drop by drop, there is at last one which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.”
Unknown
“Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire.”
Francois de La Rouchefoucauld
“There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved.”
George Sand
“True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.”
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
“Love, you know, seeks to make happy rather than to be happy.”
Ralph Connor
“The best feelings are those that
Have no words to describe them….”
Michelle Hammersley
“A heart that loves is always young.”
A Greek Proverb
“Seduce my mind and you can have my body,
Find my soul and I’m yours forever.”
Anonymous
“I have loved to the point of madness;
That which is called madness,
That which to me,
Is the only sensible way to love.”
F. Sagan
“To be in love is merely to be
In a state of perpetual anesthesia:
To mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god
Or an ordinary young woman for a goddess.”
H.L. Mencken
“Other men said they have seen angels,
But I have seen thee
And thou art enough.”
G. Moore
“I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion –
I have shudder’d at it.
I shudder no more.
I could be martyr’d for my religion
Love is my religion
And I could die for that.
I could die for you.”
John Keats
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Love is a portion of the soul itself,
and it is of the same nature as the
celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.”
Victor Hugo
“The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.”
Pearl Bailey
“The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.”
Jacques Benigne Bossuel
“It’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
Herman Hesse
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
Aristotle
“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.”
Janos Arnay
“Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me.”
Sarah Bernhardt
lush rum
toxic skum
hush, hum
run! run run run run!
a world within a world
detached and free-floating;
a firm jaw.
do not watch anymore
do not care anymore
unattached to feelings,
which are fleeting,
to love,
which comes and goes,
to honesty,
which apparently has lost its meaning
in this day and age.
i tear myself to shreds
so that i may rebuild.
revolution time.
!!!.
bring on the ruckus,
caught in your gaze, amazed
and wondering what i ever did
to deserve
the sound of your laughter all around,
the contented silences.
can i keep you?
can i keep you warm?
minutes spin to hours to eons to death to silence
something is
out of tune
and, buried in,
(help),
sighs the breath,
(end),
i’m tired of this game
(leave)
is it time again for a
whole new thing?
(erase)
this scene is getting old,
i’m running out
(time)
Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In the flash of gold heels in the hard pavement
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poetry.
Oh God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.
-Pound
You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air while I was
blazing my tirade against someone who doesn’t
interest
me, it was love for you that set me
afire,
and isn’t it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings
writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand,
isn’t there
an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? And someone you love enters the room
and says wouldn’t
you like the eggs a little
different today?
And when they arrive they are
just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather
is holding
–
We come into the room, the windows
are empty, the sun is weak
and slippery on the ice. And a
sob comes, simply because it is
coldest of the things we know
-Frank O’Hara
The sounds of my restless throat are unceasing. I wonder if anyone else can hear my heart pounding? Is it me or the floor shaking? Man, I really wanted just to love you endlessly. This is not a satisfying conclusion. An uneven buzz like the buzzing in my head. The sound of my angry stomach. Soft whispers far behind me. Comfort comes and goes like sound. This room is a womb, or a tomb, carrying buried energy that won’t stop thrumming. I want to be heard. Hear me! I want to penetrate this quiet room with an ecstatic yawp or an agonized howl. listen Listen LiStEn LISTEN
-a human need, a burning desire, a hopeless endeavor. You don’t hear a single word I say. This is fruitless. This is agony. This is so fucking human.
The Heart of the Matter
The clock is blinking 8:08 and a distant scream is tickling the backs of our necks. It creeps in- this is the end. This is the first stirring of breath. Come now, this is how and what and why you would, come now, this is-
wow
thisissofuckinggood.
To Do (immediately):
Read everything ever written! Leave poetry on bathroom stalls. Chew thoughts with gusto. Stay up all night playing. Kiss all of your friends. Try everything at least once. Say “I love you” when you do. Climb more trees? Relish in the sound of your own laughter. Always say something new. Fuck and make love often. Celebrate the first day of spring and taste cold water. Breathe in and let go.
Record your dreams. Draw them! Draw for the sheer beauty of creation. Color in your life. Be unforgettable. Forget everything that came before this moment. Start now, act immediately. Proclaim your sovereignty over yourself. Let no one keep you from the ecstatic center of all being. Declare your body your own and feel the weight of your steps. Surround everything with music and sing along. Make up your own songs! Listen like you’re the one speaking. You are the one speaking. We are one worn, wheezing being begging to be set free.
You are free, to do as I- Unplug your television. Wrestle, banter, be silly, be happy. Act decisively. Challenge people’s view of reality. Drive with the windows down and the music up loud and roaring and soon you’ll be soaring if they told you life was boring they were utterly wrong.
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