I want this world

Feel like I should walk around with this poem taped to my forehead.

#obsessed

Fuck, man, there is so much good art in the world! This is gonna be on repeat for a couple of days.



via The Killing Moon

p.s. The more I watch this, the more I realize this is a black and white version of how I feel when I write poems. Basically, this is my life.

Poem by Richard Brautigan

Today I've been responding to emails from friends and working on my lecture, the inspiration for which is Richard Brautigan, so I've been absorbing myself in his life and work, which is a wonderful way to spend the first half of a Saturday... the second half will be spent photographing a wedding reception... 


"On Real Estate" by Richard Brautigan


I have emotions
that are like newspapers that
     read themselves. 

I go for days at a time
trapped in the want ads. 

I feel as if I am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house: 

     18 rooms
     $37,000
     I'm yours
     ghosts and all.

obsessed

it's been so long since I've discovered a band and instantly fell in love. Tonight, that happened. Meet Alt-J:





Now dissolve me, two tabs on your tongue,
A herd of shepherds to herd the sheep, sleep now my only one.
Broken sweethearts who sleep apart
Both still pine for the other's side spine, spoon as sleep starts.
And pulse to pulse, now shush.

She makes the sound, the sound the sea makes to calm me down.

I am see-through, soap sliver you're so thin,
As I begin rubbing lathers up your state worsens on my skin.
And gold, fatless finger to lip, one two three four hush.
And pulse to pulse, now shush.

She makes the sound, the sound the sea makes to calm me down.
She makes the sound, the sound the sea makes, I am tired now.
She makes the sound the sea makes, knee-deep in the north sea (x8)

the universe inside you

"Each of us is conceived with a unique set of coiled genes 'primed' for realization. We are born with a desire to develop our resources and contribute our matured talents to the pool of human resources. This unfolding and becoming of an individual self is not only a biological activity--it is also a spiritual one. When we bring to life our unique personal contribution, we are active, local participants in the endless cosmic drama of the creation of ultimate meaning, as the universe, itself divine, 'becomes.'"

--Albert Pesso

Also, this:

music & poetry & VCFA update

Summer residency is quickly heading toward its bittersweet end.... Today is a low-key day in terms of scheduled readings and lectures... All that's on my schedule today is lunch with my advisor and a reading. The afternoon of the fourth is always like "the weekend" -- there's the prose v. poets softball game, and a catered picnic, and the talent show.... basically everyone is encouraged to take the afternoon and evening off. I don't think anyone needs much encouraging!

Last night was the graduation dance party, which was much needed. After being in my head so damn much, I was craving some loud music and an opportunity to MOVE MY BODY. So fun. I miss my speakers at home.

A friend shared this song with me the other day. I'm hooked:



Do you remember the late morning
when we went back to bed,
when we found the first position
and every muscle rested

I do remember that I already knew
it was the last time,
the last time for first positions
the last time you'll be mine

Aaaaoo aoo aoo ao
Aaaaoo aoo aoo ao

Do you remember the scars I showed you
the stories I told you
how I always said forever
when you aksed me to stay true

do you remember when we forgot
how to smile at each other
to believe that the other
wants only whats good for you

Do you remember the late morning
when we went back to bed,
when we found the first position
and every muscle rested

I do remember that I already knew
it was the last time,
the last time for first positions
the last time you'll be mine


And here's the poem I'm especially loving today, "Inside Out" by Diane Wakowski 

I walk the purple carpet into your eye

carrying the silver butter server

but a truck rumbles by,

                      leaving its black tire prints on my foot

and old images          the sound of banging screen doors on hot   

             afternoons and a fly buzzing over the Kool-Aid spilled on   

             the sink

flicker, as reflections on the metal surface.

Come in, you said,

inside your paintings, inside the blood factory, inside the   

old songs that line your hands, inside

eyes that change like a snowflake every second,

inside spinach leaves holding that one piece of gravel,

inside the whiskers of a cat,

inside your old hat, and most of all inside your mouth where you   

grind the pigments with your teeth, painting

with a broken bottle on the floor, and painting

with an ostrich feather on the moon that rolls out of my mouth.

You cannot let me walk inside you too long inside   

the veins where my small feet touch

bottom.

You must reach inside and pull me

like a silver bullet

from your arm.

And lucky to be here

"Even though we are in poetry school - -and lucky to be here -- isn't it true that we are dealing with something that began before time...?"

--Matthew Dickman in his lecture today

Poem: If You Knew by Ellen Bass

This morning I went to a great lecture on Surrealism. Here's a poem that was cited:

If You Knew
by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

late night music & thoughts

If Evelyn wasn't sleeping right now I'd be blasting this through my speakers. 

p.s. Tomorrow is Evelyn's birthday, which means that about exactly three years ago at this moment I started going into labor, which, for those of you who have not experienced childbirth, is as unpleasant as all the stories you've heard. But seeing her, meeting her outside my body for the first time... I'm still trying to put it into words. The phrases "truly amazing" and "fucking weird" come to mind... 

Yeah, that about explains it.

let's go on a road trip: southwest

I've never been to the southwestern part of the country but am dreaming of it more and more...

click images for url

color!

because i needed something to brighten up these rainy days... (and i guess the color on my head just isn't enough!)

watch this.

are you doing it properly?

all photos from photobucket, click through for link

"There is a world..."

"There is a world which poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world everybody else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world."

from Mary Ruefle's "Someone Reading a Book is a Sign of Order in the World."

Mary teaches poetry at VCFA, and I'm highly considering working with her for my last semester... she is brilliant.

More quotes from the above piece:

"I am a writer, and the next step is inevitable: I used what had been revealed to me in my own writing."

"We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love—a connection between things."

"Our minds and the universe—what else is there? Margaret Mead described intellectuals as those who are bored when they don't have the chance to talk interestingly enough. Now a book will talk interestingly to you. George Steiner describes the intellectual as one who can't read without a pencil in her hand. One who wants to talk back to the book, not take notes but make them: one who might write "The giraffe speaks!" in the margin. In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?"

And she quotes Kafka:

"'Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far away from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.'—Kafka in a letter, 1904"

rilke begs me...

its constant hunger

Source: truthandfairytales.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Source: tumblr.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Source: tumblr.com via Sarah on Pinterest

boom

Source: danceabletragedy.tumblr.com via Sarah on Pinterest

"This Morning" {poem by Raymond Carver}

   

This Morning

This morning was something. A little snow
lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear
blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,
as far as the eye could see.
Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went
for a walk -- determined not to return
until I took in what Nature had to offer.
I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.
Crossed a field strewn with rocks
where snow had drifted. Kept going
until I reached the bluff.
Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and
the gulls wheeling over the white beach
far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure
cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts
began to wander. I had to will
myself to see what I was seeing
and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is what
mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,
for a minute or two!) For a minute or two
it crowded out the usual musings on
what was right, and what was wrong -- duty,
tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should treat
with my former wife. All the things
I hoped would go away this morning.
The stuff I live with every day. What
I've trampled on in order to stay alive.
But for a minute or two I did forget
myself and everything else. I know I did.
For when I turned back I didn't know
where I was. Until some birds rose up
from the gnarled trees. And flew
in the direction I needed to be going.

--Raymond Carver

video source
poem source

"Sunday Service - Pre-Genesis"

thought this would be appropriate to share on this lovely sunny sunday morning:

"Pre-Genesis" - a poem by Gregory Sherl from his recently finished manuscript The Bible by Gregory Sherl, published at HTMLGIANT 

also, this photo by Emma Über:

DO A LOT OF WORK

FRENCH PRESS

French press coffee is oh so good. So smooth. Like if I drink enough of it I'll turn into a swan or something. (or a crazy bird who thinks she's a swan... )

source