I am scared of you.
I’m looking for some quality penpals. If you’re interested click here.
I also have a book for sale.
Teddy Roosevelt’s diary entry from the day his wife died. He never spoke of her death again.
Weigh in: Is this art? Are his words an outpouring of poetic sadness, or is it just raw emotion? Does art need the intent of being art to be art?
Our history is noble and tragic
Like a tyrant’s glaring mask
No hazard nor magical drama
No trivial detail
Makes pathos of our love
Opium possessed de Quincey
Chaste poison drunk to Anne
He dreamed his life away
On on since all must past
I’ll frequently turn back
Memories are hunting horns
Whose sound dies out along with the wind
There were moments when the black river
put a yoke on all my powers.
I saw the small waters large
and the gentle shores steep and high.
Turning, I fought
and heard the waters within me,
the good and beautiful black waters—
then I breathed golden strength again.
The river flowed, rigid and strong.Poem by Egon Schiele, originally in German
Music While Drowning - Book of German Expressionist Poetry
Typewriter Series #3 by Tyler Knott Gregson.
because I fell asleep
thinking of him?
If only I’d known I was dreaming
I’d never have wakened."
(Source: gotterdammerung.org, via fromthefloatingworld)
Mexican cookies, a fragrant yellow tea.
Browsed the bookstores. You
asked mildly, “Bob, who is Ugo Betti?”
A bearded bird-like man
(he looked like a Russian priest
with imperial bearing
and a black ransacked raincoat)
turned to us, cleared
his cultural throat, and
told us both interminably
who Ugo Betti was. The slow
filtering of sun through windows
glazed to gold the silky hair
along your arms. Dusk was
a huge weird phosphorescent beast
dying slowly out across the bay.
Our house waited and our books,
the skinny little soldiers on the shelves.
After dinner I read one anyway.
You chanted, “Ugo Betti has no bones,”
and when I said, “The limits of my language
are the limits of my world,” you laughed.
We spoke all night in tongues,
in fingertips, in teeth."
Robert Hass, “Spring” (Field Guide, Yale University Press, 1973)
(Source: gammasandgerunds)
If a man is only as good as his word,
then I want to marry a man with a vocabulary like yours.
The way you say dicey and delectable and octogenarian
in the same sentence— that really turns me on.
The way you describe the oranges in your backyard
using anarchistic and intimate in the same breath.
I would follow the legato and staccato of your tongue
wrapping around your diction
until listening become more like dreaming
and dreaming became more like kissing you.
I want to jump off the cliff of your voice
into the suicide of your stream of consciousness.
I want to visit the place in your heart where the wrong words die.
I want to map it out with a dictionary and points
of brilliant light until it looks more like a star chart
than a strategy for communication.
I want to see where your words are born.
I want to find a pattern in the astrology.
I want to memorize the scripts of your seductions.
I want to live in the long-winded epics of your disappointments,
in the haiku of your epiphanies.
I want to know all the names you’ve given your desires.
I want to find my name among them,
‘cause there is nothing more wrecking sexy than the right word.
I want to thank whoever told you
there was no such thing as a synonym.
I want to throw a party for the heartbreak
that turned you into a poet.
And if it is true that a man is only as good as his word
then, sweet jesus, let me be there
the first time you are speechless,
and all your explosive wisdom becomes
a burning ball of sun in your throat,
and all you can bring yourself to utter is, oh god, oh god.
I’ve been seeing this poem reblogged but the words are wrong. I just wanted to give y’all the actual, non-Def Poetry Jam edited version of the poem. During the show, I had just gotten out of the hospital and my medication was affecting my short term memory. So I got two lines in and knew I was going to forget some lines so I sort of rewrote it on stage. This is the real version.
b.
i want to kiss you
shadow you jawline
against touch
longing
kiss you
scent of musk
salt water and sea foam
clean
kiss you
near god
amongst strangers
dare either to stop me
keep me
want to kiss you
bitter
tired of waiting
wondering
empty
want to kiss you
steady as forever
small as favor
kiss you
curve where shoulder
meets neck
silk of throat
rough of chin
elbow
wrists
then rest
chest
back
hip to hip
dip of belly
want to hold you
entwined like vows
palm against palm
fingers laced and waiting
wish to kiss you
Unbroken
Before too many hearts
Snap like dried and
Dead things
this longing
this waitinglike nothing before or since
just one,
small
solitary
kiss
Quiet and quick
Silent and subtle
I hope that it alone will
speak volumes
Come on. Let’s make this good.
Ask Show me what you got? Buy my book. (Updated Page - New Pictures)
It seems we’ve left skin
in each other’s lungs. I should have
looked under your bed skirt
for my wallet, but how
could credit cards compare
to the sneeze after we’ve parted?
Gone and still you make me
reach for a tissue—still my palms
turn circles in the red
breakwater of your heartbeat.
I want to tell you, I have nothing
but respect for your ribcage
now that we both know
it’s not big enough to hold us.
No one should ask the other
“What were you thinking?”
No one, that is,
who doesn’t want to hear about the past
and its inhabitants,
or the strange loneliness of the present
filled, even as it may be, with pleasure,
or those snapshots
of the future, different heads
on different bodies.
Some people actually desire honesty.
They must never have broken
into their own solitary houses
after having misplaced the key,
never seen with an intruder’s eyes
what is theirs.
