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I read through my Goodreads Read list recently and wrote a poem:
"The girls"
The girl on the train The girl who played with fire The girl who chased the moon The girl with all the gifts Girl, interrupted Girl, wash your face
Going bovine Going postal Going solo
How to get dressed How to win friends and influence people How to be successful without hurting men’s feelings How not to stay single How not to hate your husband after kids How to keep house while drowning How to talk so little kids will listen How to be a family How to be a woman How to be happy How to do nothing How to eat fried worms
In the garden of beasts In the neighborhood of true In the company of cheerful ladies In the skin of a lion
When women were birds When the moon was ours When you are engulfed in flames Whatever you do, don’t run
Shiver Shout Shrill Smile
Wicked Wild Wifey
The witches are coming
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Under One Small Star
by Wislawa Szymborska
My apologies to chance for calling it necessity. My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all. Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due. May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade. My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second. My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first. Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home. Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger. I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths. I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m. Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time. Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water. And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage, your gaze always fixed on the same point in space, forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed. My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs. My apologies to great questions for small answers. Truth, please don't pay me much attention. Dignity, please be magnanimous. Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train. Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then. My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once. My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man. I know I won't be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way. Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
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This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw
(via)
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we have to write poems in my creative writing certificate program, so I pieced something together from Belphie's medical reports
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My dearest Granddaughter.
Na, “Annwyl Wyres”. You’ve asked me to write what I remember for your school project, So I suppose you’ll want me to do it in Welsh.
Cariad bach, Sai'n gwybod beth i ‘weud wrthi ti. Silence is a hard habit to break.
Right from day one, this wasn’t something we talked about. It was a non-subject. Mae'n rhyfedd pan ti'n meddwl am y peth; While the whole world and his wife were talking about us, With their editorials And their news items and so on A tra bod y beirdd yn sgwennu cerddi amdanyn ni A'r holl eiriau'n golchi droson ni
O'n ni'n dweud dim.
We said nothing.
So how much should you know? It’s part of your history, Our family’s history. But I can’t share my guilt with you For making the child I lost go to school that morning (I wish I’d never shared that with your Bampy even) And that I felt guilty for having A child that lived.
But I wouldn’t have had you otherwise, would I?
None of this makes sense.
There are pictures that you ought to see from afterwards. The photographer came over from America And he was here for weeks after the disaster - Rapoport his name was. ‘Sgwyla di ar ei luniau fe. He took one of the first baby born afterwards The first wedding The first smiles And how many hundreds have there been since then, thank God? Those pictures show us carrying on Because we had to.
But there are things that those photos can’t show.
Like candles in pockets. Your aunty was afraid of the dark. I would light a candle for her in the cemetary - Lots did. It was like a second home to us for a long time afterwards. I would take extra candles in my coat pocket In case somebody else’s Had burnt down to nothing.
These are things I will carry with me ‘til I die.
But Do you have a right to them?
Because it was so terrible, Should you feel like so many before you That it’s your duty To comment To sympathise To identify?
Elli di ddim, cariad bach.
But I don’t want you to forget, either.
I can only give your aunty flowers On be ranna i beth alla i ‘da di.
I’ll give you all the memories that I can.
- Llythyr Mam-gu, by the bard Ifor ap Glyn.
Written in memory of the Aberfan Disaster, 50 years ago.
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do you have the "my, what a cool and lovely autumn poem" perchance
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A little advice from someone studying extremist groups: if you’re in a social media environment where the daily ubiquitous message is that you have no hope of any kind of future and you can’t possibly achieve anything without a violent overthrow of society, you’re being radicalized, and not in the good way.
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— Yves Bonnefoy, Poems: 1959-1975 (trans. Richard Pevear)
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Notes to self
Fulfilling my drunken promise to my sober self: Ode to Clothes by Pablo Neruda Every morning you wait, clothes, over a chair, to fill yourself with my vanity, my love, my hope, my body. Barely risen from sleep, I relinquish the water, enter your sleeves, my legs look for the hollows of your legs, and so embraced by your indefatigable faithfulness I rise, to tread the grass, enter poetry, consider through the windows, the things, the men, the women, the deeds and the fights go on forming me, go on making me face things working my hands, opening my eyes, using my mouth, and so, clothes, I too go forming you, extending your elbows, snapping your threads, and so your life expands in the image of my life. In the wind you billow and snap as if you were my soul, at bad times you cling to my bones, vacant, for the night, darkness, sleep populate with their phantoms your wings and mine. I wonder if one day a bullet from the enemy will leave you stained with my blood and then you will die with me or one day not quite so dramatic but simple, you will fall ill, clothes, with me, grow old with me, with my body and joined we will enter the earth. Because of this each day I greet you with reverence and then you embrace me and I forget you, because we are one and we will go on facing the wind, in the night, the streets or the fight, a single body, one day, one day, some day, still.
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One for sorrow Two for joy Three for a girl Four for a boy Five for silver Six for gold Seven for a secret never to be told
Eight for a wish Nine for a kiss Ten for a chance you must not miss Eleven for a wasp Twelve for a bee Thirteen for a coffee Fourteen for tea
Fifteen for a pencil Sixteen for a pen Seventeen to hear these options once again
Eighteen for pepper Nineteen for salt Twenty for an accident in which you were not at fault
Twenty one for Jerry Twenty two for Tom Twenty three - where are all these magpies coming from?
Twenty five no seriously Thirty this is weird Forty eight from where have all these magpies suddenly appeared?
Sixty two stop counting Seventy just run Ninety nine the revolution of the magpies has begun
Two hundred no more sorrow Five hundred no more fears One thousand for how long the empire of the magpies will last in years
(John Finnemore)
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I see a lot of people quoting "Jessica has a forehead scar from the deep end of a pool. I ask Jessica what drowning feels like and she says not everything feels like something else" without crediting Angie Sijun Lou so. here's the full poem, "Jessica gives me a chill pill."
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Anyway here’s a poem I wrote about my cat
After “Do not stand at my grave and weep”, author disputed:
Do not stand at your bowl and meow. I gave you food. It’s in there now. I feed you at the dawning light, I feed you at the fall of night. I feed you kibbles mixed with meat And wet food for a special treat. I feed you even though you scoff At all the food within your trough. I feed you and still yet you yell Like as a beast from deepest hell. Do not stand at your bowl and cry. I gave you food. You will not die.
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