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Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980

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humans

i think things are only wonderful once humans have gotten their hands on them. we’re such wonderful, horrible, creative, destructive, imagination-filled creatures. we make dents in wood tables, and cracks in the leather seats of an old car, and paint stains on jeans, and sneakers covered in scuffs and marker. their value isn’t built in, it comes from the fact a human has loved them. they hold the stories of a thousand thousand lives, hands dug deep into the dirt, mud packed under the fingernails, 500 B.C. and 2022 A.D. identical in soul. humans and their urge to shout and sing and spin and dance and cry and laugh. humans and the silly little voices they adopt - squeaky for pets, accented for jokes, quiet and sweet for comfort. humans and the incurable urge we all seem to have to squish ourselves close together; to intertwine our fingers, to wrap our arms around each other and squeeze, to wrestle and tickle and kiss and poke and shove. we hum little songs to ourselves and move our bodies to sounds we find pleasing and splatter colorful goo over blank canvases and pull thread through fabric for no purpose other than joy. we make convoluted games with too many rules to keep a group of our favorite humans in the same space and interacting. we tear each other apart, shoot each other with guns and stab each other with knives and hurt and rape and murder and violate. we’re awful, but we’re still magic in a bottle. we pretend to be new, exciting people on a stage or a camera for humans without that skill to enjoy. we cry when others of our kind die; we mourn them, make a big deal of their return to the earth and visit the bones they’ve left behind. the pitfalls of the human condition would be so much easier to reconcile if it weren’t for the staggering peaks, for all the reasons i find to keep on living to see; we’re so incomprehensibly hard to hate, even when we’re the worst.

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andrew wyeth + franz kafka / the castle

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the tick of the clock.

i hate that things take time.

i know that rome wasn’t built in a day,

but i am not constructing an empire,

there is no romulus, no lupa,

brick and mortar is not needed,

my goal is not a legacy.

i hate that things take time.

day after day passes with little progress made,

vicious cuts and mortal wounds fade,

tighten and pucker my skin pink,

and yet i still know nothing,

not one thing that tells me who i am.

i hate that things take time.

diving head first is my instinct,

and though it is often ill fated,

leaning into immediate success

has never steered me wrong,

and everything i’ve ever discarded,

laid barren and wasted behind me,

i had simply not put effort into.

i hate that things take time.

i never make perfect stroke on a page,

every word i write has a better alternate,

dancers have better steps,

my camera never finds that perfect frame,

things take time, yes,

practice makes perfect,

rome wasn’t built in a day,

but what i really hate,

what i can never forgive,

is that life dictates

what is proper to give time to,

but none of it is what i love,

and so, rather than hate the system,

the process gains my ire.

i hate that things take time.

-

@pentoeverypage on instagram

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rain.

the pristine pitter patter

on the rickety plastic overhang,

the angry, raucous downpour

like god’s rage and women’s delight,

the icy rivulets that trace trails

on windowpanes and pale skin,

fingers and cheeks stained red

like cherry juice,

bringing clean air,

the kind that clears sticky lungs like no other,

water running together

so you can’t tell where tears end

and rain begins,

washing the remains of panic

into inconsequential nothingness,

timing heartbeats

and breaths

and lifetimes in seasons,

watching as the concrete stains

dark and damp,

day and night running together

until there’s no difference at all,

because the rain doesn’t care,

not that you’re joyful, bright,

not that you’re devastated, broken

not that your mom shuts doors too hard,

or that your frame shakes,

violent and blurring, no,

rain couldn’t care less,

it falls all the same.

-

@pentoeverypage on instagram

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Did You Finish What You Started?

it’s different, putting pencil to paper.

it’s mechanic. personal. it feels like the way

you desire me: rough and discordant,

easily edited for your liking, but forever leaving

graphite imprints on my lined life. you tear

slits into our page when you add too much

pressure, and mark me up, ruin me, fix me until

i am the poem you want me to be. you love me

like a coffee high in the late hours of lamplight night

and crumple me, cast me aside, leave me in the

junk drawer of our short-lived eternity.

i have resigned myself to being your rough draft.

you write you and me before you can ever write

you and greatness, but i’ll live on, i promise,

in eraser shavings and words you could

never really share out loud.

-

@jac_barfield_writes on instagram