#this is an excerpt of a full poem

[burninlovebutler]

‘Big City Boy’

Loving you

Is like loving

A big city

Loved by many

But known

By few

I wish you knew me

The way

I know you

[-m.m]

[lamp2003]

triple jump september

[averlym]

fairest of the fair

[soracities]

"Maybe in Another Life", Tiana Clark

I think of the kids I may or may not have. I think about their hair, the possible dark-brown curls. Baby fingers tapping on my face. I haven’t made up my mind yet, but my body is making decisions before I am ready

to make them. I can’t seem to say what it is I want out loud. I can almost see all my different lives, almost taste them, like trying to catch the tail end of a cinematic dream before it evaporates. I want to capture it, a glimpse,

sneak a peek at each distant future before the View-Master reel clicks. I want to follow the perfume of each life I could live and linger in it: the vanillas. Milk leaking from my breasts. Cereal. The piquant odor of parenthood.

The one where I am a mother negotiating happiness. The one where I am not a mother and still negotiating happiness, beauty, and rest. Almost 39, and I’ve never loved myself more, yet nostalgia wavers all around me

like a montage of mirages muddling memories, complicating hope, making me miss things I’ve already mourned. The bargaining—ain’t it a bitch? The bargaining aspect of grief, to constantly release that which I’ve already

let go of, but how the water in my mind brings it all back like the flood current each day, and each morning, in the ebb I see the seafloor for what it is, another landscape of loss and renewal, another augur deciphering the tea leaves

in the tide pool revealing the children I might never name, have, or hold. There is a finite number of eggs and books inside me. I am trying to release them. I am trying to mourn the possible futures bursting before me in a fantastic finale

of fireworks, bursting in my mouth like red caviar as I try to find the right words to say goodbye to little faces I can only imagine. I’m not sure what I want. Each decision seems to dissolve at the edge of the beach softened by the watercolor

cream of winter floating above the same shore where Eliot wrote “The Waste Land” after a mental breakdown a hundred and one years before me, writing “On Margate Sands. / I can connect / Nothing with nothing.” I keep looking at the gentle waves

for answers without trying to make another metaphor. What if the image of what I’m feeling is too heavy to be carried over into language? Maybe in another life you get to live out all the lives you’ve imagined. Maybe in this life

I become who I am by not knowing—

[tendermimi]

richard siken “driving, not washing” / benjamin 2018 / ilya kaminsky “while the child sleeps, sonya undresses”

[env0writes]

Romeo: How might I have loved before this night That in all my sixteen years Spent skirting the chase Chasing the skirt Skating the word of the law The law of love To passions flippant flame

Juliet: How might I have loved before this night In that all my thirteen years Spent playing pretend Pretending to play Playing at love filial piety And most piously To passions most devout

Juliet: Romeo: I love You Most devoutly As my servant Like the moon Illuminated by the sun Sweet first Amongst all the others Kiss And kiss me again Oh, sin Give me once more Forgive me, father That we might part in peace

Romeo & Juliet: That we might die, die, die Oh, dagger, oh, poison Oh, dire hate that loves to hate thy love Were not there moments to pause To cease this star-crossed adventure That we must ever be spoken for Not spoken to How might we have loved before this night This wretched wrestled night Predicated on royal pleas, so pleasingly met Upon deaf ears That others will take up arms in our names What is a name, Would not a rose smell as sweet By any other name And be just as bloody plucked Pricked by such pricks Petty tricks and battles With sharpened tongues and sharper swords Oh, love, most devout Without such foolish churlish errand played So desperate to elope We, the abandoned by distrust In the name of what? A name? Let us die and with us these names Forget us and these names For ours is not the blood to spill No blood need water these streets Yet by our blood, be baptized By our love’s fickle flickering flame Er’ barely sparked Before heavy boots stamped No wildfire spread here to blossom Into loves true hellacious inferno Not even Dante could predict such passions No the Heavenly Father, Nor Father whom warily was led to wed us That we might die How might we have loved before this night?

NaNoWriMo Vol. 4, 11.13.24 “Before This Night”

@env0writes C.Buck   Ko-Fi & Venmo: @Zenv0 Support Your Local Artists!

[proseinthegarden]

excerpt from moonlight (a poem by proseinthegarden)

[zazikels]

"Do you think we can win this?" "I do."

[as-nowilove]

I heard you moved to the city, 9/18/2024

[burninlovebutler]

‘1969’

You are the cheap liquor to pass the time,

he is 1969 wine

I am not yours,

and he is not mine

[-mine; m.m]

[wateryrealm]

Snow is falling on the road—the white camomile flowers. Perhaps, little by little, I shall reach the windows where shines a welcoming light?…My tired feet tread on the the white camomile flowers…Could I but touch peace!

from Nikolai Klyuev’s “The Coming of Peace,” Lament for Esenin (tr. Dimitri Obolensky)

[symptomofloves]

links: dogfish - i thought that i could not be hurt - on angels

[echoland]

.

[tendermimi]

— Mary Oliver, Doesn’t Every Poet Write a Poem about Unrequited Love?

[generallyjl]

A Sip of Water

[...]

There is a voice inside me.

It never leaves me.

Always telling me: Be afraid! Be terrified!

Run away.

No one will remain for you.

You were not born to live.

You were born to die.

I barely stand up, ignoring my inner voice.

And in a weird moment, I go for a drink.

Water.

Again, it’s not a party.

I take careful steps to avoid stepping on limbs.

Limbs everywhere.

Thank God they are warm.

And I trek for water.

[...]

Families genocided.

A whole hospital bombed.

The network was cut off.

Weeping.

Limbs. Cold.

Medics carry the martyrs, then soon become martyrs.

No one is safe.

Noise around me.

And noise inside me.

None is a happy sound.

The only sound I hear is: Run!

[...]

I don’t know what is going to happen.

Or what is happening.

All I want is not to see my body enveloped in or below the rubble.

I am scared.

A little one asks for water.

She beams, feebly.

I am thirsty.

But I am not afraid.

- Marah Hatoum

(Gaza, 2 November 2023)

[crossbackpoke-check]

do you really believe in him? is he a good kid? no problems? you're gonna love him. you're gonna love him.