“i like every person i meet. for like 17 days. after that either they expect too much or give too little. expectations and expectations and some more. it’s not like they like me indefinitely. shall i put in the effort and emotion to get to know them beyond their superficial layers and see the love and the hurt and the humanity in them when they are just going to stop caring about my existence perhaps at day 67 or 172? Shall i pacify the devil inside them when it will laugh at my attempts when they walk away at day 213? shall i? or shall i just shut up and go to sleep.”
—
all we need is hope, not war
children of the world pj
by valentini mavrodoglou
I haven’t seen you in a while. Oh, how I miss your smile. Sometimes I start to pick up the phone to dial, but I haven’t seen you in a while. One day our paths my cross again. You’ll see all these roses that have begun to pile. Until then I will hope and pray for you, my love. It’s all I can do. I haven’t seen you in a while.
J.c.A
“Step into my poem, I will be there for your heart, in this gondola of rain and hope.”
—
American sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), here at 19 in 1923.
I wanna run away with someone in the middle of the night and go on adventures and see the world and eat at cheap truck stops and sit on top of our car and look at the stars and just be somewhere other than here.
light
mitski // blanche dubois
BLUE LIGHT // ABBEY // A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
the hardest thing about poetry
is honesty.
how do i give words to the
interior of my soul
and then put it out for
the entire world to see?
knowing that there are
blurry faces i see everyday
but don’t really talk to
who will remember my poems
the next time they look at
my face and think-
this is what she feels,
this is what she hides.
so, here is a confession
as the new year is upon us:
much of what i write isn’t honest,
it isn’t me.
my poetry is not me.
if you want to find me,
if you seek what i hide,
look carefully in the spaces
between the words,
in the pauses and the hyphens.
search for me in the white in between
the black print,
in all the unexpressed
in the midst of the art.
even at my best,
find me in the silence
bursting between the
adjacent syllables,
then don’t just look,
hear,
listen to what one word
whispers to the other,
how they acknowledge the unsaid
by leaving space for it on the screen
to exist
then don’t just hear,
smell,
breathe in the vaguely musky scent
of all the letters that never made it
on to the screen in front of you
because i pressed backspace,
either because they didn’t really
say what i really wanted to
or because they said it a little too well.
then when all this is done,
feel it.
understand
that this is why in school
you were taught four different interpretations
for a single line and although
that might exasperate you,
this is why a poem is more than
the sum of the words that
it consists of,
this is the reason why the words
you read on paper and on your screen
will never be where the
true meaning of the poem lies.
but the truth sits there
squeezed in between all the noise,
patiently waiting,
somehow always the winner
of this game of
literary hide and seek.
but now,
if you want to,
at least you know where to find it.
“There’s so much more to life than finding someone who will want you, or being sad over someone who doesn’t. There’s a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself without hoping someone will fall in love with you along the way, and it doesn’t need to be painful or empty. You need to fill yourself up with love. Not anyone else. Become a whole being on your own. Go on adventures, fall asleep in the woods with friends, wander around the city at night, sit in a coffee shop on your own, write on bathroom stalls, leave notes in library books, dress up for yourself, give to others, smile a lot. Do all things with love, but don’t romanticize life like you can’t survive without it. Live for yourself and be happy on your own. It isn’t any less beautiful, I promise.”
— Emery Allen (via wordsnquotes)
By ryancphoto
— an anonymous woman on coming to terms with being a lesbian in the 1950’s-60’s, from an interview with Deborah Goleman Wolf