We've Been Having So Much Fun In Italy; A Lot Of Strolling, Talking, Swimming And Diving Into The Mediterranean.

What i’m learning is that growth is ugly. It’s not bubble baths and self-help books that teach you how to love yourself. It’s fighting, kicking and screaming against the self-doubt that weighs you down. It’s panicking at the possibility of failure while still moving forward anyway. It’s slowly peeling out of your skin and feeling the tenderness of a touch without armor. The process of growth is ugly, but it’s the product that makes it worthwhile.

a.m. // what i’m learning (via writingitdown)

Reading list for my travels through Italy: - War of the Foxes by Richard Siken - Life On Mars by Tracy K Smith (rereading it <3) - The New Testament by Jericho Brown - A Season In Hell by Arthur Rimbaud any suggestions?!!!

One does not find solitude, one creates it. Solitude is created alone. I have created it. Because I decided that here was where I should be alone, that I would be alone to write books. It happened this way. I was alone in this house. I shut myself in—of course, I was afraid. And then I began to love it. This house became the house of writing. My books come from this house. From this light as well, and from the garden. From the light reflecting off the pond. It has taken me twenty years to write what I just said.

Marguerite Duras, Writing (via mythologyofblue)

An excerpt from the poem Happy Poem by Sean Glatch (@7-weeks​); featured in his debut poetry collection 4:41 | buy it here!

On turning  24 and shedding skin

I walked through being 23 empty-handed & lonesome; stripped off the warmth in the mold that casted my existence. A complete year away from the lands I used to call home. Being 23 was very much about trying to become both tender as the blue in the sky & daredevil as the red dancing in flames. In aiming to be everything, life felt wilder than ever before; in aiming for the sun, my thinking sometimes got reduced to mere shorthand. A year I finally dared to flood. And in doing so, I ran face first into several walls that tore open my skin. I learned that some people will lie straight to your face; and it’s not like in the Hollywood realm where an evil look or a stuttering voice will give away their lying. It’s usually the opposite: pretty, very pretty smiles that will convince you to run barefoot on shattered glass. It took time and guts to wrap my head around the idea that it’s okay to walk into these labyrinths; to understand that some of the doors we open will lead to black holes and it’s not a crime but nature to let the body get absorbed into the void. 

Nature as living art. Nature as force. Nature as the shadows of our dreams. Nature as morning walks. Nature as being. My 23s were all about nature and my relationship with her. It felt like befriending a neighbor and finding out they’re cool as fuck: ‘hey you’ve always been there and it’s just now that I realize I’ve been missing out on great things all these years’. I bonded with nature and her frozen whites, vivid greens and Mediterranean blues. She held my hand and walked me barefoot through silent rainforest. She looked at me with eyes that shouted ‘dare to become’. And then it hit me: I’m more ready than ever to touch the world with my bare hands... even if it melts down in flames.

by Herr Bohn

The way I splash your relentless name In shivers about me. Watch him wallow. If he tastes mud as bitter as this poem   Of mine, then I win – and you love me.

Jericho Brown, Grip (via: skinthepoet)

lost o’clock  by jezzini 

but isn’t time just the carbon copy of a man-made concept brewed                           when a few thousand breaths                           twist their heads in reverse?

then there’s daddy hawkin saying time is an everlasting pie                           where its ending meets our cries &                           its purpose, don’t dare to fuckin’ ask.

some nights,                     when my minutes end their shift & my sighs wander adrift, i hear the clock                     spill its sins in pointless ticks;                                 the way those seconds come                                 climbing up these bones then diving down my throat                                 in emptiness. in the grey & the low;                                                        in these words i aim to draw                                                       on the skins of poems screaming love                                                       with perfect rhythms                                                               but no blood.

skin the poet

skin open the poet to find out how books have been deceiving you: not all hearts pump blood; some, expand in rhymes & contract in line breaks.

skin open the poet to confirm the rumor that between the liver & the spleen lives a tiny being; an imp, absent in daydreams -a social drinker- & a lover of the sax.

1.- take the poet’s arm, & rip off a tear of skin. behold a waterfall of metaphors soak your shoes in summer’s breeze.

2.- on a surgical table, lay your poet down in such way that his pointy nose threats to drill into the ground.   & with the help of a sharp knife, split the meadow on his back into two nations that might have lost it all in war. proceed then to spread open these lands, & discover that a poet’s spine abides as marble columns once did in falling rome: oh the burn or the glory? 3.- light a match & heat the poet’s earlobes to 95 °. careful, the smoky smell of blue winter shades might stupefy your brains   whilst the poet’s head gets caught in flames. if so: no stress, your poet’s mouth muscles might stretch into a smile, but do keep in mind it’s just an involuntary contraction. or not.

4.- once the fire’s out & the buzzcut’s ready, grab your baseball bat & crack the poet’s tibia by the half. hollow bones & secret chambers. see that rolled up paper hidden in there? take it out & read it to the skies; correct, it is nothing but the transcripts of the poet’s conversations with the moon. tally marks for bleeding hearts.  

5.- as a final act of this medical extravaganza, severe the poet’s head & hold it between your hands. do you feel it slowly floating, as if being drawn toward the clouds?   stitch the head back in place using a silver needle & a thread of slurred speech. remember poets heal on empty illusions & broken things.

that is all for poetic anatomy 101…   …now wake up the poet.

- @skinthepoet