Latest Posts by salinyay-blog - Page 5
the things we learn on our mothers’ laps
see that lady standing there between the window & the fire extinguisher? she’s just lost her father & i think her boyfriend just left her.
why the fuck would you say that?
i’m telling you, i’ve got this superpower. i just know.
how’s that? a superpower?
not a marvel studios superpower, u silly. more like this supreme capacity. i’ve always had it.
when my dad abandoned my mom, she lost herself in the world’s most dangerous drug: poetry.
she used to hold me on her lap while reciting emily brunte & sylvia plath.
i think that’s why i can read into people’s sadness.
when i come across sadness on the street, authentic sadness, the blues crawl out their host & come talk to me. i’m thinking of starting a mémoire or a blog on it. like that humans of new york, u know?
talk about those things we learn on our mothers’ laps…
i reckon everyone who’s lucky enough to have a mum will undoubtedly learn something whilst resting on her lap. my mom used to sit me on her lap while she revised old latin scriptures & tried herself at egyptian hieroglyphics.
that’s why sometimes tombs & churches murmur their secrets to me. they tell me stories about the afterlife & how, if demanded gently, fire can caress the soul the way water strokes the curves of an overflowing vase.
they find it hilarious that we make a big deal out of our own end.
when all there really is, is an everlasting void.
- @skinthepoet
it goes too fast.
hi again, tumblr
“Port of Spain, 2002” by Olivia Gatwood. Check out Olivia’s impressive debut collection, New American Best Friend.
“The Eye-Mote,” by Sylvia Plath
I’ve finally accepted that maybe we just weren’t meant to be
Day 205 (via myonlywayoutofhere)
…for we are in such fragile skin, so close to getting lost in the in-between.
Eimear McBride, from The Lesser Bohemians (via luthienne)
on my way to the airport to pick up my mother. her first time in Europe, her first time crossing an entire ocean... we haven't seen each other in almost two years & it all feels as if i'm defying the rules of existing; bodies usually explode when exposed to such levels of luminous love & nostalgia
Elliott Erwitt. Mexico. San Miguel de Allende. 1987.
Dear Dr. Frankenstein
I, too, know the sciences of building men Out of fragments in little light Where I’ll be damned if lightning don’t
Strike as I forget one May have a thief’s thumb,
Another, a murderer’s arm, And watch the men I’ve made leave Like an idea I meant to write down,
Like a vehicle stuck In reverse, like the monster
God came to know the moment Adam named animals and claimed Eve, turning from heaven to her
As if she was his To run. No word he said could be tamed.
No science. No design. Nothing taken Gently into his hand or your hand or mine, Nothing we erect is our own.
- Jericho Brown (The New Testament)
But then I hold myself back, because I knew I’ll be burned too, once I start a fire that matches you.
ma.c.a // I almost touch the spark (via vomitingwords)
between black & white, gray
in my dreams, we hold hands & laugh at the idiocy of ancient obsessions & insecurities. we walk on lonely beaches & dance with nature in rainy jungles barely known to humankind.
in my nightmares, i run to escape wild dragons & memories. the blues often tackle me, & when my body slaps the ground, the labyrinth i’m trapped in whispers in my ear:
“running is useless, boy. you’re a caged monster too”
- @skinthepoet
the things we learn on our mothers’ laps
see that lady standing there between the window & the fire extinguisher? she’s just lost her father & i think her boyfriend just left her.
why the fuck would you say that?
i’m telling you, i’ve got this superpower. i just know.
how’s that? a superpower?
not a marvel studios superpower, u silly. more like this supreme capacity. i’ve always had it.
when my dad abandoned my mom, she lost herself in the world’s most dangerous drug: poetry.
she used to hold me on her lap while reciting emily brunte & sylvia plath.
i think that’s why i can read into people’s sadness.
when i come across sadness on the street, authentic sadness, the blues crawl out their host & come talk to me. i’m thinking of starting a mémoire or a blog on it. like that humans of new york, u know?
talk about those things we learn on our mothers’ laps…
i reckon everyone who’s lucky enough to have a mum will undoubtedly learn something whilst resting on her lap. my mom used to sit me on her lap while she revised old latin scriptures & tried herself at egyptian hieroglyphics.
that’s why sometimes tombs & churches murmur their secrets to me. they tell me stories about the afterlife & how, if demanded gently, fire can caress the soul the way water strokes the curves of an overflowing vase.
they find it hilarious that we make a big deal out of our own end.
when all there really is, is an everlasting void.
- @skinthepoet
Photo by Byron Johnson
my grandparents film from Italy 🌥
the things we learn right before midnight
what’s keeping you from sleeping?
nothing. i’m just not ready to hit the sack.
why’s that?
you really want to know?
yep.
okay. but i don’t want you to think i’m crazy or leave this bed running, alright?
i wouldn’t do that.
right. okay. hmm. so, 24 years ago, on the eve of my birth, my mom decided to deliver her child in a graveyard. the city’s farthest most forgotten graveyard. she’s an artist, though; a lover of contrasts & a chaser of the dark.
oh
july 21st, lost in the depths of a summer night amid traces of grief, sorrow & dried petals, my mum gave birth to a baby she’d almost immediately hold between her arms. i don’t remember this of course, but i’ve been told she murmured:
‘hey, little one. i need you to think of death as your friend. a mutual. an ally. a confident.’
from that day on - my entire life, basically- i’ve never slept before midnight.
i stay still by the side of my bed, patiently waiting for my oldest friend to come sit by my side.
once he shows up, we tell each other how life treated us that day in our own sides of the realm. we then hold hands & together, we end the life of yet another day.
- @skinthepoet
scientists fear
with a hand on the window frame, you looked out at the night sky. & turning your head toward me, you said there was this theory about the universe being ever e x p a n d i n g.
that every star, planet, galaxy & blackhole currently alive, is endlessly drifting apart from it all.
as though in their hovering for distance, in their majestic swaying through stellar matter, every atom of the universe claimed independence from our shared existence.
that same night our last the spellbinding vibes in your beauty & that rant over the cosmos, walked me into a laberynth of oblivion; cause what i forgot to tell you & what you didn’t seem to know, was that there is another theory out there: an antithesis on the dynamics of the universe.
scientists suspect the universe will eventually stop its expansion to begin its c o n t r a c t i o n. exactly as the ball vertically thrown to reach the sky, that at a certain height surrenders to gravity & starts its way down.
scientists fear that every star & planet & galaxy & blackhole will shrink into a single spot in place & time. a sort of big bang in reverse. outside going in.
boom
which is to say: you fled away from me to smash piece by piece the things we had built. i guess in some shape or form we mimicked the universe by drifting away from each other; by sitting on opposite edges of this galaxy; dodging our own asteroids; breathing distant stardust & riding comets that might never cross paths.
imagine, just imagine that these scientists’ fear comes true & all we know to exist begins to compress; will the universe then bring us back to where we were?
a massive clash. gallactic friction.
cosmos to cosmos, blackhole to blackhole, planet to planet, & lips to lips.
hey, this might just be the universe reminding us that we are destined to collide.
- @skinthepoet
And if you ever stumble upon me asleep in dim light, next to a journal of written words. Take a photograph. My mind wide open… yet totally at peace.
-fna (via herlittleblvckbook)
just booked flights & tix to Lorde’s concert in Germany with my best friend slash neighbor. it all feels idyllic.
I sit in the train barefoot, and there’s a long way home. I kiss you so often in my thoughts. I never taught I had to teach romance but here I am; preaching one religion praying to one God. The God that teaches men to love their women. My barefoot with tired patches on, my hands break with longing. And no matter how much you stay, my legs never get tired of you. My feet on the passanger seat, writing drafts of poetry for a magnetic man. My poems are the proof that I can never think enough of you.
Cinderella by Royla Asghar (via poems-of-madness)
To feel anything deranges you. To be seen feeling anything strips you naked.
Anne Carson, Red Doc> (via theclassicsreader)
I am trying to learn how to give and foster forgiveness in a body that wants none of it.
Sierra DeMulder, For My Niece Livia, Age 8 (via cactuslungs)
This was the summer I bathed in olive oil and sat on the sidewalks of Jerusalem eating pistachio ice-cream with the old man whose ancient face tried to explain to me that we fought with our hearts and not our heads– therefore we would never win.
Annemarie Jacir, excerpt of ‘Pistachio Ice Cream’ (via pairedaeza)
Tell him, only say my name if you can swallow it dead.
Kristin Chang, from “In the Dead of Spring,” published in Vagabond City (via lifeinpoetry)
You will reach
for a door and suddenly you’ll be out in the wind touching all the
horribly beautiful things. You’ll say this moment is not my enemy and
sometimes you’ll believe it.
— Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, from “What It Takes To Leave A House,” published in Lambda Literary