take care not
to hurt, you
want so
much so
little.
April 10, 2013
March 23, 2013
When the words had all been used
for other things
we saw the first day begin
- W.S. Merwin, The First Year
November 12, 2012
In the slaughterhouse of love they kill only
the best, none of the weak or deformed.
Don’t run away from this dying.
Whoever’s not killed for love is dead meat.
- Rumi
September 25, 2012
"I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!"
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!"
— Amy Lowell, “To a Friend” (via litverve)
September 22, 2012
Die before you die
Ironic, but one of the most intimate acts
of our body is
death.
So beautiful appeared my death – knowing who then I would kiss,
I died a thousand times before I died.[…]
August 11, 2012
Just For a Day
Just for a day
She won’t think
of you
And the fish will forget
Their way about water
The sun will be suspended
Burning helpless in the orbit
The umbilical chord will coil
and strangle
Time’s own neck
Just for a day
She, oblivious
will place her lamp
between the sun and the moon
And the seven sages in the sky
Will get worried
Letters will fly away
Falling off the scripts
Creatures will forget their faces
And no mirrors will be there
Just for a day
You will go
Into an ethereal mist
For a moment
And darkness will befall
The whole of universe
Lava will gather
In the guts of earth
For miles
snails will burn
inside their shells
In just a day’s
oblivion
her body will turn blue
from its own bite
July 8, 2012
Self Portrait
It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.
— David Whyte
June 10, 2012
June 3, 2012
The wing scars the sky, making a path inevitably as the deer in snow, and the winds all know it and tell it though we hear it not.
- John Muir
June 3, 2012
if you have time to chatter
read books
if you have time to read
walk into mountain, desert and ocean
if you have time to walk
sing songs and dance
if you have time to dance
sit quietly, you happy lucky idiot
- Nanao Sakai
June 1, 2012
Absolutely Clear
Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,
My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.
—Shams al-Din Hafiz
April 21, 2012
A Man In His Life
A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
April 21, 2012
The Triumph of the Infinite
I got up in the night and went to the end of the hall. Over the door in large letters it said, “This is the next life. Please come in.” I opened the door. Across the room a bearded man in a pale-green suit turned to me and said, “Better get ready, we’re taking the long way.” “Now I’ll wake up,” I thought, but I was wrong. We began our journey over golden tundra and patches of ice. Then there was nothing for miles around, and all I could hear was my heart pumping and pumping so hard I thought I
would die all over again.
- Excerpt from ALMOST INVISIBLE © 2012 by Mark Strand.
April 7, 2012
You must try,
the voice said, to become colder.
I understood at once.
It is like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze,
braced in stone. Only something heartless
could bear the full weight.
- Jane Hirshfield
April 2, 2012
A man fell to his knees
In the midst of a square
Was he too tired
To stand
Had he reached the line
Where the waves of spent lives break
Had he been hit with hammers of grief
By whirlwinds of pain
Was it an adversity not to be borne
Was it the angel of death
With his scythe when it was time to go
Was it Satan or God
Suddenly, in the midst of a square
A man fell to his knees like a horse
the knees cut off with a scythe.
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