The Lie

Source: Unknown/Favim

Art begins with a lie
The separation is you plus me plus what we make 
Look into lightbulb, blink, sun’s in your eye

I want a rare sky
vantage point free from misconception 
Art begins with a lie

Nothing to lose, spontaneous rise 
of reflection, paint the picture
of a lightbulb, or eye the sun

How to fuel the world, then die 
Distance yourself from artfulness 
How? Art begins with a lie

The audience wants to cry
when the actors are real & passionate
Look into footlight, then feed back to eye

You fluctuate in an artful body
You try to imitate the world’s glory
Art begins with a lie
That’s the story, sharp speck in the eye.

~ Anne Waldman

The Lie

Source: Unknown/Favim

Art begins with a lie
The separation is you plus me plus what we make 
Look into lightbulb, blink, sun’s in your eye

I want a rare sky
vantage point free from misconception 
Art begins with a lie

Nothing to lose, spontaneous rise 
of reflection, paint the picture
of a lightbulb, or eye the sun

How to fuel the world, then die 
Distance yourself from artfulness 
How? Art begins with a lie

The audience wants to cry
when the actors are real & passionate
Look into footlight, then feed back to eye

You fluctuate in an artful body
You try to imitate the world’s glory
Art begins with a lie
That’s the story, sharp speck in the eye.

~ Anne Waldman

Quote: Courage

Picture credit: Srivilasica

How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, 'No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don't care if you fire me, shoot me, pass me over for promotion, or call my mother, I will not participate in this unsavory activity.' Wouldn't world history be rewritten if just a few people had actually acted like individual free agents rather than mindless lemmings?

~ Joel Salatin

Quote: Courage

Picture credit: Srivilasica

How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, 'No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don't care if you fire me, shoot me, pass me over for promotion, or call my mother, I will not participate in this unsavory activity.' Wouldn't world history be rewritten if just a few people had actually acted like individual free agents rather than mindless lemmings?

~ Joel Salatin

Poem: Attention

Source: sunshinefires.tumblr.com

Those who come by me passing
I will remember them,
and those who come heavy and overbearing
I will forget.

This is why
when air gushes between mountains
we describe the wind
and forget the rocks.

~ Saadi Youssef

Poem: Attention

Source: sunshinefires.tumblr.com

Those who come by me passing
I will remember them,
and those who come heavy and overbearing
I will forget.

This is why
when air gushes between mountains
we describe the wind
and forget the rocks.

~ Saadi Youssef

Quote: Tapestry of life

The Walthamstow Tapestry by Grayson Perry. Photograph: Linda Nylind

There are days when I think there really is some huge great tapestry of a plan out there and we're all woven into it - this fabulous, complex pattern of life and death, full of recurring motifs and waves of color, and we're each one tiny thread in the weave.

~ Jane Johnson

Quote: Tapestry of life

The Walthamstow Tapestry by Grayson Perry. Photograph: Linda Nylind

There are days when I think there really is some huge great tapestry of a plan out there and we're all woven into it - this fabulous, complex pattern of life and death, full of recurring motifs and waves of color, and we're each one tiny thread in the weave.

~ Jane Johnson

Her Beauty

Source: Unknown/Favim

I heard them say, “Her hands are hard as stone,”
And I remembered how she laid for me
The road to heaven. They said, “Her hair is grey.”
Then I remembered how she once had thrown
Long plaited strands, like cables, into the sea
I battled in — the salt sea of dismay.
They say, “Her beauty’s past.” And then I wept,
That these, who should have been in love adept,
Against my font of beauty should blaspheme.
And hearing a new music, miss the theme.

~ Max Plowman

Her Beauty

Source: Unknown/Favim

I heard them say, “Her hands are hard as stone,”
And I remembered how she laid for me
The road to heaven. They said, “Her hair is grey.”
Then I remembered how she once had thrown
Long plaited strands, like cables, into the sea
I battled in — the salt sea of dismay.
They say, “Her beauty’s past.” And then I wept,
That these, who should have been in love adept,
Against my font of beauty should blaspheme.
And hearing a new music, miss the theme.

~ Max Plowman

Quote: Closure

Source: Pinterest/Favim

Standing here, in this quiet house where I can hear the birds chirping out back, I think I’m kind of getting the concept of closure. It’s no big dramatic before-after. It’s more like that melancholy feeling you get at the end of a really good vacation. Something special is ending, and you’re sad, but you can’t be that sad because, hey, it was good while it lasted, and there’ll be other vacations, other good times.

~ Gayle Forman

Quote: Closure

Source: Pinterest/Favim

Standing here, in this quiet house where I can hear the birds chirping out back, I think I’m kind of getting the concept of closure. It’s no big dramatic before-after. It’s more like that melancholy feeling you get at the end of a really good vacation. Something special is ending, and you’re sad, but you can’t be that sad because, hey, it was good while it lasted, and there’ll be other vacations, other good times.

~ Gayle Forman

A Choice of Weapons

Source: www.topit.me

Sticks and stones are hard on bones,
Aimed with angry art.
Words can sting like anything,
But silence breaks the heart.

~ Phyllis McGinley

A Choice of Weapons

Source: www.topit.me

Sticks and stones are hard on bones,
Aimed with angry art.
Words can sting like anything,
But silence breaks the heart.

~ Phyllis McGinley

Quote: Cookery

Source: bayareabites

Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies — loaf givers.

~ John Ruskin

Quote: Cookery

Source: bayareabites

Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies — loaf givers.

~ John Ruskin

Between Going and Staying

Credit: Michela

Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

~ Octavio Paz

Between Going and Staying

Credit: Michela

Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

~ Octavio Paz

Quote: Strength

Photograph: Steve Satushek/Getty Images

Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.

~ Joss Whedon

Quote: Strength

Photograph: Steve Satushek/Getty Images

Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.

~ Joss Whedon

Loss

Source: Unknown/Favim

Such lies have been told about her.
My favorite: ‘when she comes
The blue hand of the sky vanishes.
Hippos storm the sun.
Birds peck furiously at anthills.
Wings wrap tightly against trees.’
But notice how she doesn’t say a word
And sits beside you when
The moments of love have flickered their last.
How she stands beside you when solitude
Has you cornered. Right now she is outside
Rinsing her hair. Later, she’ll use it
To wipe the mirrors of your heart.

~ Abayomi Animashaun

Loss

Source: Unknown/Favim

Such lies have been told about her.
My favorite: ‘when she comes
The blue hand of the sky vanishes.
Hippos storm the sun.
Birds peck furiously at anthills.
Wings wrap tightly against trees.’
But notice how she doesn’t say a word
And sits beside you when
The moments of love have flickered their last.
How she stands beside you when solitude
Has you cornered. Right now she is outside
Rinsing her hair. Later, she’ll use it
To wipe the mirrors of your heart.

~ Abayomi Animashaun

Quote: Choice

Source: Unknown/Favim

This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.

~ Terry Pratchett

Quote: Choice

Source: Unknown/Favim

This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.

~ Terry Pratchett

A Story About the Body

Source: Big whoop

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had
watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and
he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was
like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly
when she made amused or considered answers to his questions. One
night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she
turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like
that too, but I must tell you I have had a double mastectomy," and
when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance
that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity--like music--
withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said,
"I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin
through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the
porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found
when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the
bowl--she must have swept them from the corners of her studio--was
full of dead bees.

~ Robert Hass

A Story About the Body

Source: Big whoop

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had
watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and
he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was
like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly
when she made amused or considered answers to his questions. One
night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she
turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like
that too, but I must tell you I have had a double mastectomy," and
when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance
that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity--like music--
withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said,
"I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin
through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the
porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found
when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the
bowl--she must have swept them from the corners of her studio--was
full of dead bees.

~ Robert Hass

Quote: Optimism

Source: Unknown/Favim

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.

~ Noam Chomsky

Quote: Optimism

Source: Unknown/Favim

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.

~ Noam Chomsky

First Gestures

Source: SheKnows

Among the first we learn is good-bye,
your tiny wrist between Dad's forefinger
and thumb forced to wave bye-bye to Mom,
whose hand sails brightly behind a windshield.
Then it's done to make us follow:
in a crowded mall, a woman waves, "Bye,
we're leaving," and her son stands firm
sobbing, until at last he runs after her,
among shoppers drifting like sharks
who must drag their great hulks
underwater, even in sleep, or drown.

Living, we cover vast territories;
imagine your life drawn on a map--
a scribble on the town where you grew up,
each bus trip traced between school
and home, or a clean line across the sea
to a place you flew once. Think of the time
and things we accumulate, all the while growing
more conscious of losing and leaving. Aging,
our bodies collect wrinkles and scars
for each place the world would not give
under our weight. Our thoughts get laced
with strange aches, sweet as the final chord
that hangs in a guitar's blond torso.

Think how a particular ridge of hills
from a summer of your childhood grows
in significance, or one hour of light--
late afternoon, say, when thick sun flings
the shadow of Virginia creeper vines
across the wall of a tiny, white room
where a girl makes love for the first time.
Its leaves tremble like small hands
against the screen while she weeps
in the arms of her bewildered lover.
She's too young to see that as we gather
losses, we may also grow in love;
as in passion, the body shudders
and clutches what it must release.

~ Julia Spicher Kasdorf

First Gestures

Source: SheKnows

Among the first we learn is good-bye,
your tiny wrist between Dad's forefinger
and thumb forced to wave bye-bye to Mom,
whose hand sails brightly behind a windshield.
Then it's done to make us follow:
in a crowded mall, a woman waves, "Bye,
we're leaving," and her son stands firm
sobbing, until at last he runs after her,
among shoppers drifting like sharks
who must drag their great hulks
underwater, even in sleep, or drown.

Living, we cover vast territories;
imagine your life drawn on a map--
a scribble on the town where you grew up,
each bus trip traced between school
and home, or a clean line across the sea
to a place you flew once. Think of the time
and things we accumulate, all the while growing
more conscious of losing and leaving. Aging,
our bodies collect wrinkles and scars
for each place the world would not give
under our weight. Our thoughts get laced
with strange aches, sweet as the final chord
that hangs in a guitar's blond torso.

Think how a particular ridge of hills
from a summer of your childhood grows
in significance, or one hour of light--
late afternoon, say, when thick sun flings
the shadow of Virginia creeper vines
across the wall of a tiny, white room
where a girl makes love for the first time.
Its leaves tremble like small hands
against the screen while she weeps
in the arms of her bewildered lover.
She's too young to see that as we gather
losses, we may also grow in love;
as in passion, the body shudders
and clutches what it must release.

~ Julia Spicher Kasdorf

Quote: Praying

Source: FoodHub

I've tried praying. It gives me comfort. But not as much as a cup of tea and a ginger nut biscuit.

~ Steven Herrick

Quote: Praying

Source: FoodHub

I've tried praying. It gives me comfort. But not as much as a cup of tea and a ginger nut biscuit.

~ Steven Herrick

We Who Are Your Closest Friends

Source: Pinterest/Favim

we who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting
as a group
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift

your analyst is
in on it
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us

in announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves
but since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make
unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your
disastrous personality

then for the good of the collective

~ Phillip Lopate

We Who Are Your Closest Friends

Source: Pinterest/Favim

we who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting
as a group
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift

your analyst is
in on it
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us

in announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves
but since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make
unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your
disastrous personality

then for the good of the collective

~ Phillip Lopate

Quote: Overcoming limitations

Source: McCombs TODAY

The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.

~ Joseph Campbell

Quote: Overcoming limitations

Source: McCombs TODAY

The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.

~ Joseph Campbell

The Failure of Language

Source: CNN.com

First day of class, I ask the students, by way
of introduction, what they believe:
Language is our best tool, or language fails
to express what we know and feel.
We go around the room.
Almost everyone sides with failure.
Is it because they’re young,
still find it hard to say what they mean?
Or are they romantics, holding music and art, the body,
anything wordless as the best way in?
I think about the poet helping his wife to die,
calling his heart helpless as crushed birds
and the soles of her feet the voices of children
calling in the lemon grove, because the tool
must sometimes be bent to work.

Sitting next to my friend in her hospital bed,
she tells me she’s not going to make it,
doesn’t think she wants to,
all year running from the deep she’s now drowning in.
I change the flowers in the vase,
rub cream into her hands and feet.
When I lean down to kiss her goodbye,
I whisper I love you, words that maybe
have lost their meaning, being asked to stand
for so many unspoken particulars.

The sky when I walk to the parking lot
this last weekend of summer
is an opal, the heat pinkening above the trees
which dusk turns the color of ash.

Everything we love fails, I didn’t tell my students,
if by fails we mean ends or changes,
if by love we mean what sustains us.
Language is what honors the vanishing.
Or is language what slows the leaving?
Or does it only deepen what we know of loss?

My students believe it’s important
to get the words right.
Once said, they can never be retrieved.
It takes years to learn to be awkward.
At their age, each word must be carefully chosen
to communicate the yes, but also leave room
for the not really, just kidding, a gateway car
with the engine running.

Inside us, constellations,
bit thread knotted into night’s black drape.
There are no right words,
if by right we mean perfect,
if by perfect we mean able to save us.

Four of us pack up our friend’s apartment.
Suddenly she can’t live unassisted.
I remember this glass, part of a set
I bought her years ago
when she became for a time a scotch drinker.
I bought it for its weight, something
solid to hold, and for the way an inch or two
of amber would look against its etched walls.
I wrap it in newspaper and add it to the box marked Kitchen.

It’s my friend herself who is fragile.
When I take her out to eat, each step is work.
The restaurant is loud and bright.
She wants to know if she looks normal.
I make my words soft. Fine,
which might be the most useless word in English,
everything is going to be fine.

~ Jacqueline Berger

The Failure of Language

Source: CNN.com

First day of class, I ask the students, by way
of introduction, what they believe:
Language is our best tool, or language fails
to express what we know and feel.
We go around the room.
Almost everyone sides with failure.
Is it because they’re young,
still find it hard to say what they mean?
Or are they romantics, holding music and art, the body,
anything wordless as the best way in?
I think about the poet helping his wife to die,
calling his heart helpless as crushed birds
and the soles of her feet the voices of children
calling in the lemon grove, because the tool
must sometimes be bent to work.

Sitting next to my friend in her hospital bed,
she tells me she’s not going to make it,
doesn’t think she wants to,
all year running from the deep she’s now drowning in.
I change the flowers in the vase,
rub cream into her hands and feet.
When I lean down to kiss her goodbye,
I whisper I love you, words that maybe
have lost their meaning, being asked to stand
for so many unspoken particulars.

The sky when I walk to the parking lot
this last weekend of summer
is an opal, the heat pinkening above the trees
which dusk turns the color of ash.

Everything we love fails, I didn’t tell my students,
if by fails we mean ends or changes,
if by love we mean what sustains us.
Language is what honors the vanishing.
Or is language what slows the leaving?
Or does it only deepen what we know of loss?

My students believe it’s important
to get the words right.
Once said, they can never be retrieved.
It takes years to learn to be awkward.
At their age, each word must be carefully chosen
to communicate the yes, but also leave room
for the not really, just kidding, a gateway car
with the engine running.

Inside us, constellations,
bit thread knotted into night’s black drape.
There are no right words,
if by right we mean perfect,
if by perfect we mean able to save us.

Four of us pack up our friend’s apartment.
Suddenly she can’t live unassisted.
I remember this glass, part of a set
I bought her years ago
when she became for a time a scotch drinker.
I bought it for its weight, something
solid to hold, and for the way an inch or two
of amber would look against its etched walls.
I wrap it in newspaper and add it to the box marked Kitchen.

It’s my friend herself who is fragile.
When I take her out to eat, each step is work.
The restaurant is loud and bright.
She wants to know if she looks normal.
I make my words soft. Fine,
which might be the most useless word in English,
everything is going to be fine.

~ Jacqueline Berger

Quote: Ego and true happiness

Credit: Happy sad male faces by Jim Dandy

When true happiness shows up, the ego is bored with it: It's too plain, too ordinary, and it doesn't leave us feeling special or above the fray. It doesn't take away our problems, which is the ego's idea of happiness. The ego wants no more difficulties: no more more sickness, no more need for money, no more work, no more bad feelings, only unending pleasure and bliss. Such perfection is the ego's idea of a successful life. However, the happiness the ego dreams of will never be attained by anyone. The ego denies the reality of this dimension, where challenges are necessary to evolution and blissful states and pleasure come and go.

~ Gina Lake 

Quote: Ego and true happiness

Credit: Happy sad male faces by Jim Dandy

When true happiness shows up, the ego is bored with it: It's too plain, too ordinary, and it doesn't leave us feeling special or above the fray. It doesn't take away our problems, which is the ego's idea of happiness. The ego wants no more difficulties: no more more sickness, no more need for money, no more work, no more bad feelings, only unending pleasure and bliss. Such perfection is the ego's idea of a successful life. However, the happiness the ego dreams of will never be attained by anyone. The ego denies the reality of this dimension, where challenges are necessary to evolution and blissful states and pleasure come and go.

~ Gina Lake 

The Marvelous Women

Source: hindustan times 

All women speak two languages:

the language of men

and the language of silent suffering.

Some women speak a third,

the language of queens.

They are marvelous

and they are my friends.

My friends give me poetry.

If it were not for them

I’d be a seamstress out of work.

They send me their dresses

and I sew together poems,

enormous sails for ocean journeys.

My marvelous friends, these women

who are elegant and fix engines,

who teach gynecology and literacy,

and work in jails and sing and sculpt

and paint the ninety-nine names,

who keep each other’s secrets

and pass on each other’s spirits

 like small packets of leavening,

it is from you I fashion poetry.

I scoop up, in handfuls, glittering

sequins that fall from your bodies

as you fall in love, marry, divorce,

get custody, get cats, enter

supreme courts of justice,

argue with God.

You rescuers on galloping steeds

of the weak and the wounded–

Creatures of beauty and passion,

powerful workers in love–

you are the poems.

I am only your stenographer.

I am the hungry transcriber

of the conjuring recipes you hoard

in the chests of your great-grandmothers.

My marvelous friends–the women

of brilliance in my life,

who levitate my daughters,

you are a coat of many colors

in silk tie-dye so gossamer

it can be crumpled in one hand.

You houris, you mermaids, swimmers

 in dangerous waters, defiers of sharks–

My marvelous friends,

thirsty Hagars and laughing Sarahs,

you eloquent radio Aishas,

Marys drinking the secret

milkshakes of heaven,

slinky Zuleikas of desire,

gay Walladas, Harriets

parting the sea, Esthers in the palace,

Penelopes of patient scheming,

you are the last hope of the shrinking women.

You are the last hand to the fallen knights

You are the only epics left in the world

Come with me, come with poetry

Jump on this wild chariot, hurry–

~ Mohja Kahf

The Marvelous Women

Source: hindustan times 

All women speak two languages:

the language of men

and the language of silent suffering.

Some women speak a third,

the language of queens.

They are marvelous

and they are my friends.

My friends give me poetry.

If it were not for them

I’d be a seamstress out of work.

They send me their dresses

and I sew together poems,

enormous sails for ocean journeys.

My marvelous friends, these women

who are elegant and fix engines,

who teach gynecology and literacy,

and work in jails and sing and sculpt

and paint the ninety-nine names,

who keep each other’s secrets

and pass on each other’s spirits

 like small packets of leavening,

it is from you I fashion poetry.

I scoop up, in handfuls, glittering

sequins that fall from your bodies

as you fall in love, marry, divorce,

get custody, get cats, enter

supreme courts of justice,

argue with God.

You rescuers on galloping steeds

of the weak and the wounded–

Creatures of beauty and passion,

powerful workers in love–

you are the poems.

I am only your stenographer.

I am the hungry transcriber

of the conjuring recipes you hoard

in the chests of your great-grandmothers.

My marvelous friends–the women

of brilliance in my life,

who levitate my daughters,

you are a coat of many colors

in silk tie-dye so gossamer

it can be crumpled in one hand.

You houris, you mermaids, swimmers

 in dangerous waters, defiers of sharks–

My marvelous friends,

thirsty Hagars and laughing Sarahs,

you eloquent radio Aishas,

Marys drinking the secret

milkshakes of heaven,

slinky Zuleikas of desire,

gay Walladas, Harriets

parting the sea, Esthers in the palace,

Penelopes of patient scheming,

you are the last hope of the shrinking women.

You are the last hand to the fallen knights

You are the only epics left in the world

Come with me, come with poetry

Jump on this wild chariot, hurry–

~ Mohja Kahf

Quote: Preparing food

Source: David Rath Nutrition Shots

Every time we prepare food we interrupt a life cycle. We pull up a carrot or kill a crab - or maybe just stop the mold that's growing on a wedge of cheese. We make meals with those ingredients and in doing so we give life to something else. It's a basic equation and if we pretend it doesn't exist, we're likely to miss the other important lesson which is to give respect to both sides of the equation.

~ Erica Bauermeister 

Quote: Preparing food

Source: David Rath Nutrition Shots

Every time we prepare food we interrupt a life cycle. We pull up a carrot or kill a crab - or maybe just stop the mold that's growing on a wedge of cheese. We make meals with those ingredients and in doing so we give life to something else. It's a basic equation and if we pretend it doesn't exist, we're likely to miss the other important lesson which is to give respect to both sides of the equation.

~ Erica Bauermeister 

Travelogue for Exiles

Source: Skipwall.com 

Look and remember. Look upon this sky;

Look deep and deep into the sea-clean air,

The unconfined, the terminus of prayer.

Speak now and speak into the hallowed dome.

What do you hear? What does the sky reply?

The heavens are taken: this is not your home.

Look and remember. Look upon this sea;

Look down and down into the tireless tide.

What of a life below, a life inside,

A tomb, a cradle in the curly foam?

The waves arise; sea-wind and sea agree

The waters are taken: this is not your home.

Look and remember. Look upon this land,

Far, far across the factories and the grass.

Surely, there, surely they will let you pass.

Speak then and ask the forest and the loam.

What do you hear? What does the land command?

The earth is taken: this is not your home.

~ Karl Jay Shapiro

Travelogue for Exiles

Source: Skipwall.com 

Look and remember. Look upon this sky;

Look deep and deep into the sea-clean air,

The unconfined, the terminus of prayer.

Speak now and speak into the hallowed dome.

What do you hear? What does the sky reply?

The heavens are taken: this is not your home.

Look and remember. Look upon this sea;

Look down and down into the tireless tide.

What of a life below, a life inside,

A tomb, a cradle in the curly foam?

The waves arise; sea-wind and sea agree

The waters are taken: this is not your home.

Look and remember. Look upon this land,

Far, far across the factories and the grass.

Surely, there, surely they will let you pass.

Speak then and ask the forest and the loam.

What do you hear? What does the land command?

The earth is taken: this is not your home.

~ Karl Jay Shapiro

Quote: Poetry

Midnight rendezvous by Three less neurons per minute 

Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends.

Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations. 

~ Joyce Cary 

Quote: Poetry

Midnight rendezvous by Three less neurons per minute 

Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends.

Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations. 

~ Joyce Cary 

Advice to Myself

Source: Fashion for you

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

~ Louise Erdrich