faceofbetrayal

Today the sky was orange and yellow and blue and pink and the world and green and black like asphalt and it had just rained in Los Angeles because there would never be a blizzard here because that's just ridiculous, and for a second, the world made sense. And it was beautiful.

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"Depression in Winter"
Jane Kenyon

There comes a little space between the south
side of a boulder
and the snow that fills the woods around it.
Sun heats the stone, reveals
a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,
and tufts of needles like red hair,
acorns, a patch of moss, bright green....

I sank with every step up to my knees,
throwing myself forward with a violence
of effort, greedy for unhappiness--
until by accident I found the stone,
with its secret porch of heat and light,
where something small could luxuriate, then
turned back down my path, chastened and calm.

"Ex-Boyfriends"
Kim Addonizio

They hang around, hitting on your friends
or else you never hear from them again.
They call when they're drunk, or finally get sober,

they're passing through town and want dinner,
they take your hand across the table, kiss you
when you come back from the bathroom.

They were your loves, your victims,
your good dogs or bad boys, and they're over
you now. One writes a book in which a woman

who sounds suspiciously like you
is the first to be sadistically dismembered
by a serial killer. They're getting married

and want you to be the first to know,
or they've been fired and need a loan,
their new girlfriend hates you,

they say they don't miss you but show up
in your dreams, calling to you from the shoeboxes
where they're buried in rows in your basement.

Some nights you find one floating into bed with you,
propped on an elbow, giving you a look
of fascination, a look that says I can't believe

I've found you. It's the same way
your current boyfriend gazed at you last night,
before he pulled the plug on the tiny white lights

above the bed, and moved against you in the dark
broken occasionally by the faint restless arcs
of headlights from the freeway's passing trucks,

the big rigs that travel and travel,
hauling their loads between cities, warehouses,
following the familiar routes of their loneliness.

"Worthless"
Nick Flynn

My fingers
cling to your shoulder blades now
until fucking becomes
an urging, a way to shake you, gently. How

can I tell you I don't feel
safe, when inside
a man holds bars before his face

believing himself into a prison,
when parrots fly from his open mouth
as he tries to speak, repeating worthless,

worthless? I'm trying to love you

but I don't know how, & then
I start to remember—we are locked together
& pushing, pushing.

When I put sea shells up against my ear, its not so I can hear the ocean. I need to hear the blood rushing through the veins, I need too feel my heart beating, I need to feel like burn of my lungs as I run through the surf. I need sand between my toes, I need the smell of salt in my nose, I need the wind in my hair.

I need to know that I still exist.

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Sweetness by Stephen Dunn
Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

I don't know what I do with my free time.


"Flames"
Billy Collins

Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them
how a professional does it.

"I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete- that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theater Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash."

- JD Salinger (Spoken by Franny from "Franny and Zooey")
January 1, 1919 - January 27, 2010


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"Forgetting Someone"
Yehuda Amichai

Forgetting someone is like forgetting to turn off the light
in the backyard so it stays lit all the next day

But then it is the light that makes you remember.

Sometimes I feel like the sky knows just how much I miss you
and how I hurt that much more when I come home cold and wet
and you're still not there and she's still with you
because I've never been good at waiting
and the clouds won't wait for us either.

( on my lack of sleep )

The universe doesn't want us to succeed.
Everytime you stop yourself from crying
when you wipe away tears that haven't quite formed yet
you've somehow wronged the cosmos.

Yesterday I almost cried
for the nameless dead
who I can't feel sorry for.
Today I almost cried
for an unknown heartache
that I won't ever feel.

Atoms don't love
the sun has no sense of sorrow
The moon doesn't miss the earth
the way I miss you.

There is beauty in your tragedy
and we're willing to watch you suffer.

What of fear? Let us tear down the walls in our minds and build a new future out of love.


( Read more... )

"Purgatory"
Elizabeth Onusko

Now I understand why. Someone turns loose the winds on me
and I'm a fountain of fire, someone tosses me into the sea

and I float in a boat of flames, someone pushes me under
and my lungs implode like hydrogen blimps. Every bronchiole burns

as I fall to the sea floor. Then I notice, rising above the waves,
a confluence of birds finding formation, v-shaped as they ascend

at the same speed I sink. The air is their aviary, and at some point,
they'll shift southward as if they are coming to save me,

as if the act of being saved is worth more than the hope of it.

( typed this and then didn't feel like doing it anymore i'll leave a half baked argument behind the cut )

google will find me 90 million results
on the meaning of life
in 0.15 seconds
but when I ask it why you're not here
and if you still smell like sandalwood
it tells me my search
did not match any documents
because there are no words
for this.

"Red Meat"
Staceyann Chin

I have given up meat
the way I have given up you
without enthusiasm

The flesh still pulls at me
and I am trying to refuse
because no one is ever the better
for acting against the urge of self preservation

My body is screaming
its mantra of enough is enough

We are less likely to kill each other
if we bleed in different zip codes
if we ration our intake of one another

Dying is sometimes faster
than the living
lessons have to be taught
lifetime after lifetime

some animals never learn
and so they return to the table as steak
not rare enough or over done
no one enjoys the stubborn ass of an animal
standing its ground out of habit

the time has come for us to move on
to pull something from this cycle of will contesting fate

So I am letting you go
we both know how the dried crust of our passion
pulled us this way and that
it matters not whether we were in love
or whether we often compromised with ground turkey
the jive is up
our cups are filled with new possibilities
other comic tragedies are yet to be conjured
let us push our injured carcasses toward healing
let us forsake this glut of obligatory feeling
threatening to leave us heavy and poisoned by our choices

You're that decade I can't get past

The truth of existence
is bitter and cold
and it tastes like bile.

What I Do In English Class:

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am." - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

This design, like everything else I post, is completely unoriginal and inspired by someone else's tattoo.

I'm going to do something with my life.
I'm just not sure what.

Top of the list is The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. Only because wikipedia made it sound amazing.

"Fragments for the End of the Year"
Jennifer K. Sweeney

On average, odd years have been the best for me.

I’m at a point where everyone I meet looks like a version
of someone I already know.

Without fail, fall makes me nostalgic for things I’ve never experienced.

The sky is molting. I don’t know
if this is global warming or if the atmosphere is reconfiguring
itself to accommodate all the new bright suffering.

I am struck by an overwhelming need to go to Iceland.

Despite all awful variables, we are still full of ideas
as possible as unsexed fruit.

I was terribly sorry to be the one to explain to the first graders
the connection between the sunset and pollution.

On Venus you and I are not even a year old.

Then there were two skies.
The one we fly through and the one
we bury ourselves in.

I appreciate my wide beveled spatula which fulfills
the moment I realized I would grow up and own such things.

I am glad I do not yet want sexy bathroom accessories.
Such things.

In the story we were together every time.

On his wedding day, the stone in his chest
not fully melted but enough.

Sometimes I feel like there are birds flying out of me.

Just some horrible cycle I'm circling the drain can I crawl out of this sink hole in one fell swoop my life is over because i'm pregnant with emotion i've never experienced pain like this one time my mother told me don't ever stop trusting in God I hate her so much later I cried havoc and let slip some innocent truths about how I've never been there were three wise women without her man is nothing is empty only one time did she ever say you're sorry because sometimes we have to let go to the corner store and buy me a ring so i can flaunt what you've got me going to my wits end of the road less traveled alone in first class is so boring I want to die in silence is golden fleece stolen by traitors never live long and prosper is what cheaters will not do it only if you want to sleep with me thinks the lady doth protest too much of life is what we make of it is only fair lady and the tramp cant escape the fates final judgement day is near sighted a unidentified flying object of the preposition at the end of the sentenced to life is beautiful on the inside the killers mind games are ill advised her to undergo treatment of this novel is underdeveloped breasts a sign of unfortunate series of events catered by the sea of replies indignantly shuffling her feet like mines exploding in no mans land of the free men who can't see that girl talk to the hand over your money can't buy happiness is fleeting foxes or stars i can't decide now or forever hold your peace I shall stop your mouth to mouth resuscitation of the cardio pulmonary variety is the spice of life is a ridiculous tragedy is necessary for catharsis can be deadly blow to the head of the state of the union between man and wife is a bitch in heat of the day Jesus was born with a silver spoon in his mouth the words to your favorite song of the decade of horrors never cease this at once you pop you just cant stop collaborate and listen to the movement of the ground this flight of fancy that shit just will not fly away in a manger is a french verb for eat my heart out of the frying pan and into the fire up your engines are down captain my captain crunch under my feet like leaves fall every autumn breeze by without a care in the world is not enough to make ends meet my parents are so annoying to no end this now.

( Forgetfulness by Billy Collins )

"1999"
Kevin A. González

We were driving to your funeral
& our father was not crying
because he has a way
of tying ribbons around grief.
It was the year we learned
the piercing that prefaces the blood
holds the most delicate of darknesses.
Then it was the year we opened
all our faucets & waited for the sea
to bleed to death. Then it was the year
we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly
the year we started to believe
every thorn was just a bridge.
Then the year all we talked about
was boxing. Then the year
my stomach hurt all year, & then
the year no one spoke of you.

If there were an antonym for suicide
we could all choose when to be born.
I would have been born after that day
so I could not remember you.
So my fingers would stop pointing
at all the things that aren't there.

I want to be on a street with asphalt that stretches from building to building, the kind thats cold and dirty and smells good in the rain.

I want to be somewhere beautiful, somewhere people are loved for flaws (and not for their goodness despite their flaws), somewhere quiet and nice and filled with tragedy.

I want to be in a town polluted but still beautiful, just like the people - they live in poverty but they don't judge, and that makes them better than I.

"Their Sex Life"
A.R. Ammons

One failure on
top of another.

When literature makes me feel I can never sort it out from the unending emotion that comes from my own experiences.

Maybe that's why I stopped reading.