my greatest fear is no words

my greatest fear is no words

Poem (the spirit likes to dress up) by Mary Oliver

 

 

The spirit

  likes to dress up like this:

   ten fingers,

   ten toes,

 

shoulders, and all the rest

  at night

   in the black branches,

     in the morning

 

in the blue branches

  of the world.

   It could float, of course,

     but would rather

 

plumb rough matter.

  Airy and shapeless thing,

   it needs

     the metaphor of the body,

 

lime and appetite,

  the oceanic fluids;

   it needs the body’s world,

     instinct

 

and imagination

  and the dark hug of time,

   sweetness

     and tangibility,

 

to be understood,

  to be more than pure light

   that burns

     where no one is –

 

so it enters us –

  in the morning

   shines from brute comfort

     like a stitch of lightning;

 

and at night

  lights up the deep and wondrous

   drownings of the body

     like a star.

Rumpelstiltskin said all magic comes with a price

When I first attempted fiction writing I composed the most elaborate, fantastical allegories without any inhibition. They were full of clichés and dull allusions, but I gave them every bit of soul and care that I could muster. My first story was about a girl who I never named, instead solely referring to her as She.

She lived in a sanity warehouse, a factory that assembled sterile minds. The walls were white, the floors damp gray, the rooms shaped like cubic cells. Every morning her nurse brought the pillsː two blue rounds, one white ladder, one orange capsule. She had been taking them since her first day in the place, a day she could scarcely remember anymore. It had been at least a year, she thought. Her recollection of life outside the factory varied by day; at times she had vivid flashes of her former existence, images of her body moving through tasks, places, faces, crowds. She did not know what her prior occupation was, she knew only of her life as it surreptitiously looped around her cell.

I can hear someone shrieking from where I sit. A boy is crying in the library, two girls are patting his back. He just sat in the desk behind me. He is saying, Oh God. He is sobbing, wheezing, hysterical. Does he know that I am right in front of him? A girl just walked over toward him laughing a little, telling him he is okay, not to cry, that she can’t deal with emotions. She is saying “you’re fine dude, you just got drunk and wrapped up in the drama.” My sympathy evaporated upon the mention of the word “drunk.” This is the library. There is nowhere else to go for quiet focused solace— which is slowly becoming a pipe dream, even here.

Situations like that make me ache with loneliness, not for myself so much as for the entire world. No one on this earth will ever know the absence of loneliness. But now my patience is plummeting, the same group is laughing now, louder and louder, playground noises. What ever happened to recess anyways? Is recess in adult life available only by the bottle? We have robbed our own lives of any semblance to play, and left now to our closest imitationː a chemical elixir. How ugly how fast.

She wandered out of her cell one day, leaving her silhouette behind. Similar to how twins might play tricks on their teachers by trading places for a day. That has been one of the greatest regrets pushing my life forward through the years ː that I was born twinless, that I sprouted in complete form, that I wasn’t granted a carbon copy for reference. I want something that looks almost exactly like I do, looks like and looks at—
                 looking looks for a counterbalance ː tandem, center weight, pull of poles.

We could have done so much more in two bodies. But without a twin I have been forced to become a Rumplestiltskin of forms.

But all at once the door opened, and in came a little man,
and said, good evening, mistress miller, why are you crying so.
Alas, answered the girl, I have to spin straw into gold, and I do
not know how to do it.  What will you give me, said the
manikin, if I do it for you.  My necklace, said the girl.  The
little man took the necklace, seated himself in front of the
wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three turns, and the reel was
full, then he put another on, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times
round, and the second was full too.  And so it went on until
the morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the reels
were full of gold.

Who is the girl and who is the strange creature? I hear the whirr, am I spinning the gold? How will I ever know?

 

a bomb

warFare’s  nucleus  ː
fission \ fission-fusion
matter  \  if nothing but almost
still, mouths press
steam       continents,           no air
for the             all‐telephone            wrung  inkless
while                         fact                          tills      fact (so lets sleep
loom in lullaby)                for every Little Boy.   his bedroom only a door
with arms who siphon galaxies at night by a finger  pricked vessel
beneath the shadowy atmospheric flow.  his molecule dreams
tunneling inward
where a key dissolves \ itself will lock

this unicorn has a question 4 u~

One (nearly) deadly word

Reblogged from Purple and White:

by Kristen Lucas, senior Millsaps student

Last semester, Lucas and her classmates were asked to complete a project exploring lived gender & sexuality at Millsaps College. Students were not asked to cover all of campus life but to focus their articles on specific areas, issues and/or people. This piece is included in this series of projects.

Author’s note: This piece is an extended look into the life of one Millsaps student.

Read more… 1,668 more words

I would just like to personally thank the Purple & White for choosing this really professional and pretty photo of me jejelol

A list—

every library should have at least one gargoyle to protect the books inside
all wrapped up in the immortality of the soul.
opposite of love is indifference ,
be the first human to have a psychedelic trip on the moon
the beautiful weird / amen

the fairest of seasons, up on melancholy hill  ː
where the ground is a scroll leaking possible reincarnation
and some billion footsteps hammer out the next line of poetic ruin.
A sanctuary with no purpose at all, save being led

“I would love to have a cat’s vision, but then I won’t be able to drive.. as neither can cats..”
—strange email from boy who takes his dark roast with 3 raw sugars and a tiny bit of cream

A clip from my new short film

from Throwing Glitter at the Void…. a nonfiction lyric essay film

Shot during hurricane Isaac in Jackson, MS

Secret History by Charles Simic

Of the light in my room: Its mood swings, Dark-morning glooms, Summer ecstasies. Spider on the wall, Lamp burning late, Shoes left by the bed, I'm your humble scribe. Dust balls, simple souls Conferring in the corner. The pearl earring she lost, Still to be found. Silence of falling snow, Night vanishing without trace, Only to return. I'm your humble scribe.