This is newness: every little tawdry
Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,
Glinting and clinking in a saint’s falsetto. Only you
Don’t know what to make of the sudden slippiness,
The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.
There’s no getting up it by the words you know.
No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.
We have only come to look. You are too new
To want the world in a glass hat.
Into Hiawatha’s wigwam
Came two other guests, as silent
As the ghosts were, and as gloomy,
Waited not to be invited
Did not parley at the doorway
Sat there without word of welcome
In the seat of Laughing Water;
Looked with haggard eyes and hollow
At the face of Laughing Water.
And the foremost said: “Behold me!
I am Famine, Bukadawin!”
And the other said: “Behold me!
I am Fever, Ahkosewin!”
And the lovely Minnehaha
Shuddered as they looked upon her,
Shuddered at the words they uttered,
Lay down on her bed in silence,
Hid her face, but made no answer;
Lay there trembling, freezing, burning
At the looks they cast upon her,
At the fearful words they uttered.
My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends – It gives a lovely light.
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand; Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand.
too much too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or
tears
haters
lovers
strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks
armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.
an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one.
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid.
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners
it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
I suppose they never will be.
I don’t ask them to be.
but sometimes I think about it.
the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody
more haters than lovers.
people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.
meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.
there must be a way.
surely there must be a way that we have not yet
thought of.
who put this brain inside of me?
it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.
it will not say
“no.”“
read this to your class in contemporary
literature and tell them how easy it
is.
then send those children out to walk
the asphalt like the rest
of us.
(Source: wehadagoodrun, via henrycharlesbukowski)
The Match Girl Lights Them One By One, Rachel Contreni Flynn
I have lost: churches cupped in my hands, the moon drowned in a glass, pocket watches tied to tree stumps, watchdogs swimming in lakes of whiskey, hungry fingers to the night saw’s teeth.
Keep those. Please find my hearts, those thousand knotted plums fled from my body. Return the small one in the pit of my stomach, worn smooth as marble. Return the one in my left hand that beats with the stroke of a hammer. Return the cilia-pricked one in my ear that hears the memories of animals. Return the one in my knee that sings like a bellows. The one in my wrist that stutters my pulse like a skipping record. The one in my right hand that spins sand into glass. The one in my eye that plucks the streets from the city. The one in my tongue that shakes the sea from the shoreline. Return the one in my heart that builds ships in a bottle, with its small surgeon hands.
Ryan Teitman
