writingsforwinter:

Are you sleeping with someone else he asks;

I shake my head no, but my eyes probably tell a different story:

that every time he walks into a room my heart explodes,

and not even a specially-trained SWAT team

could clean up the mess it left behind;

his mouth gives me water damage an ocean would only

dream of. He leaves his underwear wherever he removes it,

in bed, in the living room, sometimes even in the front hall

if we’re both in a good enough mood, and I’ll find it

like a puddle on the floor, a gift waiting to be unwrapped.

Am I too boring, he inquires, but he forgets about the time

the rainstorm in New York City forced us to run three miles

just to hitch a taxi, and he carried me piggyback

the whole way, until we got in the back seat and he took off

all my wet clothes when the driver wasn’t looking

and gave him an extra tip when it dropped us off at home.

Octopuses are jealous of how good a lover he is

with only two arms; ships would fall to pieces and slowly sink

at the sound of his voice; peanut butter wishes it could

stick to the roof of his mouth.

Did I say something wrong, he begs, but the pickup lines

he scrawled me on the back of a napkin

when we first met in a bar would put

even e.e. cummings to shame. (He once brought

a bouquet of fresh pears to my office and serenaded me

with “i carry your heart with me” in my cubicle.)

So when he finally asks what’s wrong, I don’t have the heart

to tell him that he’s really just too good for me,

and I’m afraid that one day he’ll wake up and realize

that he could sleep with so many better women.

When I leave, I place the box filled with my hair beneath his pillow

so that he’ll always have a few pieces of me

to remember me by, and take one last look at his sleeping face

before shutting the door quietly behind me.

5000letters:

When people say: I’m a mess
they’re not warning you off
they’re willing you closer
to see past the sadness at 2AM,
and the chain-smoking, the crying at pianists
midnight meals, foetal positions and the sulk of bottom lips 

there’s something inherently vulnerable about it
‘i’m a mess’ 
it’s filled with a soft stark pleading you won’t hear unless you’re listening right and all it means is 
‘please don’t leave me here alone.’ 

tamburina:

Every morning as insomnia’s grip loosens
I stare at your picture
I think of your painful shyness
Your ravaged self-opinion
Your incredible beauty
How I am drawn to you
I will never be able to pound words into lines
To match the velocity of your presence.

Henry Rollins

tamburina:

I tried to leave you, I don’t deny
I closed the book on us, at least a hundred times.
I’d wake up every morning by your side.
The years go by, you lose your pride.
The baby’s crying, so you do not go outside,
and all your work it’s right before your eyes.

Goodnight, my darling, I hope you’re satisfied,
the bed is kind of narrow, but my arms are open wide.
And here’s a man still working for your smile.

Leonard Cohen

thepenneddiction:

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
    Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
    And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

thepenneddiction:

  ‘Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There’s nothing much amiss, ‘tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ‘tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship ‘tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

     Why, if ‘tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ‘tis pleasant till ‘tis past:
The mischief is that ‘twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

     Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
‘Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour
The better for the embittered hour;
It will do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

     There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that sprang to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

A.E. Housman

Absolutely brilliant poem we had to go over in AP English. I should follow the advice it gives.

I should go do hw now.

No motivation. :(

Yo pedí tu atención
despues tú perdiste tus miedos
y tus sustos y tus temores
de perderme.

Tú sabes que
siempre aqui, siempre estoy
esperando
para siempre para ti; para ti
prodigo mi todo.

Jamás permito nuestro amistad
nuestro relación, nuestro
cariño intimo
a morir 
o se marchita.

Y porque tú sabes todo esto,
tú no cuido para tratar
para yo
nunca mas. 

tamburina:

I tried to leave you, I don’t deny
I closed the book on us, at least a hundred times.
I’d wake up every morning by your side.
The years go by, you lose your pride.
The baby’s crying, so you do not go outside,
and all your work it’s right before your eyes.

Goodnight, my darling, I hope you’re satisfied,
the bed is kind of narrow, but my arms are open wide.
And here’s a man still working for your smile.

Leonard Cohen

goodpoetry:

It is love. I will have to hide or flee.

Its prison walls grow larger, as in a fearful dream.
The alluring mask has changed,
but as usual it is the only one.
What use now are my talismans, my touchstones:
the practice of literature,
vague learning,
an apprenticeship to the language used by the flinty Northland
to to sing of its seas and its swords,
the serenity of friendship,
the galleries of the library,
ordinary things,
habits,
the young love of my mother,
the soldierly shadow cast by my dead ancestors,
the timeless night,
the flavor of sleep and dream?

Being with you or without you
is how I measure my time.

Now the water jug shatters above the spring,
now the man rises to the sound of birds,
now those who look through the windows are indistinguishable,
but the darkness has not brought peace.

It is love, I know it;
the anxiety and relief at hearing your voice,
the hope and the memory,
the horror at living in succession.

It is love with its own mythology,
its minor and pointless magic.
There is a street corner I do not dare to pass.
Now the armies surround me, the rabble.
(This room is unreal. She has not seen it)

A woman’s name has me in thrall.
A woman’s being afflicts my whole body.

Jorge Luis Borges

goodpoetry:

it was like any other
relationship, there was
jealousy on both sides,
there were split-ups and
reconciliations.
there were also fragmented moments of
great peace and beauty.

I often tried to get away from her and
she tried to get away from me
but it was difficult:
Cupid, in his strange way, was really
there.

Charles Bukowski