Sitting alone in an Elysian wood

One could live this way eternally

Instead we live the way we “should”

Pulled out of our arcane reverie

I wish to live in extreme delight

Ruled only by my passions

Yet I find myself consumed by night

With Death as my temptation

Strip me of this abnormality

Death alone I do worship-

He feeds into my carnality

For me- I am the serpent

Society I long to evade

Wishing to remain away in paradise

My body may decay

richard siken, the language of birds / rae armantrout, prayers

[Text ID: The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear : that something does.

by Olivia Gatwood

I remember being a waitress on Valentine’s Day and loving the newness on a couple’s face,

how I watched, like the only patron at a matinee, as they shared everything they ate.

I would deliver their sundae with an extra cherry – the one she would slide into her mouth – a preview of what was to come.

I felt like a school teacher who goes home to no children, a cab driver without a car,

I don't know why this is so funny to me.

That I almost died this morning, actually.

And... this place lives on.

It's funny how much the world really doesn't revolve around me.

I'm glad it doesn't!

I don't mind at all.

I am just in a strange mood.

PLEASE DO NOT TAG AS YOUR OWN OC OR PAIRING.

Nathan and Ruben share a bond more powerful than most; mutual understanding through past experiences no one should ever have to go through, and through past actions so horrible they cannot be spoken of. Their grief and the blood on their hands binds them to the STEM technology they created, which has alienated them from the rest of the world— but they give each other the comfort they have both longed for so desperately for years, and that is all they need. They are each other's counterpart; you cannot imagine one without the other, like two sides of the same coin. Through their pain, their grief, their desire, and their regret, they have become one.

anna akhmatova, the guest // bones; equinox // 'i won't become' by kim jakobsson // agustín gómez-arcos, the carnivorous lamb // by oxy // achilles come down; gang of youths // czeslaw milosz, from 'new and collected poems: 1931-2001' // 'extended ambience portrait from a resonant biostructure' and 'migraine tenfold times ten' by daniel vega // a little death; the neighbourhood // marina tsvetaeva, from 'poem of the end' // by drummnist // katie maria, winter // 'nocturne in black and gold the falling rocket' by james abbott mcneill whistler // micah nemerever, these violent delights // body language; we are fury // 'the penitent' by emil melmoth // chelsea dingman, from 'of those who can't afford to be gentle'

That’s all I wanted to be.

Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.

Discovery: My longest pubic hair is 1.2 inches.

Good or bad?

7:18 a.m. Kevin overdosed last night. His sister left a message.

Couldn’t listen to all of it. That makes three this year.

I promise to stop soon.

Spilled orange juice all over the table this morning. Sudden sunlight I couldn’t wipe away.

All through the night my hands were daylight.

Woke at 1 a.m and, for no reason, ran through Duffy’s cornfield.

Boxers only.

Corn was dry. I sounded like a fire,

for no reason.

Grandma said In the war they would grab a baby, a soldier at each ankle, and pull . . . Just like that.

It’s finally spring! Daffodils everywhere.

Just like that.

There are over 13,000 unidentified body parts from the World Trade Center being stored in an underground repository in New York City.

Good or bad?

Shouldn’t heaven be superheavy by now?

Maybe the rain is ‘sweet’ because it falls

through so much of the world.

Even sweetness can scratch the throat, so stir sugar well. - Grandma

4:37 a.m. How come depression makes me feel more alive?

Life is funny.

Note to self: If a guy tells you his favorite poet is Jack Kerouac,

there’s a very good chance he’s a douchebag.

Note to self: If Orpheus were a woman I wouldn’t be stuck down here.

Why do all my books leave me empty-handed?

In Vietnamese, the word for grenade is ‘bom’, from the French ‘pomme’, meaning ‘apple’.

Or was it American for ‘bomb’?

Woke up screaming with no sound. The room was filling with a bluish water called dawn. Went to kiss grandma on the forehead

just in case.

An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Thus my mother exists. Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me.

Yikes.

9:47 a.m. Jerked off four times already. My arm kills.

Eggplant = cà pháo = ‘grenade tomato’. Thus nourishment

defined by extinction.

I met a man tonight. A high school English teacher

from the next town. A small town. Maybe

I shouldn’t have, but he had the hands

of someone I used to know. Someone I was used to.

The way they formed brief churches

over the table as he searched for the right words.

I met a man, not you. In his room the Bibles shook on the shelf from candlelight. His scrotum is a bruised fruit. I kissed it

lightly, the way one might kiss a grenade

before hurling it into the night’s mouth.

Maybe the tongue is also a key.

Yikes.

I could eat you he said, brushing my cheek with his knuckles.

I think I love my mom very much.

Some grenades explode with a vision of white flowers.

Baby’s breath blooming in a darkened sky, across

my chest.

Maybe the tongue is also a pin.

I’m gonna lose it when Whitney Houston dies.

I met a man. I promise to stop.

A pillaged village is a fine example of a perfect rhyme. He said that.

He was white. Or maybe, I was just beside myself, next to him.

Either way, I forgot his name by heart.

I wonder what it feels like to move at the speed of thirst - if it’s fast like lying on the kitchen floor with the lights off.

(Kristopher)

6.24 a.m. Greyhound station. One-way ticket to New York City: $36.75

6:57 a.m. I love you, mom.

When the prison guards burned his manuscripts, Nguyên Chí Thięn couldn’t stop laughing - the 238 poems already inside him.

I dreamed I walked barefoot all the way to your house in the snow. Everything was the blue of smudged ink

and you were still alive. There was even a light the shade of sunrise inside your window.

God must be a season, grandma said, looking out at the blizzard drowning her garden.

My footsteps on the sidewalk were the smallest flights.

Dear god, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through to get here.

Here. That’s all I wanted to be.

I promise.

Margartia Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, from Rien ne va plus

by Mary Oliver

It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much I thought my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon to the sea which held me, until I grew easy.