Poetbabble

thefranticsearch:

Robert Pattinson as Jeff Buckley? Please, please, no.

Oh god. My heart just got kicked over a cliff…  That’s worse than James Franco.

In answer to a C’s message asking why I am (still) single…

Because I have yet to find an adventurous, romantic man of letters who balances his time between traveling the world and retreating to work his farm/ranch/cabin/hermitage, between his personal creative vision, his family/partnership vision, and his ambitions in the world.

Dancing at the club and sustainable farming… reading Henry James and listening to Radiohead. Building a rain barrel and presenting at an industry conference. Someone who wants to throw the kid in a backpack and trek all over Nepal for 3 months. And then come home and regroup, create work, make good food, live deliberately.

He exists all over the internetz, so why does this multitudinous man seem to be so rare IRL?

Seems that men I meet believe there are only one or two ways to exist in the world,  only one or two disparate internal desires that can serve a cohesive whole.

We can do life exactly as we want to do it, balancing both mutual and independent vision. Such idea(l)s are not mutually exclusive. I have yet to meet someone who really believes this and then tries to serve it. 

But I’m hopeful. :)

Things that interfere with writing well:

Earning a living, especially by teaching

Not reading Henry James

Winning the Nobel Prize

Living in New York, especially if you are friendly

When I saw you ahead I ran two blocks
shouting your name then realizing it wasn’t
you but some alarmed pretender, I went on
running, shouting now into the sky,
continuing your fame and luster. Since I’ve
been incinerated, I’ve oft returned to this thought,
that all things loved are pursued and never caught,
even as you slept beside me you were flying off.
At least what’s never had can’t be lost, the sieve
of self stuck with just some larger chunks, jawbone,
wedding ring, a single repeated dream,
a lullaby in every elegy, descriptions
of the sea written in the desert, your broken
umbrella, me claiming I could fix it.

— Dean Young

fwriction:

“In fact, to every young person listening tonight who’s contemplating their career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child—become a teacher. Your country needs you.”

—

Barack Obama, State of the Union Address

First, place a premium on teaching and the skills of those who do so. Schools need to make getting in to the field as competitive and prestigious as law schools and medical schools in the 90s did. By doing so, you will attract the brill set of each field to teach - although, don’t kid yourself, they may not all be able to do so. Teaching is a skill of its own (as being a doctor is), and being smart and educated is not always enough…

Secondly, get faculty in administrative positions. Someone who has never performed surgery would never consider telling surgeons which tools they should use and how/when they should use them.

And then, then dear President, how about we provide resources for these teachers? (Gasp!!) How about we pay teachers what they’re worth?!

Imagine?!

The things they did would not have been as limited as it was when they was doing whatever they was doing or did.

the mississippi river empties into the gulf

and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
none of them emptying anything,
all of them carrying yesterday
forever on their white tipped backs,
all of them dragging forward tomorrow.
it is the great circulation
of the earth’s body, like the blood
of the gods, this river in which the past
is always flowing. every water
is the same water coming round.
everyday someone is standing on the edge
of this river, staring into time,
whispering mistakenly:
only here. only now.

- Lucille Clifton

Back from New Orleans, Tumblrs. Pics to come later.

I’ve been meaning to tell
you how the sky is pink
here sometimes like the roof
of a mouth that’s about to chomp
down on the crooked steel teeth
of the city,

I remember the desperate
things we did
                and that I stumble
down sidewalks listening
to the buzz of street lamps
at dusk and the crush
of leaves on the pavement,

Without you here I’m viciously lonely

and I can’t remember
the last time I felt holy,
the last time I offered
myself as sanctuary

*

I watched two men
press hard into
each other, their bodies
caught in the club’s
bass drum swell,
and I couldn’t remember
when I knew I’d never
be beautiful, but it must
have been quick
and subtle, the way
the holy ghost can pass
in and out of a room.
I want so desperately
to be finished with desire,
the rushing wind, the still
small voice.

It’s terribly serious, of course, but I think more people die of heartbreak than of radiation. - Saul Bellow

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
     the flying cloud, the frosty light:
     the year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

- from In Memoriam, Lord Alfred Tennyson