words – Page 7 – the moon is beautiful

It is me now
Who is the demon

And yes yes
It is me who is the demon

It is me who everyone
Should fear

Dorothea Lasky, from “The Demon,” The Blue Teratorn

I’m not searching for my other half because I’m not a half.

Realizing this is one of the things that made the biggest difference in my life, not just in my relationships. (via ifechukwudee)

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten — happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

Brenda Ueland
(via thetinhouse)

Your name, I will have noticed
on a list collected by an Iraqi census of the dead,
because your name is the name of my own brother,
because your name is the Tigrinya word for “tomorrow,”
because all my life I have wanted a farm,
because my students are 12, because I remember
when my sisters were 12. & I will not
have ever seen your eyes, & you will not
have ever seen my eyes
or the eyes of the ones who dropped the missiles,
or the eyes of the ones who ordered the missiles,
& the missiles have no eyes.

Aracelis Girmay, from “Arroz Poetica,” Teeth

(via lifeinpoetry)

We are bees then; our honey is language.
Now the honey lies stored in caves
Beneath us, and the sound of words
Carries what we have forgotten.

Robert Bly, from “Words Rising,” Eating the Honey of Words (HarperCollins, 1999)

this is how we loved: a knife on the tongue turning / into a tongue.

Ocean Vuong, from “Homewrecker,” Night Sky with Exit Wounds

(via lifeinpoetry)

If I can’t have love, if I can’t find peace,
Give me a bitter glory.

Anna Akhmatova, Rosary (via mythaelogy)

lifeinpoetry:

the boy &
his loneliness the boy who finds you
beautiful only because you’re not
a mirror because you don’t have
enough faces to abandon you’ve come
this far to be no one & it’s june
until morning you’re young until a pop song
plays in a dead kid’s room water spilling in
from every corner of summer & you want
to tell him it’s okay that the night is also a grave
we climb out of but he’s already fixing
his collar the cornfield a cruelty steaming
with manure you smear your neck with
lipstick you dress with shaky hands
you say thank you thank you thank you
because you haven’t learned the purpose
of forgive me because that’s what you say
when a stranger steps out of summer
& offers you another hour to live

— Ocean Vuong, from “Because It’s Summer,” Night Sky with Exit Wounds

a-pair-of-ragged-claws:

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.

—Li-Young Lee, “One Heart,” in Book of My Nights

You never get to the point where you think “I am the adult”, but you do get to the point where you think “I’ve dealt with this before.” The older you get, the higher and higher the percentage is of things you’ve already been through. Have you ever changed a tire? Had a flat tire? Someday, you might, and the next time it happens, you’ll know what to do, since you’ve already done it.

My dad. I’m 24, and asked if you ever shake the feeling of not being an adult, and this was his response. Probably the most comforting thing he could have said. (via jun-mon)