You have so much potential within you. So many
Jessica Semaan, Child of the Moon
gifts, it will blow your mind
So stop landfilling your soul. Stop overcrowding
your genius
Get naked with yourself. Look at your nakedness in
the mirror
This is it
Be naked. Live naked. Thrive naked. Fly naked.
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
She [Lucy] loved Christ for his suffering, for what they had in common. With all his strength, even Christ had asked if this burden could be lifted from him. The idea that pain was not a random thing, but a punishment of the evil upon the good, the powerful upon the weak, gave her something to rage against. After all, what is the point of being angry at nature when nature could care less? If you cried against barbarism, then at least you were standing up to a consciousness that could hypothetically be shaped. When Lucy believed that there were actually things in the world that were worse than what had happened to her, she could pull herself up on this knowledge like a rope. When she lost sight of it, she sank.
Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty: [A Friendship]
they only know what they have been given, which is a land maligned, a land deprived of its beasts of change.
sometimes i can just feel it:
warmth & all the other things
i’ve never asked for seeping
into me, a violation to the x
degree. what is wrong in a
world where one can’t shed
the shackles of summer &
sink into the blissful autumn
like a child into a mountain of
leaves? these children don’t
know the seasons. they only
know what they have been
given, which is a land maligned,
a land deprived of its beasts of
change. if i had been told i’d
be forced to live in an eternal
summer, i would have remained
in embryo, in ectoplasm, in
a dream had right before waking.
when i see someone wearing a
coat it pisses me off. i want to
ask them what it is that chills
them in a world on fire? i want to
slap their smug self-satisfied grins
until their ears ring. is speaking
the truth now an act of unspeakable
violence?
Haiku season is (temporarily) over, so I’m back to posting original non-haiku poetry on here. I wrote Eternal Summer in a fit of rage. I was sitting in my living room reading reports of the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida alongside reports about record-breaking temperatures on the West Coast and the increasing likelihood of more wildfires. We are seeing the first waves of the effects of climate change on our ecosystems, and some days I can’t help but feel a sense of utter despair over it.
We are seeing the first waves of the effects of climate change on our ecosystems, and some days I can’t help but feel a sense of utter despair over it.
Rather than acting expeditiously to help the world reach net zero carbon emissions, most governments, municipalities, and MNCs seem content to pay lip service to sustainability and clean energy initiatives while acting as if they have decades to figure this out—they don’t. Others seem to be banking on nascent carbon capture technologies to act as their get out of jail free card when what we really need is aggressive action now. Not tomorrow. Not in the next decade. Now. Our lives quite literally depend on it.
Wow, so this post is a prime example of how my ADHD brain works. I started off sharing a poem and ended on an urgent call-to-action on curbing the effects of climate change. All in a day’s work, my reader-friends.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Eternal Summer © 2021 Fred Slusher. All rights reserved.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Breathe, darling. This is just a chapter. It’s not your whole story.
S.C. Lourie
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Canva lately and I just designed this branded wallpaper that I’m going to share with all of you. Feel free to save it, share it, and use it in whatever way suits you. No attribution is required provided it is only stored and/or disseminated in its original form.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
For those of you who enjoyed reading my haiku on here, all sixteen of them are now available in one place on Wattpad. Enjoy!
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Quick: run for your life
You’re almost out of time now
Hold tight for dear life
Reader-friends, we have now reached the end of our haiku journey together. I had this wild notion to put sixteen haiku I wrote on a rainy afternoon onto this blog one at a time, and I really appreciate the response I’ve gotten from you all. So appreciative, in fact, that I have a little bonus for you.
Right now, I am putting together a collection of all the haiku I’ve published here on The Voracious Bibliophile and soon you’ll be able to have them all together. More to come on that later.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I will love who loves me
I will love as much as I am loved
I will hate who hates me
I will feel nothing for everyone oblivious to me
I will stay indifferent to indifference
I will live hostile to hostility
I will make myself a passionate and eager lover
in response to passionate and eager love
I will be nobody’s fool
The Voracious Bibliophile 