The day I learned my wife was dying
I went to read about volcanic eruptions,
earthquakes, fire, bloody war, and murder.
I wanted to discover the most awful, because
I knew her death would be worse than that;
and even crueler would be her absence, not
for a day or a year. It meant not coming back.
That was what I couldn’t imagine. How many
days in Never? How many times would we
hear a car and think, That’s her, or hear
the phone ring and feel suddenly happy,
only to grasp it was basically nobody,
and each burst of knowing would be one
little death, and they will happen all day.
We bother with the ‘old stuff’ because it’s really what’s important to you as a human being, what’s important for your soul. The real value is the art, and it gives us sustenance. It’s something we have to cherish, and we have to make sure it survives.
The cliff’s edge, a salty drink; cerulean & white foam; home, love, & road all have four letters. Home, love, and road all have four letters & I tore me apart: limbs, cells, sinew; all held together by so little, a little blood, oil, & water. Every scrap of paper shredded, every thread unraveled. Living in the empty in-between is easy when you’re unsure of your own tepid existence. How can you tell someone the truth which is that you feel nothing & everything at once?; a whole cosmos made corporeal, flesh theater. Applause, applause! Exeunt all. There was a summer I became obsessed with fragmentation, fading into the woods of autumn where I discovered restoration & took a job selling bundles of violets by the old movie house on the corner of 9th & Vine. All the customers were wine-drunk & in love; not necessarily with each other but with the idea of love itself, the feeling of a mouth & a neck & decades-old spit on celluloid.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I give everything away and it goes away, into the dusty air, onto the face of the water that goes away beyond our seeing. I give everything away that has been given to me: the voices of children under clouds, the men in the parks at the chess tables, the women entering and leaving bakeries. God who came here by rock, by tree, by bird. All things silent in my seeing. All things believable in their leaving. Everything I have I give away and it goes away.
If you drive past horses and don’t say horses you’re a psychopath. If you see an airplane but don’t point it out. A rainbow, a cardinal, a butterfly. If you don’t whisper-shout albino squirrel! Deer! Red fox! If you hear a woodpecker and don’t shush everyone around you into silence. If you find an unbroken sand dollar in a tide pool. If you see a dorsal fun breaking the water. If you see the moon and don’t say oh my god look at the moon. If you smell smoke and don’t search for fire. If you feel yourself receding, receding, and don’t tell anyone until you’re gone.
This Is Where I Leave You: A Novel by Jonathan Tropper
You never know when it will be the last time you’ll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there’s always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you’d never stop grieving.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
You’re all bluster & melodrama Empire State of Eden’s Rejects, Mama You can still be a racist even though You voted for Obama (Twice)
And I take meds to be a little Less me in melancholia Debutante in repose, Rhinoplastied nose your dad Bought you in Santa Fe but
I had to keep my ugly And my secrets and my sighs tucked Like a melody on a dusty piano While you were in Reno Getting turnt & twisted on the boulevard of broken dreams
You told me in aught three my Songs were poorly written but I kept Sparring with my demons & writ My lonesomeness into dust & made myself free
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
The Voracious Bibliophile 