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.
Martin Scorsese, in conversation with Ari Aster
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.
© 2021 Fred Slusher. All rights reserved.
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.
Life is not just one thing; it’s so many things, and sometimes so many things all together.
Sophia Loren
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.
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.
Today’s poem is one of my favorites. I hope you love it as much as I do.
In this life,
I was very minor.
I was a minor lover.
There was maybe a day, a night
or two, when I was on.
I was, would have been,
a minor daughter,
had my parents lived.
I was a minor runner. I was
a minor thinker. In the middle
distance, not too fast.
I was a minor mother: only
two, and sometimes,
I was mean to them.
I was a minor beauty.
I was a minor Buddhist.
There was a certain symmetry, but
it, too, was minor.
My poems were not major
enough to even make me
a “minor poet,”
but I did sit here
instead of getting up, getting
the gun, loading it.
Counting,
killing myself.
Copyright © 2016 Olena Kalytiak Davis. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 31, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
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.
No person, no matter how important society deems their relationship to you, has the right to denounce you for who you are.
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.
Copyright © 2021 Fred Slusher. All rights reserved.
There should be more to life
than disruption
and survival
but there isn’t.
There should be birds
singing your name.
There should be paintings
the size of skyscrapers
memorializing your body.
There should be love
for you
in everything.
There should be a billion women
jumping at the same time
to move the earth off its course.
There should be parties
to celebrate
the end of this world.
There should be flowers
to welcome
a new one.
The Voracious Bibliophile 