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what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.
Charles Bukowski (via naturaekos)
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Aries: I know you have only ever seen life in shades of dull gray while everyone else talked about the beautiful neon of colors. Some people find their magic a little sooner is all, doesn’t mean you won’t see the fireworks light up too. Just be patient.
Taurus: You’re different now. But not in a bad way, in a way that would make your mother proud if you told her all the horrors you’d been through. You can finally stand up off your bloody knees and dance. The time for praying is over, you’ve won the god damn war.
Gemini: You are so much more than the value they’ve put on you. You are worth more than the scars and the stares and the stupidity. You are worth more god damn it.
Cancer: Drink Water. Get some sleep. Let yourself reset. Do not go jumping off bridges or burning them down at 2 am. Because those choices made in a rash of emotion never did anything good.
Leo: Learn to listen. Learn to be comfortable with silence. Do not let the silence make you smaller instead learn to grow in the places others give room. Flourish in quiet.
Virgo: Grow up. A relit cigarette will never taste the same and going back to old flames is only ever going to get you burned. So stop. Stop letting yourself get burned.
Libra: Forgive yourself. Because it is not your fault for the choices and actions everyone else has made. Because everyone else in this god awful situation has.
Scorpio: You are not just a bundle of mistakes and broken bones. You are more then the damage that has been done to you. You are wanted and loved and cherished. Remember that.
Sagittarius: Bury the bones. They deserve to be the skeletons because they were the ones who commuted the sins against you. You’re not wrong here. Remember that.
Capricorn : Do not be scared to restart. Preset the reset button and enjoy it. Do not be scared when you have to make new friends. Create a new life. In the end, it’ll be worth it.
Aquarius : Let go. Let go of all the anger and hatred you’re still clinging to because it’s all you’ve got left of them. It’s going to be hell but the relief of finally letting go of the glass shard memories will be worth it.
Pisces:Go outside. Do something you’ve never done before. Change some small thing in your routine. This monotonous pattern you’ve set yourself in is going to kill you.
This Week’s Zodiac (via thesocietyofpoets)
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found some photos from my underwater camera
today is the first time I’ve looked at these
July 2014
North Carolina
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You are shaking fists & trembling teeth. I know: You did not mean to be cruel.
That does not mean you were kind.
Venetta Octavia, excerpt of “THE BURNING”, from of my upcoming chapbook, tentatively titled “Oculus” (via venettaoctavia)
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Hunger is the first and
last word. When all words in California
slide into the sea, hunger will be the last
to fall. Should they all plunge out of the sky
in flames, hunger burns the brightest.
Marsha de la O, from “How to Go On” in Antidote for Night (via pigmenting)
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the courage
to love
like a wound
that never
heals.
Erica Jong, “What You Need to Be a Writer,” Ordinary Miracles (as seen in Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected)
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i think the weirdest thing is having left over information about someone. like i still know someone’s favorite girl name. or their favorite season. or someone’s address. i remember someone’s favorite ice cream flavors. and someone’s favorite childhood book. and the mental disorder their uncle has. i remember the ages and birthdays of their siblings. i remember the song they said they’d sing to their spouse. where do i put this down? where do i learn to forget?
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it doesn’t feel like a time to write
when all my muses are begging
for their lives.
Danez Smith, from “It Doesn’t Feel Like a Time to Write,” published in BuzzFeed Reader
(via lifeinpoetry)
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The truth is this:
My love for you is the only empire
I will ever build.
When it falls,
as all empires do,
my career in empire building will be over.
I will retreat to an island.
I will dabble in the vacation-hut industry.
I will skulk about the private libraries and public parks.
I will fold the clean clothes.
I will wash the dishes.
I will never again dream of having the whole world.
This is the Nonsense of Love, Mindy Nettifee (via clementinevonradics)
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When the plane went down in San Francisco,
I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes.
He memorizes the wrecked metal details,
the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke.
Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes:
The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa.
It was almost a year before I learned
his brother was a pilot.
I can’t help it,
I love the way men love.
Ada Limón, “Accident Report In The Tall, Tall Weeds,” from Bright Dead Things (via bostonpoetryslam)
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…But who were you kidding? You took him in
with no grand dreams of salvation, but only to ease
the guilt of never having tried…“
from How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs, Natalie Diaz, in When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012)
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“you are terrifying and strange and beautiful. something not everyone knows how to love.“ For Women Who Are Difficult To Love
All credit goes to Warsan Shire // Video & my sister for making it
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It never ends, the bruise
of being–
Kevin Young, opening lines to “Greening,” Kenyon Review (vol. 33, no. 2, Spring 2011)
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This isn’t a poem.
This is two a.m. in the backseat of your car,
picking my heart out of the upholstery.
It’s a trick of the light:
shapes in the darkness.
It’s the monster under your bed that
followed you into your twenties.
This is what your lungs look like
after a lifetime of smoking.
This is cigarettes through a stoma.
This is what you do with the Lonely
when it pats you on the back
and holds your hair–
when the hangover has nothing to do
with the alcohol.
You make room for it.
Lonely crawls in bed with you and
you pull back the covers.
What else are you supposed to do?
Nobody told me Lonely was this ugly.
Nobody told me Lonely looked like me.
Nobody told me Lonely and I would get good and cozy.
That days can feel like months
can feel like steam.
I’m writing a letter to my teenaged self:Stay away from this one and that one
and this one. Trust me,
it’ll be easier that way.
How many years have I carried my heart
like a coin purse? Handed it out
like loose change?
Heart in a sandwich bag–
school science project–
how many licks to the center
of a tragic backstory?
I didn’t wallow in it;
I made friends with the Lonely.
I walked it out to the water.
I held its hand when it tried to drown me.
I painted on the bravest face I know.
I survived heartache by the handful—
so, no. Hard as you tried to hurt me,
you’re not special.
You’re the flavor of the week and trust me—
I’ve had better.
This isn’t a poem,
this is digging you out of my bones
with a carving knife.
I don’t know much about love,
but it’s not supposed to hurt.
It’s not supposed to hurt.
NEW NAMES FOR OLD HEARTACHES, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
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First,
quit picking old wounds
and going for walks in the aches
and pains you already made it through–
you call it healing, but
it sounds like a good way
to take a haunting home with you.
LONELY is a no-vacancies sign
for an empty room on the backside
of your chest, and there will never
be enough people to
love that empty out of you.
Love will not save you.
You will save you.
Remember,
no matter how much you need
a voice at the other end of the line
who only wants to take care of you,
it is a felony to call 911 just because
you need someone to talk to.
You cannot shrink to radio static,
to heavy breath on a telephone.
Your aching does not end
in an ambulance.
Now, breathe.
Yes, I know you’ve heard this one before.
Do it anyway. Got ribs like
the wrong side of a fistfight, yeah?
That’s from the hyperventilating.
Your lungs just survived a car crash
inside of your body.
Be gentle with them, please.
Find the pocket of your heartbeat
where you keep forgiveness.
We will try again tomorrow–
I know you’ve got a bone to pick
with tomorrow, but it’s coming anyway.
Listen, in a few hours
our little world will
turn herself right-side-up again,
and you will forget about
all the ways this lonely night
sang you watered down blues and
your hands will start to make sense again.
You think you’ve seen every ugly corner
of this whole rotten world, but listen:
there are an infinite number
of things we don’t know and,
statistically speaking,
at least half of them
are probably
very, very beautiful.
POST-PANIC ATTACK by Ashe Vernon
(from my second book, Wrong Side of a Fistfight, available here)
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So, this is my latest attempt at self-recovery, and
I’m looking for a good way to describe the emptiness.
Listen, some days my heart is the canary in the coal mine,
Some days my heart is the coal mine,
I pick fights with the bird
And choke the chirp out of the chatter
But there’s always something chirping,
There’s always a leak somewhere.
Listen, some days my heart is the anchor of the shipwreck and
Some days my heart is the shipwreck,
But this always ends in a drowning,
This always ends in remembering
So, some days my heart is the car crash at 175 BPM,
Some days my heart is the passenger,
Making stick shifts out of the wreckage
Because I’m always trying to drive in reverse.
Listen, please. Some days my heart is the addict in a church
And some days my heart is the church.
Either way,
Someone is always planting another crucifix.
Listen, I’m sorry for the chirping,
I’m sorry for drowning the bird
And resuscitating the bird
just to kill the bird again,
I’m sorry that it’s still beating its wings,
That this always ends in beating
But listen. Some days my heart is the sinking metaphors,
And some days my heart is the buoy,
The poetry,
The forming.
On those days I’m learning how to love again.
Okay?
7-weeks//Canary. (via 7-weeks)
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