to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive

“ The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

— Oscar Wilde (via aquaticwonder)

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Louise Glück, “First Memory”

sharingpoetry:

Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was—
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.

(source; submitted by shriven)

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(Source: samflowerr)

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invisiblestories:

The inscription on Keats’ tombstone.

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“ I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.

—

Family Happiness, Leo Tolstoy

Passage highlighted in one of the books found with Chris McCandless’s remains.

(via vertere)

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“ I don’t suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don’t have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn’t hear.

— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (via bluesandbarebones)

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vintageanchor:

“I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. “None of this is worth it!” That’s what I’d like people to hear.”
― Raymond Carver, Elephant And Other Stories

Short-story writer and poet Raymond Carver was born today in 1938. He died 1988, and would have been 74 this year.

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“ You don’t know what love is Bukowski said
I’m 51 years old look at me
I’m in love with this young broad
I got it bad but she’s hung up too
so it’s all right man that’s the way it should be
I get in their blood and they can’t get me out
They try everything to get away from me
but they all come back in the end
They all came back to me except
the one I planted
I cried over that one
but I cried easy in those days
Don’t let me get onto the hard stuff man
I get mean then
I could sit here and drink beer
with you hippies all night
I could drink ten quarts of this beer
and nothing it’s like water
But let me get onto the hard stuff
and I’ll start throwing people out windows
I’ll throw anybody out the window
I’ve done it
But you don’t know what love is
You don’t know because you’ve never
been in love it’s that simple
I got this young broad see she’s beautiful
She calls me Bukowski
Bukowski she says in this little voice
and I say What
But you don’t know what love is
I’m telling you what it is
but you aren’t listening
There isn’t one of you in this room
would recognize love if it stepped up
and buggered you in the ass
I used to think poetry readings were a copout
Look I’m 51 years old and I’ve been around
I know they’re a copout
but I said to myself Bukowski
starving is even more of a copout
So there you are and nothing is like it should be
That fellow what’s his name Galway Kinnell
I saw his picture in a magazine
He has a handsome mug on him
but he’s a teacher
Christ can you imagine
But then you’re teachers too
here I am insulting you already
No I haven’t heard of him
or him either
They’re all termites
Maybe it’s ego I don’t read much anymore
but these people who build
reputations on five or six books
termites
Bukowski she says
Why do you listen to classical music all day
Can’t you hear her saying that
Bukowski why do you listen to classical music all day
That surprises you doesn’t it
You wouldn’t think a crude bastard like me
could listen to classical music all day
Brahms Rachmaninoff Bartok Telemann
Shit I couldn’t write up here
Too quiet up here too many trees
I like the city that’s the place for me
I put on my classical music each morning
and sit down in front of my typewriter
I light a cigar and I smoke it like this see
and I say Bukowski you’re a lucky man
Bukowski you’ve gone through it all
and you’re a lucky man
and the blue smoke drifts across the table
and I look out the window onto Delongpre Avenue
and I see people walking up and down the sidewalk
and I puff on the cigar like this
and then I lay the cigar in the ashtray like this
and take a deep breath
and I begin to write
Bukowski this is the life I say
it’s good to be poor it’s good to have hemorrhoids
it’s good to be in love
But you don’t know what it’s like
You don’t know what it’s like to be in love
If you could see her you’d know what I mean
She thought I’d come up here and get laid
She just knew it
She told me she knew it
Shit I’m 51 years old and she’s 25
and we’re in love and she’s jealous
Jesus it’s beautiful
she said she’d claw my eyes out if I came up here
and got laid
Now that’s love for you
What do any of you know about it
Let me tell you something
I’ve met men in jail who had more style
than the people who hang around colleges
and go to poetry readings
They’re bloodsuckers who come to see
if the poet’s socks are dirty
or if he smells under the arms
Believe me I won’t disappoint em
But I want you to remember this
there’s only one poet in this room tonight
only one poet in this town tonight
maybe only one real poet in this country tonight
and that’s me
What do any of you know about life
What do any of you know about anything
Which of you here has been fired from a job
or else has beaten up your broad
or else has been beaten up by your broad
I was fired from Sears and Roebuck five times
They’d fire me then hire me back again
I was a stockboy for them when I was 35
and then got canned for stealing cookies
I know what’s it like I’ve been there
I’m 51 years old now and I’m in love
This little broad she says
Bukowski
and I say What and she says
I think you’re full of shit
and I say baby you understand me
She’s the only broad in the world
man or woman
I’d take that from
But you don’t know what love is
They all came back to me in the end too
every one of em came back
except that one I told you about
the one I planted
We were together seven years
We used to drink a lot
I see a couple of typers in this room but
I don’t see any poets
I’m not surprised
You have to have been in love to write poetry
and you don’t know what it is to be in love
that’s your trouble
Give me some of that stuff
That’s right no ice good
That’s good that’s just fine
So let’s get this show on the road
I know what I said but I’ll have just one
That tastes good
Okay then let’s go let’s get this over with
only afterwards don’t anyone stand close
to an open window

— Raymond Carver - You Don’t Know What Love Is (a conversation with Charles Bukowski)

(Source: shakespearneverdidthis)

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“

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply I may forget.

— Christina Rossetti, The Complete Poems (via talkativolive)

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“ If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.

—

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

LYL

(via asymptotejournal)

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“ And so you shudder now
and then from grief. The darkness, being real,
is clearly visible.

— Joseph Brodsky, from Gorbunov and Gorchakov in Collected Poems (via proustitute)

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showslow:

‘Please don’t break my heart’ by Sandy Smith, August 2007.

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“ ‘They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities? I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was no egoist … he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the one beautiful comrade, the only inseparable love … poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point.’

— Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms (via nickmiller)

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“ Nobody knows you.
You don’t know yourself.
And I, who am half in love with you,
What am I in love with?
My own imaginings?

— D.H. Lawrence, Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence (via serialstranger)

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“ There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.

— Tennessee Williams (via leda-swanson)

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to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive

Louise Glück, “First Memory”

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