iniquity is one of the perks

callowyn:

softerworld:

A Softer World: 818

(Or anyway I might get arrested)

But fuckyeahspnandpoetry will try its damnedest.

I don’t think I reblogged anything advertising this awesome blog yet, but hey guys,  fuckyeahspnandpoetry is an awesome blog.

notheretoperch:

Paige Bradley created one of the most striking sculptures I’ve seen in recent times. Her masterpiece, entitled Expansion, is a beautiful woman seeking inner piece but fractured and bleeding with light. “From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a container already built for us to fit inside: a social security number, a gender, a race, a profession,” says Bradley. “I ponder if we are more defined by the container we are in than what we are inside. Would we recognize ourselves if we could expand beyond our bodies?”

You want a form that will hold the river’s water
So it glitters, miraculous as tears?

First, smash the vial. First, swallow the shard.

- from “Seven Penitential Psalms”, V. Penelope Pelizzon

(Source: poorartists)

anneretic:

perisima:

114 (by Somewhere Lovely)

I am an exile here, some other land
beneath another sun must have been mine.
I speak your language and I clasp your hand,
I taste the grapes that grow upon your vine.
But these your grapes are bitter to my mouth,
your hand is hard, I do not like your tongue.
I have forgotten whether north or south
but in some other land where I was young,
the vines bore sweeter grapes and speech was soft
and hands and eyes were friendlier than words.

Tennessee Williams

fragmentsshoredagainstmyruin:

He was not dead yet, not exactly—
     parts of him were dead already, certainly other parts were still only waiting
for something to happen, something grand, but it isn’t
                                                            always about me,
he keeps saying, though he’s talking about the only heart he knows—

     He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest
where a heart would fit perfectly
          and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place—
                                                            well then, game over.
-Richard Siken, “Road Music

yourguttersoul:

CHUCK: But you guys aren’t supposed to be there. You’re not in this story.
CASTIEL: Yeah, well… (glances at Dean) we’re making it up as we go.

And here—mid-tale, mid-war, mid-labyrinth, 
Mid-birth and -death, mid–once upon a time, 
And midway through the names of all who died 
In wars we can’t say where, we can’t say when, 
Their stories broken off, the fragments fused 
Mid-genealogy, mid-epitaph, 
Annihilation gusting nearer; here— 
Here the god of writers broke his pen.

- from Bedtime Mahabharata by Gjertrud Schnackenberg

(via agustincare)

“poem 111” by leonard cohen

Each man 
has a way to betray 
the revolution 
This is mine 

“my friend” by khalil gibran

My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.

The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.

I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do — for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.

When thou sayest, “The wind bloweth eastward,” I say, “Aye, it doth blow eastward”; for I would not have thee know that my mind doth not dwell upon the wind but upon the sea.

Thou canst not understand my seafaring thoughts, nor would I have thee understand. I would be at sea alone.

When it is day with thee, my friend, it is night with me; yet even then I speak of the noontide that dances upon the hills and of the purple shadow that steals its way across the valley; for thou canst not hear the songs of my darkness nor see my wings beating against the stars — and I fain would not have thee hear or see. I would be with night alone.

When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell — even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, “My companion, my comrade,” and I call back to thee, “My comrade, my companion” — for I would not have thee see my Hell. The flame would burn thy eyesight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils. And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it. I would be in Hell alone.

Thou lovest Truth and Beauty and Righteousness; and I for thy sake say it is well and seemly to love these things. But in my heart I laugh at thy love. Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone.

My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect — and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously. And yet I am mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone.

My friend, thou art not my friend, but how shall I make thee understand? My path is not thy path, yet together we walk, hand in hand. 

notheretoperch:

I take this road to arrive at its end
where the toll taker passes the night, reading.
   I feel the cupped heat
of his left hand as he inherits
change; on the road that is not his road
anymore I belong to whatever it is
which will happen to me.

           - Lucie Brock-Broido, “After the Grand Perhaps”

(Source: idrather-haveyou)

anneretic:

I’ll go with you and I’ll do my best.

“Are you coming?”

“Of course.”

(Source: lunch-poems)

anneretic:

He has considered weeping, only
he can’t even bring himself to

take a stab at it. He just can’t cry—
it is terrible to cry

when you’re by yourself, because
what then?

Nothing is solved,
nobody comes;
even solitary children understand. 

“The Weeping”, Franz Wright
People do understand that, right, that grief is sometimes a carving knife, paring everything down to the bare bones, cut away the heart, the affection, memory. Break everything that made it good. Forget you were ever saved. So that while the loss still hurts, there are fewer things that hurt.

“a man and an angel” by toon tellegen

A man said:
I can’t live
and he lived long and meticulously

then he stood still and said:
but I can’t love
and he loved women and peace
and unspoken shyness

and an angel fought with him –
I can’t fight, said the man
and he fought like a tiger, like a hare,
and like a bag of bones

the sun went down
and still they fought on,
the man and the angel,
and the man said,
with a melancholy note in his voice:
now I know,
I can’t lose.

Believe me, said an angel, I will save you.
No, said a man, I don’t believe you.
You have to believe me, said the angel

and he drove away the ambition of the man
and his painful omniscience,
gave him peace
and large quantities of a rare,
resilient happiness, such as had never been described.

Do you believe me now, the angel asked
and he looked at the man with unparalleled love
and tenderness
and the man whispered: I don’t believe you.

A man searched for his conscience
and an angel saw him and asked:
might this be it?
showed him a large and orthodox conscience

that is yours, said the man,
but the angel shook his head:
we don’t have a conscience,
we are too light,
we would fall,
we would lose from everyone,

and with a nonchalant gesture
he struck the man down and dragged him away

and the man felt ashamed.

In the end,
if we just wait long enough,
if we have seen beauty change shape
and justice bend over backwards,
if we have cherished hope,
if we believe we have believed in something true
and feel we have loved until we withered
and could not go on,
so help us our self-knowledge –
in the end,
out of everything that was
and could have been and should have been
in heaven as on earth
there only remains
a man fighting with an angel
night falls
and the angel strikes him down.

(translated from Dutch by Judith Wilkinson)

I don’t ask for much:
a few words,
a rented intimacy.

Even without the room,
her eyelids waiting to be closed,
you can imagine

the unmothering, its stark

perfection. You’ve occupied 
these kinds of rooms, done your own
borrowing and giving back.

I don’t ask for much:
a conversation,
a form of permanence that I
can hold until it’s gone.

-Sally Lipton Derringer, “Attachment”

(Source: souralpha, via fuckyeahspnsupportings)

notheretoperch:

Hello, hello
anybody out there?
‘cause I don’t hear a sound
alone, alone
I don’t really know where the world is but I miss it
now

The gods of Babel went quiet
When I knelt down and begged for a translation
So sure was I that every stain on your mouth
Meant a word with some significance;
These stains were letters written in deep crimson
Emphasized by a bright bloodied background,
An uneven upped alphabet that was displayed
For my desire to decipher and read:
This is it, this is what I mean — you mean
That I came to believe in the truth of those dark stains
And forgot to turn back towards the light

“The Gods of Babel” by Judith Mok

notheretoperch:

Things are beautiful
when you feel compelled
to throw yourself in a fire for them.
More so when you have to start the fire yourself.

  - Robert Montes, “The Poet Speaks of Beauty”

(Source: luvemishacollins)

notheretoperch:

Awesome Minor Characters → Claire Novak

She looks down at the plate, thinks I’ll be sad when you are gone,
forks the last bite of gingerbread and swallows.
She expects sadness to burst her like a hunger bubble,
a gas pain, to taunt with the sweet of another serving.
The penalty of the second piece, how it’s never as good
as the first, is her proof that God exists.
She can’t remember the tang of molasses
after it salves the seams of her mouth.
She traces alphabets in the muck where her cake
gripped the plate like a starfish. Isn’t it strange,
how appetite is collapsible? It has a way of matching the meal.
That’s why she is sad at buffets, with her spoon half-sunk
in pea salad, sour cream, crystallized chicken wings. Sad
when she checks her reflection in a pan
of unblemished Jello. Sadder still
when she wanders the aisles of heat lamps with her tray,
not sure what to serve herself and no longer hungry.
This is not what she meant by a feast. 

Kate Lebo, “Diminishing Returns”