Dreams-and-nightmares - Lost In Time And Space

What are some of your favorite poems/pieces of writing?

general disclaimer that im much less well-read as my carefully curated internet persona might lead on... but these are some pieces of writing that make up the mycelium network of my mind’s undergrowth:

tim riggins speaks of waterfalls - nico alvarado

as from a quiver of arrows - carl phillips 

what the dragon said: a love story - c. valente

hunting season - steven chung

yes, think - ruth stone

from blossom - li-young lee

psalm - dorianne laux

sleeping in hte forest - mary oliver

percy wakes me (fourteen) - mary oliver

here there are blueberries - mary szybist

try to praise the mutilated world - adam zagajewski

de profundis - christina rosetti

new bones - lucille clifton

morning love poem - tara skurtu

forfeiting my mystique - kaveh akbar

that kind of good - natalie wee

the mower - philip larkin

valentine - carol ann duffy

happiness from paul schmidtberger’s design flaws of the human condition

we ate the birds - margaret atwood

i want to tell you yes - kallie falandays

ode to buttoning and unbuttoning my shirt - ross gay

not the beloved from anne carson’s erso the bittersweet

after the movie - marie howe

accident report in the tall, tall weeds - ada limón

in tennessee i found a firefly - mary szybist

when i put my hands on your body - david wojnarowicz

the mystery of grocery carts - john olson

your night is of lilac - mahmoud darwish

a dead thing that, in dying, feeds the living - donika kelly

please read - mary ruefle

dudes, we did not go through the hassle of getting these fake ids for this jukebox to not have any springsteen - hanif andurraquib

we lived happily during the war - ilya kaminsky

while the child sleeps - ilya kaminsky

the forgotten dialect of the heart - jack gilbert

what the living do - marie howe

eleven - sandra cisneros

revolutionary letter #4 - diane di prima

elegy for my sadness - chen chen

Franz Wright, from “Our Conversation” [ID in alt text]

I owe the healing to myself and the little girl in me with big dreams.

yena sharma purmasir

five recipes for an exciting life (in my opinion)

spending enough time creating things with your hands (baking, drawing, scrapbooking, doodling, crocheting, journaling and so on)

keeping track of things like pretty skies, milestones, happy memories, appointments you're looking forward to

listening to music that genuinely makes you feel happy and energetic

making a habit of reaching out to people in a way that's comfortable to you (i send my dad songs he might like, my friend sends me monthly life updates)

being kind to all your five senses → like investing in a scented candle or essential oil dispenser or body mist, having a soft blanket or socks (or a soft animal to pet), listening to birdsong or the rain, looking at the sky more often, and having your favorite foods enough times

i love my therapist but i hate being in therapy. 10 minutes before my appointment, i'm in a meeting with my boss - we discuss my artistic choices; my boss recommends i artistically choose less. 10 minutes after therapy, i wash my hair and think about everything that was said, and then i have to switch it off, like a lamp, and go back to work again.

i was on a walk the other day and someone had the perfect combination of his cologne and whatever-else. it was almost exactly his scent. i fucking hate that. after all these years, i remember that? i tell my therapist - i feel like a fucking wolf. try telling a middle-aged blonde lady. oh i scented him on the air. i'm 30, and i'm having a panic attack over something that would be a plotline in the omegaverse.

what they don't tell you about mental illness is that if you are lucky enough to survive it into adulthood; it becomes a weird slice of your life. because you do, eventually, have to build a life. i realized in a panic somewhere around 22 - oh. i don't know what i'm fucking doing, because i always assumed i'd just go ahead and die. i didn't die, and i'm grateful for that, and i'm very happy about that choice. but it does mean that i am an adult in an apartment, living with my conditions side-by-side like. oh, that's my roommate, adhd. ignore the glass, bytheway, that's ocd.

so you pick your stupid life up by the scruff of the neck and you're, like glad for it (so much laughter and light and friends you would have never thought possible, when you were in the worst of it). but it feels so strange to be dancing around these odd little microcosms, these patchwork moments of your symptoms. if you have a panic attack at night, you still need to wake up and walk the dog in the morning. if your depression is making everything boring, well, you don't have any sick days left, and a job's not really supposed to be that exciting anyway. your ocd tears out each individual leg hair, and then, an hour later, you sigh, patch up the bloody bits, and go get dinner with friends. and the life is kitten-quiet, mewling and pathetic, but it's also like - it's yours, so you're fond of it.

and it's like - you're real. so you still enjoy pushing the shopping cart really fast and then riding on the back of it down an empty aisle. and you're not, like, so sick anymore that when you accidentally drop a mug you burst into tears (except for the days you do that. which are bad). and no, you're not allowed around certain items anymore. oops! but you've learned to be good about brushing your teeth most days of the week. and yeah sometimes in the middle of the day you have a little freak-out about how fucking unfair it all is, how fucking hard, how other people can just do this without having to fucking hurt the whole time. and then you sigh and force yourself to sit down and fucking journal about it so you can tell the nice middle-aged blonde woman yeah i had a hard day but i practiced grounding. you still sometimes want to burst out of your own skin, but you force yourself to eat kind-of healthy and to take your vitamins. you let yourself chop off all your hair in the sink in a dramatic poetry of control and relief - and you also have developed good hobbies that help you move your body more frequently. you feel helplessly behind, lost in the shuffle - but you also practice gratitude, taking stock of what you have garnered. because you're trying. even if you're never gonna be normal, you have something... close enough.

and the little kitten of your life, this mangy, starlit tigercub, this thing you expected to rot so young: in your arms, it turns itself over, belly-up. exposing this new soft part, all the organs and guts. like it's saying i trust you now. you won't give me up.

recovery is always the right thing to do. when you heal, you’ll look at things with completely new eyes, and your life will feel softer and calmer like nothing you’ve felt for a long time. you deserve this kind of life. maybe it feels like a million miles away, but you’re already on your way, and you will get there.

i exist, i exist, i exist

kačka chmelíková // holly warburton // ? // image from pinterest // letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke

What the Dragon Said: a Love Story

by Catherynne M. Valente

So this guy walks into a dragon’s lair      and he says why the long tale?                  HAR HAR BUDDY says the dragon                  FUCK YOU. The dragon’s a classic the ‘57 Chevy of existential chthonic threats take in those Christmas colors, those impervious green scales, sticky candy-red firebreath, comes standard with a heap of rubylust goldhuddled treasure.                  Go ahead.                  Kick the tires, boy.                  See how she rides. Sit down, kid, says the dragon. Diamonds roll off her back like dandruff. Oh, you’d rather be called a paladin? I’d rather be a unicorn.                  Always thought that was the better gig. Everyone thinks you’re innocent. Everyone calls you pure. And the girls aren’t afraid they come right up with their little hands out for you to sniff like you’re a puppy and they’re gonna take you home. They let you put your head right in their laps.                  But nobody on this earth ever got what they wanted. Now I know what you came for. You want my body. To hang it up on a nail over your fireplace. Say to some milk-and-rosewater chica who lays her head in your lap look how much it takes to make me feel like a man.                  We’re in the dark now, you and me. This is primal shit right here. Grendel, Smaug, St. George. You’ve been called up. This is the big game. You don’t have to make stupid puns. Flash your feathers like your monkey bravado can impress. I saw a T-Rex fight a comet and lose. You’ve got nothing I want. Here’s something I bet you don’t know:      every time someone writes a story about a dragon a real dragon dies.                  Something about seeing and being seen                  something about mirrors that old tune about how a photograph can take your whole soul. At the end of this poem                  I’m going to go out like electricity in an ice storm. I’ve made peace with it.                  That last blockbuster took out a whole family                  of Bhutan thunder dragons living in Latvia the fumes of their cleargas hoard hanging on their beards like blue ghosts. A dragon’s gotta get zen                  with ephemerality. You want to cut me up? Chickenscratch my leather with butcher’s chalk: cutlets, tenderloin, ribs for the company barbecue, chuck, chops, brisket, roast.                  I dig it, I do. I want to eat everything, too. When I look at the world      I see a table. All those fancy houses, people with degrees, horses and whales, bankers and Buddha statues the Pope, astronauts, panda bears and yes, paladins                  if you let me swallow you whole                  I’ll call you whatever you want. Look at it all: waitresses and ice caps and submarines down at the bottom of the heavy lightless saltdark of the sea                  Don’t they know they’d be safer                  inside me? I could be big for them      I could hold them all My belly could be a city      where everyone was so loved they wouldn’t need jobs. I could be the hyperreal post-scarcity dragonhearted singularity.      I could eat them      and feed them      and eat them      and feed them. This is why I don’t get to be a unicorn. Those ponies have clotted cream and Chanel No. 5 for blood and they don’t burn up like comets with love that tastes like starving to death.      And you, with your standup comedy knightliness, covering Beowulf’s greatest hits on your tin kazoo, you can’t begin to think through      what it takes to fill up a body like this. It takes everything pretty and everything true      and you stick yourself in a cave because your want is bigger than you. I just want to be the size of a galaxy so I can eat all the stars and gas giants without them noticing and getting upset. Is that so bad?                  Isn’t that what love looks like?                  Isn’t that what you want, too? I’ll make you a deal.      Come close up stand on my emeraldheart, my sapphireself the goldpile of my body      Close enough to smell everything you’ll never be. Don’t finish the poem. Not for nothing is it a snake that eats her tail and means eternity. What’s a few verses worth anyway? Everyone knows poetry doesn’t sell. Don’t you ever feel like you’re just a story someone is telling about someone like you?                  I get that. I get you. You and me we could fit inside each other. It’s not nihilism if there’s really no point to anything. I have a secret down in the deep of my dark. All those other kids who wanted me to call them paladins, warriors, saints, whose swords had names, whose bodies were perfect as moonlight      they’ve set up a township near my liver had babies with the maidens they didn’t save      invented electric lightbulbs      thought up new holidays.                              You can have my body                              just like you wanted. Or you can keep on fighting dragons writing dragons fighting dragons re-staging that same old Cretaceous deathmatch you mammals always win.                  But hey, hush, come on. Quit now. You’ll never fix that line.                  I have a forgiveness in me                  the size of eons                  and if a dragon’s body is big enough                  it just looks like the world.                                                          Did you know the earth used to have two moons?

Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001