En el Nombre del Cielo

How in heaven’s name can I write anything when I seem to be constantly writing to you.


Anne Sexton

Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.





Erich Fromm // The Art of Loving

65

One day, whether you are 14, 28 or 65, you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die. However, the saddest, most awful truth you will ever come to find - is they are not always with whom we spend our lives.


Beau Taplin // Hunting Season

Echizo de Tinta

Fire and water,… don’t really mix. You could say they’re incompatible. But when they do love each other, they love passionately.




Cornelia Funke // Inkspell

La Douleur Exquise

— (idiom) A French, untranslatable phrase, describing the heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can’t have. To say this phrase is synonymous with unrequited love limits its beauty. Unrequited love describes a relationship state, but not a state of mind. Unrequited love encompasses the lover who isn’t corresponding, as well as the lover who desires. La douleur exquise evokes the emotional heartache, specifically, of being the one whose love is unreciprocated.

 

Y Nadie se le Aproxima

19 May. He feels more deserted with a second person than when alone. If he is together with someone, this second person reaches out for him and he is helplessly delivered into his hand. If he is alone, all mankind reaches out for him – but the innumerable outstretched arms become entangled with one another and no one reaches to him.

Franz Kafka’s diary entry of 19 May 1922. From The Diaries of Franz Kafka.” Schocken Books. Translation by Martin Greenberg.

Bestial

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”



Stephen Crane // 1895

All those ships that never sailed
The ones with their seacocks open
That were scuttled in their stalls...
Today I bring them back
Huge and intransitory
And let them sail
Forever



Bob Kaufman

Genésico

Vivir es darse, perpetuarse, y perpetuarse y darse es morir. Acaso el supremo deleite del engendrar no es sino un anticipado gustar de la muerte, el desgarramiento de la propia esencia vital. Nos unimos a otro, pero es para partirnos; ese más íntimo abrazo no es sino un más íntimo desgrarramiento. En su fondo, el deleite amoroso sexual, el espasmo genésico, es una sensación de resurrección, de resucitar en otro, porque sólo en otros podemos resucitar para perpetuarnos.


El sentimiento trágico de la vida // Miguel de Unamuno

Sus Amantes y Mi Carta a Mano

Inward

If I rest, if I think inward, I go mad.


— Sylvia Plath

Saudade

“saudade”

— (noun) A Portuguese, untranslatable word romanticizing nostalgia in its purest form. This beautiful feeling captures the yearning for someone or something that you love, which is now lost. It is a melancholic longing. Saudade’s pronunciation varies according to the speaker and country, which only adds to its sincerity and vulnerability.

Acto

Her concise speaking style was strangely persuasive. From every word that came to her lips, he felt a precise, wedge-like thrust. He still could not tell though, how seriously he should take her. There was something out of the ordinary about her, a screw slightly loose. It was an inborn quality, perhaps. He might be in the presence of an authentic talent in its most natural form, or it could all be an act.



-  Haruki Murakami

Irremarcable

Mara tells me that he was
no one special. Okay.
I believe her.
He was no one special.
Unremarkable, even.
A newspaper man with coffee
breath and ugly sneakers.
Mara tells me to let go.

But I waited for him, Mara.
I ate the scraps of his heart like
a starving dog under the dinner
table.
I slept at his feet and then by the
door when he was too far away.


I dreamt of coffee. I brought
the newspaper in every morning.

He was no one special, but it
didn’t matter, Mara,
because I kissed his stained teeth.
I brushed his unremarkable hair,
rested my head on his soft,
unremarkable stomach.

There was no hunger like my
hunger, Mara.
No man like my plain man.
No torch like my torch.

"

Caitlyn Siehl, Unremarkable (via alonesomes)

Titus

When I saw the couple get into the taxicab the mind felt as if, after being divided, it had come together again in a natural fusion. The obvious reason would be that it is natural for the sexes to co-operate. One has a profound, if irrational, instinct in favour of the theory that the union of man and woman makes for the greatest satisfaction, the most complete happiness. But the sight of the two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness? And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man’s brain the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman’s brain the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating. If one is a man, still the woman part of his brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her.



Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought. But it would be well to test what one meant by man-womanly, and conversely by woman-manly, by pausing and looking at a book or two.

Coleridge … meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided. In fact one goes back to Shakespeare’s mind as the type of the androgynous, of the man-womanly mind… And if it be true that it is one of the tokens of the fully developed mind that it does not think specially or separately of sex, how much harder it is to attain that condition now than ever before… No age can ever have been as stridently sex-conscious as our own…

Castigado

Here I go again,
talking myself up the side of another
treacherous mountain.
I work my way up.

And then you come through,
blowing my progress down with your
turbulent zephyr.
You take me back down.

I fumble and fall,
tumbling towards the ground of the
tentative bottom.
I fracture the ground.

And it’s you who comes,
saving me from dropping beneath by
throwing yourself in.
You prevent the drop.

But you can’t go on,
pulling me off the endless sea of cliffs
time and time again.
We need for this end.

We must leave the heights,
flying to the ground below the cloud’s
triggering descent.
We meet solid ground.



Sarah Marie Pardy // Grounded

Our Little Disaster

We are all a little damaged. Some of us hide it better than others, and others just have in different ways than most. But on some level we are all torn up. We take it out on others and beat through life carrying it all and we will end up damaging someone else. And most of the time we won’t even notice or bother to care, because we are busy with our little disaster, that we call life.

El Eterno Optimista

I am the eternal optimist for love.
I believe you can find love anywhere.
You can find it anytime, any place, with anything.
It will hit you unexpectedly with the last person you thought you were capable of loving.
Love is the strongest force in this world. Maybe in the universe.
I am the eternal optimist for love.
I am the eternal optimist for people.
There are good people in this world.
Believe it or not there are people out there who are not out to hurt you.
If you stop judging those you don’t know you will realize that everyone is in a battle.
Everyone is struggling in someway. Notice.
I am the eternal optimist for people.

I am the eternal optimist for life.
Never take for granted the things that have happened to you.
Life has a plan for everyone. Everything happens for a reason as cliché as that sounds.
Regardless if you haven’t fallen in love or haven’t had the right people walk into your life.
Be thankful for these things, they are lessons you never thought you could learn from.
There are the things that make life so easily enjoyable and so easy to hate, but regardless of the emotion or feeling, fall in love with life. More importantly fall in love with everything in your life.
Be the eternal optimist for life.



Kimberly Marie // The Eternal Optimist

If I Hadn't Abused Words

This is April again. Roller skates rain slowly down the street
Your voice far away on the phone
Once I would have jumped like a clown through a hoop—
but
“Then the area of infection has increased? …oh …What can I expect after all—I’ve had worse shocks.
Anyhow, I know and that’s something.” (Like hell it is, but it’s what you say to an X-ray doctor.)
Then the past whispering faint now on another phone:
“Is there any change?”
“Little or no change”
“I see”
The roller skates rain down the streets,
The black cars shine between the leaves,
Your voice far away:
“I am going with my daughter to the country. My husband left today. . . No he knows nothing.”
“Good”.
I have asked a lot of my emotions—one hundred and twenty stories, The price was high, right up with Kipling, because there was one little drop of something not blood, not a tear, not my seed, but me more intimately than these, in every story, it was the extra I had. Now it has gone and I am just like you now.
Once the phial was full—here is the bottle it came in.
Hold on there’s a drop left there. . . No, it was just the way the light fell
But your voice on the telephone. If I hadn’t abused words so what you said might have meant something.
But one hundred and twenty stories
April evening spreads over everything, the purple blur left by a child who has used the whole paint-box.



F. Scott Fitzgerald

Childish

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.



Anaïs Nin

Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.



Sylvia Plath

No Soul

Understand me.

I’m not like an ordinary world.
I have my madness,
I live in another dimension
and I do not have time
for things that have no soul.



Chinaski

Otredad

The Giver

The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.




Lois Lowry // The Giver

No Country For Old Women

Fault

I have seen your beauty,
Saw your bleeding parts too.
I love everything yours;
I want you whole now.
I want the ugliness
most of all.



Simone Desso // Once in a while, you fall in love with the faults too

For The Grieving

Beloved, they will tell you
To turn away from sadness,
But I say: you can only move through it.

Just as rivers must be crossed
To reach a different shore -
So should you, beloved;
Take up the splintered paddle. Go.

Grief is strong, and like the river
Cuts men and mountains to the bone.
Grief and water will not tame;
It wears away the stubborn stone.

Let it carry you, beloved,
Let it take you where it may;
And though your journey is a lonely one
You’ve come so far, you must not stay.

Beloved, they will tell you
To veil the wounds and what you feel,
Not to look upon or touch;
That ugliness must be concealed,

But the lighted world, and joy,
loses depth without its shadows;
For water cuts, but also heals;
Runs deep, and white, but leads to shallows.

To Recede

my dear,
we are all made of water.
it’s okay to rage. sometimes
it’s okay to rest. to recede.


// Sanober Khan

Thick Skins & Cheekbones

Millions of people
have decided not to be sensitive.
They have grown thick skins
around themselves
just to avoid being hurt by anybody.
But it is at great cost.
Nobody can hurt them,
but nobody can make them
happy either.




//Osho

La Correcta

There is, after all, a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it’s the right unhappiness.


Jonathan Franzen // Freedom

One Day, Wake Up

Hello.


Eye contact, slight waves.
Small talk, playful banter.
First date, deeper conversations.
Laughter heard, smiles seen.
More dates, more shared.
Secrets divulged, dreams revealed.
Inside jokes, stolen kisses.
Wounded cries, painful struggles.
Open arms, life support.
Comfortable silence, starry nights.
Loving embraces, warm peace.

One day, wake up.

Uneasy feelings, disturbing quiet.
Hopelessly lost, pulling away.
Unrevealed moments, multiplying lies.
Emotionally numb, growing apart.
False accusations, pointless fights.
Jealousy heightens, piercing screams.
Sleep deprived, tears dried.
Angrily drained, unhappily exhausted.
Final straw, boxes packed.
Last words, turn around.
Part ways, eyes down.

Goodbye.


Isa Ampersand

Evelyn

Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else.


Charles Bukowski

Evelyn McHale

Throne // Thorns

So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.

Two Kinds

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.


Tom Robbins // Still Life with Woodpecker

Pale

But luck will fail
and others will pale
and I’ll think of you.
And I’ll think I tried it
or I will deny it
but it’s not true.



Waxahatchee // Luminary Blake

Your life flashes before your eyes just before you die... it’s called Life.

- “What is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?”
Death thought about it.
- ”CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE."





Sir Terry Pratchett // 28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015

The sun goes down upon the Ankh,

And slowly, softly fades -

Across the Drum; the Royal Bank;

The River-Gate; the Shades.

A stony circle's closed to elves;

And here, where lines are blurred,

Between the stacks of books on shelves,

A quiet 'Ook' is heard.

A copper steps the city-street

On paths he's often passed;

The final march; the final beat;

The time to rest at last.

He gives his badge a final shine,

And sadly shakes his head -

While Granny lies beneath a sign

That says: 'I aten't dead.'

The Luggage shifts in sleep and dreams;

It's now. The time's at hand.

For where it's always night, it seems,

A timer clears of sand.

And so it is that Death arrives,

When all the time has gone...

But dreams endure, and hope survives,

And Discworld carries on.

Where could I rest but in your hurricane?

Erica Jong // Insomnia & Poetry

Ironicamente

Mirrors of Bergman from Criterion Collection on Vimeo.

You Crave Me

I am your morning cigarette.
You crave me,
you need me,
but someday soon you’ll realize
how toxic I am.
Someday soon
you will leave me.

Don’t you worry, darling.
I’ve already stained your lungs black
and I know you’ll feel
the ghost of me
on your fingers
forever.
In the mornings
before you fully wake
you’ll crave me
because old habits die hard
and you’ll never quite be able to
kill the desire for me.
When the gentle lips of your wife
bore you,
you will think of my
bitterness that somehow always
tastes sweeter than honey.

That one time you give in
and indulge
she will cry when
she smells me on you,
and never again
will you feel me
on your lips,
but I know you will always
feel me in
the darkness inside you.

Right now
I am your morning cigarette.
Soon I will be
the cancer in your lungs.

I wish I was sorry.

He estado aqui por un tiempo ya

A Restless Ocean Heart

Niles King

Colliding

Because I was the storm that he couldn’t weather.
Because I was the sea while he never strayed from shore.

We were the joining of the tempest and the calm.

The worst part not us colliding but that I, absorbed by him lost my vastness.

He never loved me and I-

I should’ve known better.

Unwise Love

It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.


Patrick Rothfuss // The Wise Man’s Fear

Bailo otra vez borracho,
desaprobando la dictadura del orgasmo,
soy el monstruo idiota que saliva delante de la carne,
y me encuentro de nuevo con este amuleto obscuro,
que despierta mis antiguas soledades,
la serie es triste,
amores fríos,
delicadezas manipuladoras,
prefiero abrazar el caos,
oler sexos descerebrados,
besar cuerpos ensangrentados,
por que dentro de estos cuerpos
todo es eterno mi amor.

In This Kind of Hope

…I love you, you of your feelings, you of your belief. You are the reason I wrote the poems. I didn’t even know you were there — but you were. "There ought to be something for someone in this kind of hope" I wrote…but I wasn’t sure. Now I am sure.



Anne Sexton // A Self-Portrait In Letters