screen-porches in summertime.

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade featherveins.etsy.com

me at bethesda fountain, central park, nyc - 09.14.08 - brian burke photography

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1. name:
2. birthday:
3. place of residence:
4. what makes you happy:
5. what are you listening to now/have listened to last:
6. do you read my lj:
7. if you do, what is particularly good/bad about it:
8. an interesting fact about you:
9. are you in love/have a crush at the moment:
10. favourite place to be:
11. favourite lyric/quote:
12. best time of the year:
13: a recent picture of yourself:

RECOMMEND
1. a film:
2. a book:
3. a song:
4. a comic book:
5. a short story:

PLUS
1. one thing you like about me:
2. two things you like about yourself:
3. put this in your LJ so I can tell you what I think of you.

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i.

to live not in spite of fear but for fear, to cherish fear, to lick it from the air like peanut butter from a spoon


ii.

ask me what i would change about myself and i will answer you, nothing or i have already explained that i am no longer a lioness, but a tigress now.


iii.

Aliens
Kim Addonizio

Now that you're finally happy
you notice how sad your friends are.
One calls you from a pay phone, crying.
Her husband has cancer; only a few months,
maybe less, before his body gives in.
She's tired all the time, can barely eat.
What can you say that will help her?
You yourself are ravenous.
You come so intensely with your new lover
you wonder if you've turned
into someone else. Maybe an alien
has taken over your body
in order to experience the good life
here on earth: dark rum and grapefruit juice,
fucking on the kitchen floor,
then showering together and going out
to eat and eat. When your friends call--
the woman drinking too much, the one who lost
her brother, the ex-lover whose right ear
went dead and then began buzzing--
the alien doesn't want to listen.
More food, it whines. Fuck me again,
it whispers, and afterwards we'll go to the circus.
The phone rings. Don't answer it.
You reach for a fat eclair,
bite into it while the room fills
with aliens--wandering, star-riddled creatures
who vibrate in the rapturous air,
longing to come down and join you,
looking for a place they can rest.

iv.

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v.

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.


vi.

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
Jack Gilbert

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

vii.

what is the root of heartbreak?
our actions.
by our own hands.

viii.

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ix.

live in exultation - LIVE IN EXULTATION

x.


The Thing Is
Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

this page will be periodically updated with quotes from novels/poems/poetry collections/non-fiction that i read. (i won't bombard your friend's page with all of it each time i update it. instead, the link to this entry will always be on the left.) i am a collector of quotes and i all-too-often misplace them or forget where i've written them down. hopefully this collection will eliminate that problem.

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a few of my friends have done this & i think it is a fantastic idea:

please tell me what you honestly think of me & post your comments anonymously.

all criticism, advice, opinions, & thoughts are welcome.