"Next morning I'll confess I overmarmaladed
the toast on purpose, trying to make up
for the chromatic deficiency, for orangelessness,
though the sky begins to show at times
we can observe, now, look -"
"I choose, for moderate comfort, a thin tree
whose tallest branch has yet one leaf
hunched brown. A flag? Defiance? Obstinance?
A declaration I suppose.
I make it mine."
"when i am alone, i hear the thrum of blood pumping against my shirt. i feel my mother and grandmother wrap their arms around me until we are all chest to chest, the mirrors of our hearts beating in sync, as unending as the ocean lapping the shore"
Thirty spokes converge on a hub
but it’s the emptiness
that makes a wheel work
pots are fashioned from clay
but it’s the hollow
that makes a pot work
windows and doors are carved for a house
but it’s the spaces
that make a house work
existence makes a thing useful
but nonexistence makes it work.
— Lao-tzu from ‘Taoteching: With Selected Commentaries from the Past 2,000 Years’, tr. from Chinese by Red Pine
We write poetry constantly, unknowingly,
in our endless gush of posts.
I say this ferociously, unjokingly.
We write poetry constantly, unknowingly,
whether heroically or stoically,
humbly mumbled or in boasts.
We write poetry constantly, unknowingly,
in our endless gush of posts.
"The colours of their middle-age
are a midsummer tease, matching
hues, bluing into blue into bluish-
white in the distance. So here we are
too, a gallery of gazes
looking on these affairs—easy
chairs on the veranda."