Just think for a moment about the fact that every single person is a person
You can talk to any of them and they will talk back and every one of them will have something different to say. They’re all as complex as you are, and you’re probably more complex than you realize. Each of them is full of their own questions and hypocrisies and delightful twists and turns. There’s a whole world hidden inside every skull.
Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie (via bookmania)
Bertrand Russell (via philphys)
from The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (via bookmania)
Charles Bukowski (via philphys)
by Jeffrey McDaniel
Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland,
I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive
insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the endof a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt
in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds
of women—those you write poems aboutand those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you
a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.
My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addictionlyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M.,
whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked
within the confines of my character, castas the bad boy in your life, the Magellan
of your dark side. We don’t have a past so much
as a bunch of electricity and liquor, powernever put to good use. What we had together
makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught
one another like colds, and desire was merelya symptom that could be treated with soup
and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now,
I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,as if I invented it, but I’m still not immune
to your waterfall scent, still haven’t developed
antibodies for your smile. I don’t know how longregret existed before humans stuck a word on it.
I don’t know how many paper towels it would take
to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the lightof a candle being blown out travels faster
than the luminescence of one that’s just been lit,
but I do know that all our huffing and puffinginto each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trick
birthday candle—didn’t make the silence
any easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kissesI scrawled on your neck were written
in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you
so hard one of your legs would pop outof my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d press
your face against the porthole of my submarine.
I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen yearsto reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding
off the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyriding
over flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolate
to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy
of each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraph
from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.
by Chou Nu Er
When I was young I’d never tasted sorrow,
But I loved to climb the highest tower, but I loved to climb the highest tower,
To sit and try and write of the taste of sadness.
But now I have tasted sorrow,
I would like to talk about it, but cannot, I would like to talk about it, but cannot.
And so I only say “The day is cool, the autumn is fine.”
John Locke (via philphys)
Hafez (via philphys)
