Mr. Sexsmith

i don’t know what to tell you
other than the fact that a giraffe’s
heart weighs 22 pounds and that
somebody once told me when
flies fall in love, their entire brain
is rewired to only know loving each
other. when one of them dies, their
memory becomes blank. i hope you
never think about anything as much
as i think about waking up next to
you during a windstorm at 5 am.

(Source: likeawritingdesk, via feministpizza)

What I Have Learned So Far, Mary Oliver

What I Have Learned So Far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the
sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

Mary Oliver (from New and Selected Poems Volume Two)

To Have Without Holding

Marge Piercy 

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind 
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously, 
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can’t do it, you say it’s killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

The Thing Is

The Thing Is
by 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.

(Source: sugarbutch.net)

Radiant Sutra

You are stunned, powerless.
You thought you knew
What was going on.
Now you realize you don’t have a clue.

You are stopped in your tracks.
Everything within your skin is shaking.
Enter the trembling.

Right here, in the midst of the commotion - 
Get curious, look around inside with wonder.
Unmind your mind.
All the walls have fallen down - 
Go ahead and dissolve.

The One Who Has Always Been,
Who has seen much worse than this,
Is still here.

window

andrewgibby:

If everything is a window, if the wound is a window, if heartbreak is a window, if grief is a window, if the storm is a window, if illness is a window, if loss is a window, you will say you live in a house made entirely of glass, you will say the moon is so close you can catch its reflection on your silver spoon, you will say your spoon is a silver spoon, you will feed yourself light, you will be hungry for nothing but people whose hearts will never close the blinds.