I'm Still Not All Put Back Together

Well, it's been a year now.  And since it's Domestic Violence Awareness Month:

When my clients experience the death of someone who harmed them, whether it was a family member, partner, or anyone else, they often experience what I refer to as the trauma trifecta: there is often an initial sense of relief, followed by a feeling of guilt for feeling this relief, and they also often feel sadness—often for the loss of what could have been had the person not been abusive. Often there is a feeling of sadness or of having missed out on what could have been, coupled with confusion as to why you are feeling sad when someone was abusive to you.

That last sentence.  Thought I was going to blog more about this, but I just can't.

Selah.

I can't hold you down if you want to fly

Can't you see I'm all broke up inside?

For Her Bold and Inventive Oeuvre

Between Us And:

BETWEEN US AND
animals is a namelessness.
We    flail    around
generically      —
camelopardalis   is   what
the Romans came up with
or  "giraffe" ( it looked to
them like a camel crossed
with a leopard ) or get the
category wrong — a musk
Ox isn't an ox at all but
more closely cognate with
the  goat —  and   when
choosing   to    name
individual  animals  we
pretend they are objects
(Spot) or virtues (Beauty)
or just other selves (Bob).

Anne Carson (2026 Nobel Laureate).

#throwbackthursday

Rally cap worked.  (2022)

We would be warm below the storm

In our little hideaway beneath the waves.

Just Like Every Night Has Its Dawn

Rose Thorns:

Why do roses need their thorns?
Some things are little known.
But thorns of roses
spring and seize the surface
of  fey airs
before the roses come.
I’ve seen thorns huddle in a harmony alone,
hunkered down on green, wiry canes,
smoothed blades of whipping rose stalks,
and curl their polished tridents
to night’s call.
They are like stars
digging into firmament
with such desire,
you don’t quite get it,
and so healthy that
they almost have to wound,
or like bodies that can’t be argued,
borrowed, tamed.
The touch of a thorn
is a wry, deep telling
of the senses not to bloom
without a wish to,
without belief  in pain
to hold us true.

By Molly McQuade

Trip to heave and ho

Far out, man.

Our Life Is What Our Thoughts Make It

Marcus Aurelius:

Sometimes I wake up in the night
with a terrible headache, my mouth
blackened; a ghost looking for valuables
in the debris, I turn on a battery-powered
light, clipped to a book, I write things down
in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius
who said the finest bottle of wine
is just grape juice, passing through the liver,
no matter the beauty of a frothing glass,
or a night of big Truth-seeking, never recalled;
the importance of putting something bittersweet
into our mouths, turning it around and around
on our tongues, attaching to it, our missions,
our purpose—in the end
we are all just filters, not even
as beautiful as the plainest bird
or as zen as the meanest deer tick,
nothing is given over to, nothing new is lit.
So often it is this. I wake up, urgent, fatalistic,
with the taste of nectar on my boughs.
I replay on a loop my one stoic consistency,
my middle of the night vow,
that I will start tomorrow
the essential dismantling
of what I live.

Bianca Stone.

Let the rich go colonize mars

I'm aggravated by Morello's privileged bothsiderism, but I dig this new track.  In conclusion: Beir bua, faoi spéir crua.

The Insurgency Began and You Missed It

It is I Who Must Begin:

It is I who must begin.
Once I begin, once I try –
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
–to live in harmony
with the “voice of Being,” as I
understand it within myself
–as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out upon that road.

Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.

Vaclav Havel.

It's bigger than you

And you are not me.

But Data Centers Are Forever

On a Day, In the World:

             We had a grief
we didn't understand while
           standing at the edge of
   some low scrub hills as if
humans were extra
   or already gone;—

what had been in us before?
          a life that asks for mostly
    wanting freedom to get things done
in order to feel less
          helpless about the end
of things alone—;
when i think of time on earth,
   i feel the angle of gray minutes
          entering the medium days
    yet not "built-up":: our
work together: groups, the willing
    burden of an old belief,
 
           & beyond them love, as of
    a great life going like fast
creatures peeling back marked
    seeds, gold-brown integuments
    the color time
  will be when we are gone—

Brenda Hillman.

Oh, life is bigger

Hold on a sec...

All That’s Best of Dark

These Are Her Wonders:

Beauty drips like soft light between the trees,
Huddles like birds on the red autumn leaves.
These are her wonders, but she is not these. 

She bears the wound of darkness in her breast,
And healing for the wound. Her fingers pressed
Against your temples bring the deepest rest. 

She is not darkness, nor the wound, nor peace —
These are her wonders, but she is not these.

She is in dust and in the hard black ground,
And in the sun's hair flaming and unbound.
Ever astounding; always to astound.

She is in wind that sprawls against the eaves ;
In shooting stars, in laughter. All that grieves
Bears something of her, yet she is not these. 

I think the heart that loves, the heart awake
Most truly, knows the path her wonders take
And drinks a strong libation for her sake.

The wakened heart must follow when it sees
Her signs and wonders, yet knows she is not these. 

Madeline Gleason.