look. the nature of the artist (any kind) is to become inexplicably obsessed with certain themes and motifs for a few years and just milk that subject matter to death. when respected artists do this, art critics refer to it as a “period.” the only thing separating you from them is fame and accolades. to your haters you will be “that freak who’s fixated on drawing weird trains,” while to your admirers, you are simply in your “tiny trains made out of household appliances” period

author unknown - "value form"

"Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev" - Adrienne Rich

(Leader of a woman’s climbing team, all of whom died in a storm on Lenin Peak, August 1974. Later, Shatayev’s husband found and buried the bodies.) The cold felt cold until our blood grew colder then the wind died down and we slept If in this sleep I speak it’s with a voice no longer personal (I want to say with voices) When the wind tore our breath from us at last we had no need of words For months for years each one of us had felt her own yes growing in her slowly forming as she stood at windows waited for trains mended her rucksack combed her hair What we were to learn was simply what we had up here as out of all words that yes gathered its forces fused itself and only just in time to meet a No of no degrees the black hole sucking the world in I feel you climbing toward me your cleated bootsoles leaving their geometric bite colossally embossed on microscopic crystals as when I trailed you in the Caucasus Now I am further ahead than either of us dreamed anyone would be I have become the white snow packed like asphalt by the wind the women I love lightly flung against the mountain that blue sky our frozen eyes unribboned through the storm we could have stitched that blueness together like a quilt You come (I know this) with your love your loss strapped to your body with your tape-recorder camera ice-pick against advisement to give us burial in the snow and in your mind While my body lies out here flashing like a prism into your eyes how could you sleep You climbed here for yourself we climbed for ourselves When you have buried us told your story Ours does not end we stream into the unfinished the unbegun the possible Every cell’s core of heat pulsed out of us into the thin air of the universe the armature of rock beneath these snows this mountain which has taken the imprint of our minds through changes elemental and minute as those we underwent to bring each other here choosing ourselves each other and this life whose every breath and grasp and further foothold is somewhere still enacted and continuing In the diary I wrote: Now we are ready and each of us knows it I have never loved like this I have never seen my own forces so taken up and shared and given back After the long training the early sieges we are moving almost effortlessly in our love In the diary as the wind began to tear at the tents over us I wrote: We know now we have always been in danger down in our separateness and now up here together but till now we had not touched our strength In the diary torn from my fingers I had written: What does love mean what does it mean “to survive” A cable of blue fire ropes our bodies burning together in the snow We will not live to settle for less We have dreamed of this all of our lives (1974)

There is a blacksmith, and there is a shepherd, and there is a butcher boy, and there is a barber, who’s cutting and cutting away at my only joy. I saw a rabbit, as slick as a knife, and as pale as a candlestick, and I had thought it’d be harder to do, but I caught her, and skinned her quick: held her there, kicking and mewling, upending, unspooling, unsung and blue; told her “wherever you go, little runaway bunny, I will find you.” And then she ran, as they’re liable to do.

Be at peace, baby, and be gone. Be at peace, baby, and be gone.

John Lee’s Dead

John Lee’s dead and his motorcade winds toward the old hill and its chapel choked with vines.

The clouds are dark and swollen as mourners dry their eyes, and ravens deck the branches of the trees as they roll by.

As the gates groan wide, the clouds begin to burst and the sky throws down its spears, a thousand tears on John Lee’s hearse.

Now a swarm of dark umbrellas like black flowers bloom around a pit that yawns to swallow one more memory in the ground.

And John Lee’s widow’s weeping in her veil of black lace (though some detect a smile, if only just a trace).

The priest, he babbles nonsense about heaven, God, and sin as the casket slowly lowers in the low and mournful din.

But the dearly beloved who are gathered here today will forget death in an hour as they drink their tears away.

And John Lee’s funeral’s over. He’s down too deep to dream. And only grass will go there. And not until the spring.

© JM Tiffany 3/27/2024

i have read the whole moon by Emily Skaja

ms angelou i will never get over this

James baldwin’s the artists struggle for identity. Btw.

Tonight I am Searching for An Image that May Very Well Change My Life

Anne Sexton - "The Kiss"

haven't written much lately but wanted to write something about my kind neighbours. JIM & KERRY on substack now

Jenny Xie - From "Rootless" (2018)

Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems to Night

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

reimagining shame, on writing and being seen