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poetry-in--motion · 19 days

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you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me

#i just looked up the site and it really hasn't changed AT ALL and i think that's so beautiful

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poetry-in--motion · 5 months

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HOLY TRINITY OF TRADITIONAL BALLADS

#doctor who #iconic #i think about the toxic joke daily

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poetry-in--motion · 5 months

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that scene in tlo where thalia tells percy he can't start feeling sorry for luke bc luke made his choices. and thalia reveals that the reason they couldn't make it to camp in time for all of them to make it to camp was bc luke kept picking fights. and annabeth never saw this as wrong bc luke was her hero. so thalia had to pick up the pieces. and percy thinking both that luke was put in a cruel position and that luke was putting others in a cruel position. and percy is the only character who understood both sides of luke bc annabeth sees only the best of him and thalia sees only the worst. and that's why percy is the prophecy kid and the one who gives luke the knife. bc annabeth had spent the entire series essentially giving luke the knife when he didn't deserve it. and thalia was never going to give luke the knife. but percy is the only one who can see exactly when luke deserves the knife.

#percy jackson

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poetry-in--motion · 10 months

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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - OCEAN VUONG

i

Tell me it was for the hunger

& nothing less. For hunger is to give

the body what it knows

it cannot keep. That this amber light

whittled down by another war

is all that pins my hand

to your chest.

i

You, drowning

between my arms —

stay.

You, pushing your body

into the river

only to be left

with yourself —

stay.

i

I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after

backhanding

mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel

in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls.

And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing

to surrender.

i

Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.

Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.

Say autumn despite the green

in your eyes. Beauty despite

daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn

mounting in your throat.

My thrashing beneath you

like a sparrow stunnedwith falling.

i

Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining.

i

I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once.

i

Say amen. Say amend.

Say yes. Say yes

anyway.

i

In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed.

i

In the life before this one, you could tell

two people were in love

because when they drove the pickup

over the bridge, their wings

would grow back just in time.

Some days I am still inside the pickup.

Some days I keep waiting.

i

It’s not too late. Our heads haloed

with gnats & summer too early

to leave any marks.

Your hand under my shirt as static

intensifies on the radio.

Your other hand pointing

your daddy’s revolver

to the sky. Stars falling one

by one in the cross hairs.

This means I won’t be

afraid if we’re already

here. Already more

than skin can hold. That a body

beside a body

must make a field

full of ticking. That your name

is only the sound of clocks

being set back another hour

& morning

finds our clothes

on your mother’s front porch, shed

like week-old lilies.

#poetry #poetry in motion #poem #ocean vuong #on earth we're briefly gorgeous

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poetry-in--motion · 2 years

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Hey, do you have any recommendations when it comes to mythology inspired poetry? 🤍

for collections i would try:

averno & meadowlands, louise gluck

orpheus & eurydice: a lyric sequence, gregory orr

the world's wife, carol ann duffy

sonnets to orpheus, rainer maria rilke

gilgamesh: a verse play, yusef komunyakaa

autobiography of red, anne carson

mother love, rita dove

ovid at fifteen, christopher bursk (i haven’t read this one yet, but it’s been on my list for a while now)

helen in egypt & hermetic definition, h.d.

some individual ones i’ve loved:

"persephone leaving", mary jo bang

"ceasefire", michael longley

"unicorn", angela carter

"complaint of achilles' heel", charles jensen

"even the gods", nicole sealey

“musée des beaux arts”, w.h. auden

"shapechangers in winter", margaret atwood

"the pomegranate", eavan boland

"odysseus to telemachus", joseph brodsky

"the wedding letter", paul monette

"failing and flying", jack gilbert

"black mythology", jonathan teklit

"and they were both right", kapka kassabova

"mycenae lookout", seamus heaney

“daedalus, after icarus”, saeed jones

"the maenads", ursula k. le guin

"fairy tale", miroslav holub

"cuchulain comforted" & "the stolen child", w.b. yeats

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poetry-in--motion · 4 years

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One Should Do It Peacefully

Imagine then What the world will look like When we tumble out Of our holes and caverns and caves Strange and new Forgotten social cues Scrambling for that normal we used To run from, with loss Of taste or want. Imagine when we all emerge Eager to clasp a hand Hand out a kiss Embrace strangers with the Knowing of safety finally Returned from its journey. Imagine how we will see The world that so bravely Went into the unknown, danced Into the fear and said Yes we will do this. Yes we will survive this. And yes, we shall come out Again the stronger. As a people. As a race. As a home. What is more beautiful than Sleeping tonight in that knowledge?

because my anxiety is skyrocketing, and i’m writing my way through it.

#poem #poetry #write to calm down #poetry in motion #hi followers its me

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poetry-in--motion · 4 years

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- Blythe Baird

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poetry-in--motion · 9 years

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Anny Miner’s “Wicked Women”

Chapter 4 - Isabelle She was daughter to the moon, born with stars as freckles and found dancing with the trees. When a man tried to comb the wild out of her hair and wash the bark of her skin she called the wolves, she sent the vultures, she watched as he was consumed alive organ by organ, asked him, “How dare you try and chop my Amazon into fire wood for your own warmth?”

My mother is full of these fairy tales. She read them to me each night hoping I would grow up believing in the power of my own magic, that I was born as bonfire chasing circles during the witching hour. I come from a long line of wicked women. But they do not need voodoo dolls or magic spells; instead go straight for the throat.

Isabelle was my great grandmother who fed her husband ground glass instead of sugar and watched him die because she was sick of how bourbon made him mistake her for prey.

My grandmother Marie went through her husband’s savings and bought herself a diamond ring when he spent Christmas inside another woman.

And my mother’s story is still a family secret. I will not tell you in case my father is ever listening.

I am the next chapter. Yet I still accepted the boy’s fists as if each were a rose and I was a garden in need of some color. When he left finger prints on my skin like thin ice over dark pools I pull my long sleeve shirts out of winter storage and clung to his next morning apologies as if they could calm the swelling.

When he told me all the places he could hide my body, I drew my diary into a treasure map awaiting an X and a dotted red line.

When he broke into my house I spoke quietly as to not trespass on his temper afraid that one more rose would tip the bouquet and spill them all across my face. Afraid that no one would find my bones until the snow melted in Spring.

When I look at my hands I wonder how I did not inherit their brass knuckles. I pray these fists were something they had to grow into also.

I still believe in magic. I’ve heard a whisper to summon the southern winds. The wicked women are telling me that hurricanes are named after humans for a reason. I am not making pacts with the devil. I am telling him you are not welcome here anymore.

Last night I put on my grandmother’s Christmas ring, studied the design it would leave if it ever collided with skin, and noticed how it fit my finger perfectly.

The metal began to sweat, as if a storm was coming.

#poem #poetry #slam poem

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poetry-in--motion · 9 years

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Each time I turn on the TV I am reminded that the world is still searching for Flight 370. The plane you were supposed to be on landed in Philadelphia two days ago. We both know you never boarded. But earlier, I let myself pretend you were lost in the Indian Ocean with the rest of the missing. Sick, yes, but somehow more tolerable than having to remember I was not good enough for your engagement ring. There are twenty-five nations now searching for that plane and honestly I just wish they would all give up. Don’t they understand how desperate they look? Do they know how pathetic it is for a girl to call her ex at 3am in hopes of finding a morsel of life in the carnage? Why can’t I accept that not all disasters yield survivors? The newscasters are now saying that the flight managed to fly for five hours after it went off the radar. I am beginning to realize that your love did the same.

b.e.fitzgerald (i wonder what our headlines would say)

#poem #poet #Favorite

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poetry-in--motion · 9 years

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There are poets who sing you to sleep and poets who ready you for war and I want to be both.

Ashe Vernon (via shinat0se)

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poetry-in--motion · 10 years

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I swear to every heaven ever imagined, if I hear one more dead-eyed hipster tell me that art is dead, I will personally summon Shakespeare from the grave so he can tell them every reason why he wishes he were born in a time where he could have a damn Gmail account. The day after I taught my mother how to send pictures over Iphone she texted me a blurry image of our cocker spaniel ten times in a row. Don’t you dare try to tell me that that is not beautiful. But whatever, go ahead and choose to stay in your backwards-hoping-all-inclusive club while the rest of us fall in love over Skype. Send angry letters to state representatives, as we record the years first sunrise so we can remember what beginning feels like when we are inches away from the trigger. Lock yourself away in your Antoinette castle while we eat cake and tweet to the whole universe that we did. Hashtag you’re a pretentious ass hole. Van Gogh would have taken 20 selflies a day. Sylvia Plath would have texted her lovers nothing but heart eyed emojis when she ran out of words. Andy Warhol would have had the worlds weirdest Vine account, and we all would have checked it every morning while we Snap Chat our coffee orders to the people we wish were pressed against our lips instead of lattes. This life is spilling over with 85 year olds rewatching JFK’s assassination and 7 year olds teaching themselves guitar over Youtube videos. Never again do I have to be afraid of forgetting what my fathers voice sounds like. No longer must we sneak into our families phonebook to look up an eating disorder hotline for our best friend. No more must I wonder what people in Australia sound like or how grasshoppers procreate. I will gleefully continue to take pictures of tulips in public parks on my cellphone and you will continue to scoff and that is okay. But I hope, I pray, that one day you will realize how blessed you are to be alive in a moment where you can google search how to say I love you in 164 different languages.

#how to say I love you in 164 different languages.#Never again do I have to be afraid of forgetting what my fathers voice sounds like #lines i love #art is not dead #poem #poetry #hispters #b.e.fitzgerald

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poetry-in--motion · 10 years

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It is not your job-- Caitlyn Siehl

when your little girl asks you if she’s pretty your heart will drop like a wineglass on the hardwood floor part of you will want to say of course you are, don’t ever question it and the other part the part that is clawing at you will want to grab her by her shoulders look straight into the wells of her eyes until they echo back to you and say you do not have to be if you don’t want to it is not your job both will feel right one will feel better she will only understand the first when she wants to cut her hair off or wear her brother’s clothes you will feel the words in your mouth like marbles you do not have to be pretty if you don’t want to it is not your job”

#caitlyn siehl #poem #poetry in motion #poetry #feminism #beauty #young girls

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poetry-in--motion · 10 years

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“The day I surrendered to my limp, and went out and bought my cane, I realized I was through with the burden of feet. Instead, I am going to become a mermaid. If i am going to be stared at, it should at least be because I’m beautiful. I have always liked the ocean, the promise of depth. I am tired of this dry world, all of this dust and sickness, these barren fields. I want to dive without drowning. I want to kiss sharks. I want to braid my hair with seaweed and mythology. I want men to carve me into the bows of their ships like a prayer, before I lure them into the depths with my fishnet mouth. I want the beauty, the gorgeous mutation, the legend of half body. All the wisdom of a woman, without the failures of sex. I am plunging. I am sinking. I am not coming up for air. I do not want all this human, my legs move like they resent being legs, my body is wrecked by all this gravity. I cannot face another morning waking up with no hope of a fairytale. Here on land, i cannot move. Here on land, i cannot breath. I am always drowning. Here on land, I cannot move.”

Part of Your World, Clementine von Radics (via clementinevonradics)

#poem #poetry #clementine von radics #mermaid #poet

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poetry-in--motion · 10 years

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James Whitcomb Riley, “If I Knew What Poets Know”

If I knew what poets know, Would I write a rhyme Of the buds that never blow In the summer-time ? Would I sing of golden seeds Springing up in ironweeds? And of raindrops turned to snow, If I knew what poets know?

Did I know what poets do, Would I sing a song Sadder than the pigeon’s coo When the days are long? Where I found a heart in pain, I would make it glad again; And the false should be the true, Did I know what poets do.

If I knew what poets know, I would find a theme Sweeter than the placid flow Of the fairest dream: I would sing of love that lives On the errors it forgives; And the world would better grow If I knew what poets know.

#if i knew what poets know #james whitcomb riley #poem #poetry #poetry in motion #poet

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poetry-in--motion · 11 years

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After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, Please come to the gate immediately. Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she Did this. I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, Sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used— She stopped crying. She thought our flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late, Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and Would ride next to her—Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and Found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering Questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag— And was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers— Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands— Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped —has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be. (via jazzylittledrops)

#Poems #poetry #poetry in motion #naomi nye #albuquerque

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poetry-in--motion · 11 years

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A Dream Within A Dream---Edgar Allen Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

#poe #American poetry #Edgar Allan Poe #poetry #poem #poems #poet #dream

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poetry-in--motion · 11 years

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Fire and Ice---Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

#fire and ice #frost #robert frost

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