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desertpups · 3 days

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Sweetness

BY STEPHEN DUNN

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear

one more friend

waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness

has come

and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,

for a while lost

in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk

to mouth-size,

hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness

that doesn’t leave a stain,

no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....

Tonight a friend called to say his lover

was killed in a car

he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed

to repeat, and I repeated

the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.

Often a sweetness comes

as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,

then returns to its dark

source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road

it’s traveled

to come so far, to taste so good.

#hozier #andrew hozier byrne #sweetness #stephen dunn #oh how I've missed the poetry posting

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pyjamacryptid · 3 months

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Connubial (excerpt) - Stephen Dunn

#listen i read the last line of this poem... and this is what I thought of......#LISTEN #bbc merlin #merlin #merthur #merlin emrys #arthur pendragon #king arthur #merlinedit #merthuredit #merlin x arthur #bbcm #diamond of the day #stephen dunn #connubial #my edits

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lillyli-74 · 8 months

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I was calm, no one wants the kind of calm I was.

~Stephen Dunn

#stephen dunn

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sinligh · 1 year

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There’s a fine line between being protective of your inner peace and being a slave to paranoia

I don’t know where I stand when it comes to it.

I trust no one to love me, me who is fiercely delicate

Picturesquely so, one might say.

I trust no one, and I might as well love no one, no one but myself.

I have gaps in my memory from times when I only thought about not being here,

refusing to exist…

pseudodementia, a case of hysteria, what else can i call it ?

An episode of over analyzing the flaws of a society that thrive on any imbalanced power dynamic.

The clock is ticking…

Tick. Tick. Tick.

That’s my biological clock, or so i was told.

I prefer to think of it as a ticking time bomb…

It’ll explode one day and there will be another piece of my soul out in the world

Just like this one is out under the name of sarcasm.

I will love it unrealistically, maybe the way my mother loves me.

love it so much; enough to sacrifice my life.

And it’ll mean nothing, at least nothing more than what was expected

As a young girl i used to get reprimanded every time i was sincere about how I feel

I started to accumulate half chewed thoughts left them in my mouth overnight then swallowed.

Disgustingly rotten…

I felt less real as time went by, and so I learned spit those thoughts and sculpture them into more admirable statues

Then painted a raw authentic layer of what i think of myself as now all over them, just so they don’t look fake.

Ending up with a form of art that is an acquired taste…

But the thing is: i had all my life to adapt to it to myself, and all the feminine rage in me.

•Quotes: Stephen Dunn/ Fyodor Dostoevsky/ Kate Jacobs/Marina Tsvetaeva/ richard siken/richard siken/ Margaret Atwood/ Sylvia Plath/ an excerpt from "Elektra,' Sophocles (translated by Anne Carson)

•Original context: sinligh

•Art reference:

1. Art by Crawfurd damson 2. desperate lamentation by Roberta Coni. 3. Curled Up - Crawfurd Adamson. 4. Paintings by Brett Williams. 5. a fragment of ourselves returning v, 2018 by beatrice wanjiku. 6. Art by allison sprock. 7. Art by Michael Mao. 8. Dark Corridor by unknown artist, 1990s, from The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

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haveyoureadthispoem-poll · 3 months

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"Didn't they know Frankenstein had abandoned / his creation, set him loose without guidance / or a name? Didn't they know what it feels like / to be lost, freaky, forever seeking who you are? "

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

#closed polls #polls #poetry #poems #poetry polls #poets and writing #tumblr poetry #have you read this #mary shelley at brigantine #stephen dunn #mary shelley #frankenstein #time travel #sometimes we have extra options #as a treat

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dk-thrive · 7 months

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For a while I climbed the ladder, not realizing I'd placed it against the wrong house. The window I tried to look into was a mirror. I fell backward into the world.

— Stephen Dunn, from "Ars Poetica" in Lines of Defense: Poems (W. W. Norton & Company; January 6, 2014) (via Alive on All Channels)

#ambition #success #work #win #Stephen Dunn #climbing the ladder #purpose #meaning #career

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gravity-rainbow · 1 month

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Happiness by Stephen Dunn

#stephen dunn #happiness

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loveisdamnation · 4 days

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the power to break a heart

#crumpch #parallels #lyric parallels #poetry #web weaving #taylor swift #cristin o’keefe aptowicz #anne carson #hera lindsay bird #boygenius #stephen dunn

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lip-scrub · 1 year

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apocalyptic love

older - 5sos / wasteland, baby! - hozier / love poem near the end of the world - stephen dunn / apocalypse - cigarettes after sex

#lindsay talks #web weaving #poetry #web weave #apocalypse #hozier #5sos #stephen dunn #cigarettes after sex

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cmonbartender · 1 month

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McGruff the Crime Dog at Choctaw Stadium, Arlington (1998) - Stephen Dunn

#photography #stephen dunn #1990s #1998 #mcgruff the crime dog #dog #baseball #sport

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nofatclips · 1 year

Video

youtube

Paragon of Order by Owen Pallett from the album Island - Artwork by Eric Kostiuk Williams

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abellinthecupboard · 4 months

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The Shame Place

After he did what he did, and was ashamed, 　he went into himself where shame makes its poor home and lived there amid the excessive heat, 　the Dead End signs. Shame was his rent and he paid in shame until it was spent and he returned 　to his public body which was waiting like a debtor to apologize. He never felt so clean. 　At work, where it was expensive to be ashamed, he wished everyone could visit 　their shame place, could live for a while without credit or esteem. He felt sorry for everyone 　unchanged. But there was no hope for the shameless with their profit charts and perfect reasons. 　And what could he say to the beaten who had lived too long eating their hearts and words? 　Their shame places were hovels, all the energy shut off. Soon he lied again, hurt someone, rekindled 　what never burns to ash. Once again his shame place opened and took him in. It had carpets. A plush chair 　covered the spot where he had sat and writhed.

—Stephen Dunn, Local Time (1986)

#The Shame Place #Stephen Dunn #Local Time #poetry #writing #literature #poets on tumblr

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lillyli-74 · 1 year

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I look for those with hidden wings, and for scars that those who once had wings can’t hide.

~Stephen Dunn

#stephen dunn

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itspileofgoodthings · 1 year

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Poetry rec for you: Sweetness by Stephen Dunn.

Looked it up when you sent this. And YES. I love it.

#poetry #sweetness #stephen dunn

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haveyoureadthispoem-poll · 3 months

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"Often a sweetness comes / as if on loan, stays just long enough / to make sense of what it means to be alive, / then returns to its dark / source."

Read "Sadness" here | Read "Sweetness" here

Reblog for a larger sample size!

#submitter told me these poems are a pair #so i'm polling them as such #stephen dunn #sadness & sweetness #hozier live poetry #hozier #death #meaning of life #closed polls #polls #poetry #poems #poetry polls #poets and writing #tumblr poetry #have you read this

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dk-thrive · 11 months

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A secret life

When you write late at night it's like a small fire in a clearing, it's what radiates and what can hurt if you get too close to it. - Stephen Dunn, from “A Secret Life” in Landscape at the End of the Century (W W Norton & Co Inc; January 1, 1991) (W.W. Norton and Company).(via Alive on All Channels)

#Stephen Dunn #write #writing #writer #night

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