Monday, March 27, 2017

A Ritual to Read Each Other



If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give – yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
 “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” by William Stafford

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Too pretty for words


❝ Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence. ❞
 Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ryThe Little Prince

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Breathing

This is the worst hunger
The hunger of loss
The deep set eyes
Burning through appetite
They will not be sated
These wolf eyes
The cry of hunger
Comes from a tearing
A tearing deep inside
Inside the wolf’s gut
His heart has been denied
And all he can think
Is to rip his teeth into flesh
To satisfy through the mouth
What his heart cannot have
This is the ghostly hunger
It will devour tear and rip
And still its heart will cry
A savage cry of cries
Echoing down the valleys
The valleys of his longing
His endless longing
The taste of blood in his mouth.



From Bodyhood by Leon De Kock (2010)

a word is one wing of the silence


You must know that I do not love and that I love you,
because everything alive has its two sides
a word is one wing of the silence, 
fire has its cold half. 
                                                –Pablo Neruda