we must risk delight

...
There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil....
          
      - Jack Gilbert, A Brief for the Defense

Found at The Aesthetics of Joy.

our hunger

we are conquerers. of hearts. countries. persons. lives. objects. praises.

our appetite is whet with desire to point to our booty. is it a shame that we are so hungry?

growth

our heroes soar because we believe.
egos grow because we applaud.

that which is pure is unbounded.

one scale of intimacy

vision

open my eyes, dear sir.
I mean not to be blind.

open my eyes, dear ma'am.
what I see shows where I have been,
not what I seek to know.

open my eyes, dear sir.
my blindness is not where I end.

open my eyes, dear ma'am.
share with me what I may not see.

a beginning to the bird boy

this was written two years ago for a University of Iowa summer writers' assignment. the beginnings to posts that later inspired this and this.

- - - - -

He belongs to the earliest family in the region of Tall, Steep Hills. His family existed before history was created -- before people walked on two legs, before the wheel. Their time and history was told relative to everything else. Visitors to the town at the base of Tall, Steep Hills would inquire about the age of the family. All would answer, "Longer than any of the other families; history didn't exist when they began. All we know is one true descendent remains. It is he who lives on top of the Tall, Steep Hills.”

The base of his particular tall, steep hill is suffocated with bushes and brambles of the fastest growing genus around. He lives above the tree line. Every day he fights through the forest with his skinny arms extended in protection of his face; and every evening he returns to the once again overgrown pathways. 

Years before today, his fellow inhabitants of Tall, Steep Hills grew tired of daily commute and compromises with the branches and thorns. They retreated below the tree line to the outskirts of town. But he -- he stayed in the Tall, Steep Hills.

As they left, he watched the once frequented footpaths become engulfed and overgrown with brambles and bushes. What once took him mere minutes to walk through, now requires hours. Yet he remains. Believing that if he stays, he may find the history of his long deceased family and their stories.

Each day as he heads into town the townspeople whisper.

"There he is."

"There he is."

"The one that lives on top of the tall, steep hill."

"The one who waddles even though skinny and lanky."

"The one who's family was once so great and magnificent."

Someone once told him his family was a rare group -- descended from those rumored to travel not by foot but by feather.  His family helped create history to record the stories and lessons of time. And they said, he retains the traits of his family -- built with two measly legs and thin bony arms, now balding from his fights with the forest. Arms that once displayed the most beautiful feathers.

re: the alchemy of sound

moments later, the great elsa kim responds to the alchemy of sound with a typewritered sound poem.

alchemy of sound

tUnE-YaRdS' Merrill Garbus on sounds and lyrics....

On the other hand, I believe in a magic that happens in sound. When you go back to how language was originally formed, I really do think that a lot of it must have had to do with sound and which sounds sounded like the thing you were talking about. I tend to rely heavily on that kind of alchemy, where if I just start with a sound, then the right words will appear, and that something – if you wrote it out in a sentence would be nonsense – evokes far more to people than a more correct sounding sentence.

That’s no revolutionary idea on my part, but sound is my way of accessing that magical abstract language that can hit me in poets like Cummings or Joyce. People who are writing in a channeled kind of way. Gertrude Stein. You sort of go, “what??” but something about it really hits you as a human, the way the words are put together, the choice of words.

 The rest of the interview can be found at The Rumpus. Here's a link.

we speak of freedom as an expected right

we came to the point when the very hinge upon which we valued our society to be rare was the same hinge that now sat broken. closing our eyes and walking forward felt just as stable as having our eyes wide open. nothing could be foretold. what was once comforting, now seemed a distraction.

we have been known to schlep around the idea of freedom as if because it always had been, it always would be.

we closed our eyes as the doors started to close -- and so we came to be at this point where mere conversations about the closed doors are seen as indicative of guilt and ill-intention.

by the time we arrived at this point...
so many of us were so embedded in our expectations and demands that so few of us were left to actually see with clear eyes what was happening.

there were protests and boycotts and pulpits installed in street corners - pulpits that called to be occupied by those with clear eyes.

those whose wings worked yet, begged that the sky not be restricted. those who had long since flown and now made way by foot, argued that the roads be cleared of bristles so they may walk freely.

the artists with history so vividly painted in their minds made their own pulpits. they painted colors and words on any empty space to be found. it was as if people were still aware of what color meant.

the history keepers of my generation will tell two stories - one of victory and one of loss. the latter will never be shared. but it is one of loss of vision. loss of understanding.

where our hearts seek to sing, those are our weak points where we're liable to invest in hope that has a 50/50 chance of becoming true.

former lovers.
close friends.
gentle men.

we speak statements as if they're the same as gathering consensus.

we must make space for discussion.

From Alison on one of my huevos rancheros experiments...

We were out for brunch and Andrew got the Huevos Rancheros. Half way through, he said “On a scale of 1 to Kate, I rate these a 7”.

you are screaming

your intentions

in a language I can’t decipher.

my dear heart’s lack of fluency in your tongue

is my weak shield for pretending not to understand.

not to understand what is obvious.

not to understand what I wish were otherwise.

not to understand what is not said in my language.

not to understand what you intend.

though, I know.

and so my shield is weak.

steven pinker on fate

An academic with an optimistic orientation is refreshing.

The fact that the balance can change (and, I argue, has changed) over time is perhaps the firmest ground for another shared conviction: that we are not helpless about our fate.

 - Steven Pinker, The New York Times

our ability to begin and to end something can both be hindered by fear.

elegant lovers

The man who delivers the Rumpus found the below quote from Jeannette Winterson. I like it.

Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their fervently wish consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong.