Ink

Robert Frost

This pretty much sums up how i feel about graduating at the end of this year...

-M

spaces

                                          

Definitely going to have a custom bookshelf in my house one day

-M

all over the place

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

—	E.L. Doctorow

So true, so true.

-M

food for thought

Blue

BY Chris Abani

                                  I

Africans in the hold fold themselves

to make room for hope. In the afternoon’s

ferocity, tar, grouting the planks like the glue

of family, melts to the run of a child’s licorice stick.

Wet decks crack, testing the wood’s mettle.

Distilled from evaporating brine, salt

dusts the floor, tickling with the measure

into time and the thirst trapped below.

                                  II

The captain’s new cargo of Igbos disturbs him.

They stand, computing the swim back to land.

Haitians still say: Igbo pend’c or’ a ya!

But we do not hang ourselves in cowardice.

                                  III

Sold six times on the journey to the coast,

once for a gun, then cloth, then iron

manilas, her pride was masticated like husks

of chewing sticks, spat from morning-rank mouths.

Breaking loose, edge of handcuffs held high

like the blade of a vengeful axe, she runs

across the salt scratch of deck,

pain deeper than the blue inside a flame.

                                  IV

The sound, like the break of bone

could have been the Captain’s skull

or the musket shot dropping her

over the side, her chains wrapped

around his neck in dance.

Today in my history class we watched a movie and it made me contemplate how much the modern youth don't think about the past. How can we learn and move forward if we neglect our history? I'm not one to dwell on what's done, but life is cyclical and sometimes to see the future you must focus on the past. This poet was recommended by one of my professors and this poem really stuck out to me. I love the imagery and playful word combinations infused into such a heavy topic. 


-M

Confidence

Homage to my Hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Lucille Clifton

The cold weather has set in and I've been feeling alittle down lately. But when I read this poem, I can't help but put alittle bounce in my step, embrace my swingin' hips, and enjoy that I am a woman. Check out Ms. Clifton reading this poem out loud here! and let it amp up your womanly confidence

-M

Bloglovin'

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Contemporary

from SOUVENIR

i’m sick of love & sad for what I’ve lost:
that bullshit fix of nervy hands has gone &
rude spring’s a bully, sun & wavy cold air
& you are well, i having never been well i,
i want to meet you anew and be loved &
not thought of as silly – to you now i’m
a clown or a dog waiting to be put down
& so my breasts are hairy teats for cubs i love
& are not born, & not for you, my new nude
is atrocious & i wonder who you
think of in the shower, what wets your meat
if not my putrid body you once & gently
fucked & which i, promising it to you, have lost
the receipt for. go away for a long time


& meet me at the airport, run me a bath
as before with water from the kettle so
kind & we’ll shiver in two inches forever,
thigh on thigh never shrinking from the
moment but cycling it around the time
we do have, having been given each other, &
never unadorned or waiting to get broke.
i’d wait to die forever to have unlost
that time & die to lose it all again,
having taken too much, having got
love unspent not wanted & staid unhappy
inside the kettle waiting to be filled kindly,
touched on the cunt or met at the airport with the
ghosts of animal kingdoms still inside me.


Sophie Robinson is a poet living in London and is writin' right now. I dig her bawdy images for sexuality and blunt language.

-M

Namesake

Little known fact, Bob Dylan formerly Bob Zimmerman, adopted the last name Dylan after one of his favorite poets. Dylan Thomas's poetry was very influential on Bob Dylan's work and music. This is one of his more famous poems, a villanelle, called "Do not go gentle into that good night"

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-------

don't you just feel something in the very core of you when you read that?

-M

Red Leaves

The air is crisp, the blankets are warm, and all you really want to do is curl up with a good book and a warm cup of coffee. I've been reading a ton for school lately, so here is a peak at my bookshelf...

The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare



Gasoline by Gregory Corso (a book of poetry)







The Public Image by Muriel Spark

"She looked at him and was taken more than ever by his role as a man of theory-- for she thought of appearances in this way, they were 'roles'; and whether or not he was a man of theory was irrelevant. His actor's good looks had sunk into his cheek-bones and eye-sockets. As her husband, he presented a very good public image indeed." pg. 22







Don't you just want to be her best friend?

-M

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

A book written in the time span of 24 hours in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, who's preparing a dinner party at her house that evening.  Because the story is being told from multiple perspectives, we get the storyline of not only Clarissa, but also of a man named Septimus and his wife Rezia. The two stories come together at a few points, but never quite connect. 

"Septimus Warren Smith, aged about thirty, pale-faced, beak-nosed, wearing brown shoes and a shabby overcoat, with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension which makes complete strangers apprehensive too" (14)

"Bond Street fascinated her; Bond street early in the morning in the season; its flags flying; its shops; no splash; no glitter; one roll of tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fifty years; a few pearls; salmon on an iceblock" (11)

"The leaden circles dissolved in the air" (4) the image of smokestacks are a time signifier

"Then, just as happens on a terrace in the moon light, when one person begins to feel ashamed that he is already bored, and yet as the other sits silent, very quiet, sadly looking at the moon, does not like to speak, moves his foot, clears his throat, notices some iron scroll on a table leg, stirs a leaf, but say nothing- so Peter Walsh did now" (42)

I couldn't put this novel down and for a book written in 1925 it has a lot of surprisingly racy scenes. The descriptions are really what get you, Woolf is so descriptive and vivid, I love it!

-M