Today My Horoscope Read - Warsan Shire

You are the alchemist

of your loneliness.

You can create anything

in its place.

Downhill - Julia Vinograd

I don’t have a home

and I live there

all the time.

Abracadabra Acudubillah - Warsan Shire

Everyday since that bad

thing happened, I've been practicing

                   a spell:

how to disappear

from yourself,

within yourself.

I've noticed

each time I leave,

something in me keeps

                   going.

Something in me turns

its back on me—

someone else reflected in the mirror,

someone else answering

to my name.

"My mind and I had a meeting, and we came to the conclusion that you're going to let us down." - Henry Rollins

My mind and I had a meeting, and we came to the conclusion that

you're going to let us down. We are here every minute of the day

getting ready for the let down. So when you push me away, I'll just

say ok, because we came to that conclusion a while ago. Like I said,

we were ready for the let down. If you're ever walking down the

way and you see me on the side of the road lying broken and scat-

tered, you keep walking right on by.

"Her eyes" - Henry Rollins

Her eyes

Her touch

Her voice

Takes my breath away

She's nice enough

To give it back

Thanks friend

I needed that

"I've got no romance left in me." - Henry Rollins

I've got no romance left in me. I know I once had it. I have no need

for love. You might have something to say about that, you might

have a few names to call me. I'm not that desperate anymore. That's

not to say that I've slacked off in the desperation department alto-

gether, far from it. I have less time and less things in my mind to

convince me of the need to support and perpetuate a lie.

Some will tell you that they need love to live. Well shit, people will

tell you a lot of stuff, like how you owe a stranger your life to

uphold the lie he's selling this week. Weakness is painless. Like

sliding down a razor so sharp you wouldn't think to look down on

the floor and see all the blood. The other night I looked down at her

and almost forgot her name. It's just flesh. Put your tears in an enve-

lope and send them to Hitler. They mean as much to his dead ass as

they do to me.

Animals - Louise Glück

My sister and I reached

the same conclusion:

the best way

to love us was to not

spend time with us.

It seemed that

we appealed

chiefly to strangers.

We had good clothes, good

manners in public.

In private, we were

always fighting. Usually

the big one finished

sitting on her little one

and pinching her.

The little one

bit: in forty years

she never learned

the advantage in not

leaving a mark.

The parents

had a credo: they didn't

believe in anger.

The truth was, for different reasons,

they couldn't bring themselves

to inflict pain. You should only hurt

something you can give

your whole heart to. They preferred

tribunals: the child

most in the wrong could choose

her own punishment.

My sister and I

never became allies,

never turned on our parents.

We had

other obsessions: for example,

we both felt there were

too many of us

to survive.

We were like animals

trying to share a dry pasture.

Between us, one tree, barely

strong enough to sustain

a single life.

We never moved

our eyes from each other

nor did either touch

one thing that could

feed her sister.

Love Poem - Richard Brautigan

It’s so nice

to wake up in the morning

all alone

and not have to tell somebody

you love them

when you don’t love them

any more

Picture by Unknown, found on Public Domain (if you own the rights and would like it removed, just contact me!). This is the full poem, not an excerpt.

Untitled - Franz Wright

Will I always be eleven,

lonely in this house,

reading books

that are too hard for me,

in the long fatherless hours.

The terrible hours of the window,

the rain-light

on the page,

awaiting the letter,

the phone call,

still your strange elderly child.

You Must Accept - Kate Light

You must accept that’s who he really is.

You must accept you cannot be his

unless he is yours. No compromise.

He is a canvas on which paint never dries;

a clay that never sets, steel that bends

in a breeze, a melody that when it ends

no one can whistle. He is not who

you thought. He’s not. He is a shoe

that walks away: “I will not go where you

want to go.” “Why, then, are you a shoe?”

“I’m not. I have the sole of a lover

but don’t know what love is.” “Discover

it, then.” “Will I have to go where you go?”

“Sometimes.” “Be patient with you?” “Yes.” “Then, no.”

You have to hear what he is telling you

and see what he is; how it is killing you.

"They left like you knew they would." - Henry Rollins

They left you like you knew they would. They went away and you

fell like a stone. All the way to the bottom of your room. I see you,

yes I see you. Sitting in your chair, hating every minute of it. Falling

like a stone without even moving. It hurt you to know that you were

right about all the shit you wanted to be wrong about. They always

leave you. You put yourself in the right place to get left.

Mending Wall - ROBERT FROST

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs.  The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side.  It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

'Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn’t it

Where there are cows?  But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.'  I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself.  I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'