The essential - Aleksandar Ristović

I was not allowed to live my life,

so I pretended to be dead

and interested solely in things

a dead man could be interested in:

petrified reptiles,

museum bric-à-brac,

fake evidence passed off as truth.

I felt a great need to be really dead,

and so at all times I wore

a mask made of wood

on which someone occasionally drew,

with colored pencils,

the look of contentment,

impatience, desire, bliss,

or the look of someone who is thinking

about an entirely different matter.

Cousins - Louise Glück

My son’s very graceful; he has perfect balance.

He’s not competitive, like my sister’s daughter.

Day and night, she’s always practicing.

Today, it’s hitting softballs into the copper beech,

retrieving them, hitting them again.

After a while, no one even watches her.

If she were any stronger, the tree would be bald.

My son won’t play with her; he won’t even ride bicycles with her.

She accepts that; she’s used to playing by herself.

The way she sees it, it isn’t personal:

whoever won’t play doesn’t like losing.

It’s not that my son’s inept, that he doesn’t do things well.

I’ve watched him race: he’s natural, effortless—

right from the first, he takes the lead.

And then he stops. It’s as though he was born rejecting

the solitude of the victor.

My sister’s daughter doesn’t have that problem.

She may as well be first; she’s already alone.

“A man feared that he might find an assassin” - Stephen Crane

A man feared that he might find an assassin;

Another that he might find a victim.

One was more wise than the other.

"To me, she's not even human, she's some kind of a germ." - Henry Rollins

To me, she’s not even human, she’s some kind of a germ. A concoc-

tion. She is neurotic, nasty and abusive. Pathetic is a word that

springs to mind. When she is loud and drunk, it’s torture being

around her. She treats marijuana like some life preserving drug. She

is most lively when she has a chance to get fucked up. Whenever

she’s spazzing out and drooling over pot, I think to myself, “coke

whore” but I change the word “coke” to pot. She doesn’t bathe much

and sometimes the stench can be quite noxious. I don’t like being

associated with her because I see how nasty she is with people who

I work with. When she comes into a room, I either leave or try to get

out of earshot of her. I hope she goes on her painful little way and

leaves my sight. Not a bone in me hates that girl. She has managed

to turn off everyone around her. She sure did it to me. I never set out

to feel like that, no way. Now it’s at the point where it’s totally

irreversible.

Do Not Make Things Too Easy - Martha Baird

Do not make things too easy.

There are rocks and abysses in the mind

As well as meadows.

There are things knotty and hard: intractable.

Do not talk to me of love and understanding.

I am sick of blandishments.

I want the rock to be met by a rock.

If I am vile, and behave hideously,

Do not tell me it was just a misunderstanding.

Debt - Sara Teasdale

What do I owe to you

     Who loved me deep and long?

You never gave my spirit wings

     Nor gave my heart a song.

But oh, to him I loved,

     Who loved me not at all,

I owe the little open gate

     That led through heaven’s wall.