Paper Flowers, Imaginary Birds

The wax has melted
but the dream of flight
persists.
I, Icarus, though grounded
in my flesh
have one bright section in me
where a bird
night after starry night
while I’m asleep
unfolds its phantom wings
and practices.

—P.K. Page, This Heavy Craft (via yesyes)

(via grammatolatry)

“To the mountains rising above you:
you should say…move.

You will say move.”

—Derrick Brown, excerpt from “Blazing the Valley in Psalms”

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.

—

(via immortels)

you are always
ticking inside of me and I dream of you
more often than I don’t.
My body is a dead language
and you pronounce
each word perfectly.

—Sierra DeMulder (via abysms)

break yr legs & break yr heart
kiss the girls & make them cry
loving the gods & seeing them die

—Ted Berrigan, excerpt from ‘Things to Do in New York (City)’

I didn’t fall in love. I fell through it:

Came out the other side moments later, hands full of matter, waking up from the dream of a bullet tearing through the middle of my body.

—Sarah Manguso, excerpt from ‘Love Letter (Clouds)’

Such pleasure we shared, though on waking, like something overheard at a cafe table.

A sentence underlined in a book you’ll never reopen.

—Boyer Rickel, excerpt from Vestige. (via holdonmagnolia)

(via theoryoflostthings)

A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.

—Wallace Stevens (via bodasdesangre)

(via con-mis-palabras-deactivated201)

Listen—
the mathematical equivalent of a woman’s beauty
is directly relational
to the amount or degree
other women hate her.

You, dear, are hated

—The Kurosawa Champagne (via strangelight)