thoughts a plenty

Nescis quid sit amor, iuvenis, si ferre recusas immitam dominam coniuqiumque ferum

(you don't know what love is, young man, if you will not bear with an ungentle mistress or a shrewish wife.

Iam mala finissem leto, sed credula vitam spes fovet et fore cras semper ait melius

(i would by now have ended my sufferings by death, but gullible hope encourages me to live, keeps saying that tomorrow will be better

Sit ius liceatque perie poetis: invitum qui servant, idem facit occidenti

(poets should have the right and the power if they choose to destroy themselves. to save a man against his will is as bad as to murder him

Inquum est collapsis manum non porrigere: commune hocius generis humani est

(it is wrong not to stretch out your hand to the fallen: that is common law of the human race

got some books back from the house so friday night

consists of reading my old babies.

don't be jealous of my party life.

How is your life with that other one? 

Simpler, is it? A stroke of the oars
and a long coastline—
and the memory of me 

is soon a drifting island
(not in the ocean—in the sky!)
Souls—you will be sisters—
sisters, not lovers. 

How is your life with an ordinary
woman? without the god inside her?
The queen supplanted— 

How do you breathe now?
Flinch, waking up?
What do you do, poor man? 

“Hysterics and interruptions—
enough! I’ll rent my own house!”
How is your life with that other,
you, my own. 

Is the breakfast delicious?
(If you get sick, don’t blame me!)  

How is it, living with a postcard?

You who stood on Sinai.
How’s your life with a tourist
on Earth? Her rib (do you love her?)
is it to your liking? 

How’s life? Do you cough?
Do you hum to drown out the mice in your mind? 

How do you live with cheap goods: is the market rising?
How’s kissing plaster-dust?
Are you bored with her new body? 

How’s it going, with an earthly woman,
with no sixth sense? 

Are you happy?
No? In a shallow pit—how is your life,
my beloved? Hard as mine
with another man?

Marina Tsvetaeva, “An Attempt at Jealousy”

He spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another, a mind aware of the impossibility of absolute understanding. The difficulty of having a mind that understands that it will always be misunderstood.

Nicole Krauss

I just poured my heart out

There’s bits of it on the floor

And I take what’s left of it and rinse it under cold water

And call him up for more.

Sorry : Maria Mena

Moon Song, Woman Song

I am alive at night. I am dead in the morning, an old vessel who used up her oil, bleak and pale boned. No miracle. No dazzle. I'm out of repair but you are tall in your battle dress and I must arrange for your journey. I was always a virgin, old and pitted. Before the world was, I was.

I have been oranging and fat, carrot colored, gaped at, allowing my cracked o's to drop on the sea near Venice and Mombasa. Over Maine I have rested. I have fallen like a jet into the Pacific. I have committed perjury over Japan. I have dangled my pendulum, my fat bag, my gold, gold blinkedy light over you all.

So if you must inquire, do so. After all I am not artificial. I looked long upon you, love-bellied and empty, flipping my endless display for you, you my cold, cold coverall man.

You need only request and I will grant it. It is virtually guaranteed that you will walk into me like a barracks. So come cruising, come cruising, you of the blast off, you of the bastion, you of the scheme. I will shut my fat eye down, headquarters of an area, house of a dream.

Anne Sexton - The Complete Poems