Flowers Tumblr Themes
Entropy
You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.
“
— From The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (via coffeeandnights)
Reblogged 11 months ago from whatokay (Originally from cateyesindisguise)
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Tagged: pat conroy, prince of tides, lit, literature, fiction, prose, reading, read, reader, readers, quote, quotes, book, books, .
Source: cateyesindisguise
The phone’s disconnected.
Just as well, I’ve got nothing to tell you:
I won’t go inside where the bats dip and swarm
over my bed. It’s the sound of them
shouldering against each other that terrifies me,
as if it might hurt to brush across another being’s
living flesh.
“
— From Across a Great Wilderness Without You by Keetje Kuipers
Posted 1 year ago
Tagged: keetje kuipers, across a great wilderness without you, contemporary poet, contemporary poetry, contemporary, contemporary poem, poet, poem, poetry, quote, quotes, author, writer, read, reader, reads, reading, writes, writing, desperation, .
A Brief Attachment

I regard your affection, find your teeth have
left me a bruise necklace. The lipstick marks
    leech a trail, ear to ear, facsimile your smile.
    Your 40 ounces of malt beverage, your shrink
hate, your eyes dialing 911. The hearts you
draw with ballpoint on my cigarette packs
    when I’ve left the room, penned in your girl’s

look demented, misshapen approximations
of what I refuse to hand over. It’s a nice touch,
    though: a little love to accompany the cancer.
    My thought follows you to where you spend
your days lying in bed, smoking and reading
the Beats. The accumulation of clothes and ashes
    circles you, rises like a moat after rainfall.

You are a study in detachment – the trigger eye
is your eye, still as a finger poised to press should
    one refuse to cooperate, and I wonder why you
    hate men so much when it seems you think like
one. Think of what I could be doing outside if
I could unlock the door of myself: think bikini,
    think soda fountain, think tradition, a day lacking

entirely your brand of ambivalence. If you were
a number, I’d subtract you; if you were a sentence,
    I’d rewrite you. Are you the one who left these
    wilted flowers, are you the one whose PIN spells
out H-O-L-E? Why are you wearing my clothes?
If you are weather, then I’m a town, closing down
    at word of your coming: you’re a glacier on fast

forward, you’re direct as a detour, when I say
good-bye you move in next door. You say you
    want to have my baby, you want to buy me a car,
    and you’re too young to enter a bar. I should tether
you to a tree in the dark park, allow the moon to stroke
your white neck. I should give you a diamond collar,
    walk you around the block, and show you off.

by Cate Marvin

Posted 1 year ago
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Tagged: cate marvin, a brief attachment, poetry, contemporary poetry, contemporary, contemporary lit, contemporary literature, lit, literature, poet, art, author, writer, writing, write, reader, reading, read, theysaid, .
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
“
— From Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Reblogged 1 year ago from nucleic-acid-deactivated2012011
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Tagged: lit, contemporary lit, contemporary, contemporary literature, literature, novel, novelist, contemporary novelist, author, contemporary author, writer, writing, read, reader, reading, books, published author, 20th century author, american, funny, humor, dark humor, dark comedy, black humor, black comedy, cat's cradle, satarical, hilarious, humorous, quote, .
Bars Poetica

This is the story I’ve tried to tell. Guy
exists. Father mother sister brother.
Oh pretty stars, oh bastard moon
I see you watching me. The trembling
years leading to sex, the trembling sex.
Death as garnish. Death as male lead,
female lead, death as a cast
of thousands. God in, on, as, with,
to, around, because who knows
because. All the while feeling air’s
a quilt of tongues, that spaces
between words are more articulate
than words. It’s not like you’d hope,
that anyone can make sense.
Look around you, let your ears
breathe deep — almost no one does.
Have another drink. When they throw us out
there’s a place down the street
that never closes, after that
we’ll climb a fire escape and praise
the genealogy of light. The Big Bang
sounds like what it was, the fucking
that got everything under way.
That love was there from the start
is all I’ve been trying to say.

by Bob Hicok

Posted 1 year ago
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Tagged: lit, literature, contemporary, contemporary lit, contemporary literature, contemporary poem, contemporary poet, contemporary poetry, contemporary author, poem, poet, poetry, author, writer, bars poetica, bob hicok, read, reader, reads, words, poem, theysaid, .
The world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal experience. There’s lots of good fish in the sea … maybe … but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you’re not mackerel or herring yourself, you are lucky to find very few good fish in the sea.
“
— From Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence (via poetryisnotorgasmic)
Reblogged 1 year ago from poetryisnotorgasmic
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Tagged: d.h. lawrence, lady chatterley's lover, literature, lit, poetic, author, novelist, novel, book, books, writer, writers, writes, writing, reader, reads, read, quote, quotes, sarcastic, 20th century lit, 20th century literature, canonical, canonical lit, canonical literature, english writer, english lit, english literature, .
Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives. And to the ‘good life,’ whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
“
— By Hunter S. Thompson (via whatokay)
Reblogged 1 year ago from whatokay
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Tagged: hunter s. thompson, contemporary lit, contemporary, contemporary literature, lit, literature, fear and loathing in las vegas, contemporary author, author, novelist, writer, write, writing, read, reader, reading, book, books, journalism, satire, quote, quotes, .
To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed at its first execution, to spend one’s middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth - all this is surely vain and futile.
“
— From Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (via musicwordscolourslights)
Reblogged 1 year ago from musicwordscolourslights
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Asian Invasion by Beau Sia

Posted 1 year ago
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Tagged: beau sia, asian invasion, poet, poetry, contemporary poet, contemporary poetry, performer, performance, slam poetry, poetry slam, contemporary lit, contemporary literature, contemporary, lit, literature, writing, writer, write, reader, read, reads, reading, HBO, HBO poetry jam, poetry jam, asian, asia, comedy, humor, satire, .
Currently reading this. Partly because I’m taking a class on Milan Kundera and Marguerite Duras and partly because I’m actually interested (albeit with reservations) is Mr. Kundera.

Currently reading this. Partly because I’m taking a class on Milan Kundera and Marguerite Duras and partly because I’m actually interested (albeit with reservations) is Mr. Kundera.

Posted 1 year ago
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Tagged: marguerite duras, milan kundera, book, books, book cover, book covers, courses, course works, novels, novel, novelist, novelists, read, reader, reading, writing, write, contemporary lit, contemporary literature, contemporary, contemporary author, author, lit, literature, zdena, mirek, karel, eva, marketa, the book of laughter and forgetting, .
Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.
“
— From Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (via atavus)
Reblogged 1 year ago from atavus-deactivated20111120-deac
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Dirty Valentine

There are so many things I’m not allowed to tell you.
I touch myself, I dream.
Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending
that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands,
these shins, these soapy flanks.
The musicians start the overture while I hide behind the microphone,
trying to match the dubbing
to the big lips shining down from the screen.
We’re filming the movie called Planet of Love-
there’s sex of course, and ballroom dancing,
fancy clothes and waterlilies in the pond, and half the night you’re
a dependable chap, mounting the stairs in lamplight to the bath, but then
the too white teeth all night,
all over the American sky, too much to bear, this constant fingering,
your hands a river gesture, the birds in flight, the birds still singing
outside the greasy window, in the trees.
There’s a part in the movie
where you can see right through the acting,
where you can tell that I’m about to burst into tears,
right before I burst into tears
and flee to the slimy moonlit riverbed
canopied with devastated clouds.
We’re shouting the scene where
I swallow your heart and you make me
spit it up again. I swallow your heart and it crawls
right out of my mouth.
You swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. I want it back.
Lying on the sofa with my eyes closed, I didn’t want to see it this way,
everything eating everything in the end.
We know how the light works,
we know where the sound is coming from.
Verse. Chorus. Verse.
I’m sorry. We know how it works. The world is no longer mysterious.

by Richard Siken

Posted 1 year ago
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Tagged: richard siken, crush, dirty valentine, favorites, poet, poem, LGBT, contemporary poet, contemporary poetry, poetry, contemporary author, author, contemporary, contemporary lit, contemporary literature, writer, write, writing, reader, read, reading, beautiful, art, artist, .
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
“
— From The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Posted 1 year ago
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Tagged: milan kundera, the book of laughter and forgetting, czech, communism, history, contemporary lit, contemporary literature, contemporary, contemporary novel, contemporary author, lit, literature, author, novel, novelist, write, writer, writing, read, reader, reading, book, book, quote, quotes, .