Elitists of all nations...
Started by Terry Scott34 · · 👁 7 views · 372 replies
#25 ·
Joe Frazier
by Ernest Hemingway
It’s me, Joe Frazier
and I’m telling you
it is high time I cut loose from
all those small-minded, weak-willed types
because, frankly, I am a beast
and I have zero competition
not just any random person can stand by my side
you actually have to fight for a seat at my table
you have to earn the right to toast with the beer I'm drinking
Joe Frazier
I simply cannot afford to look back anymore
I can't keep dragging along people who can't hold their own
I'm done doing it out of pity
or for any other half-baked reason
to let just anyone walk beside me
or stop me on the street to say hello
It's me, Joe Frazier—expert at navigating tight spaces
where people won't tell the truth or respect others
I don't wish anything special upon anyone
that's what I told myself
Frazier, you are at the summit, and it is lonely up there
but don't you dare regret it
don't go inventing some manufactured suffering—it doesn't exist
Frazier, nobody even realizes you actually won
but you know you did
Frazier, my little doll
you were knocked down 82 times by people far inferior to you
those mediocre nobodies
but then again, you took down the giants
exactly when it mattered most
Being a champion is a heavy burden
you never acted like you cared about winning
and that's what others find so hard to stomach
especially when you take them all down at once
in a single, brutal bout
Frazier
that's exactly why you don't have friends or a support system
because none of them could ever handle that one
that absolute, crushing, decisive moment.
by Ernest Hemingway
It’s me, Joe Frazier
and I’m telling you
it is high time I cut loose from
all those small-minded, weak-willed types
because, frankly, I am a beast
and I have zero competition
not just any random person can stand by my side
you actually have to fight for a seat at my table
you have to earn the right to toast with the beer I'm drinking
Joe Frazier
I simply cannot afford to look back anymore
I can't keep dragging along people who can't hold their own
I'm done doing it out of pity
or for any other half-baked reason
to let just anyone walk beside me
or stop me on the street to say hello
It's me, Joe Frazier—expert at navigating tight spaces
where people won't tell the truth or respect others
I don't wish anything special upon anyone
that's what I told myself
Frazier, you are at the summit, and it is lonely up there
but don't you dare regret it
don't go inventing some manufactured suffering—it doesn't exist
Frazier, nobody even realizes you actually won
but you know you did
Frazier, my little doll
you were knocked down 82 times by people far inferior to you
those mediocre nobodies
but then again, you took down the giants
exactly when it mattered most
Being a champion is a heavy burden
you never acted like you cared about winning
and that's what others find so hard to stomach
especially when you take them all down at once
in a single, brutal bout
Frazier
that's exactly why you don't have friends or a support system
because none of them could ever handle that one
that absolute, crushing, decisive moment.
#26 ·
THE SECRET OF BIRTH
Oh, the crimson flows directly from my mother
Light—listen—from a home you can never return to
A flamethrower, listen! cutting through bleached white tents
For some ridiculous young man
(The one haunted by childhood visions!)
That red beam meant to pierce the very brain!
A deep, sonic forest brings to mind a flock of young kids;
I will never speak to you of the red tide of freedom,
I will never even mention
That jungle-deep delirium of liberty!
And how much I drank of those intoxicating dreams while parched,
How many scorching heavens I tasted from my plate:
My gut still remembers the heaviness and the spasm of gods,
Whose remnants were chased away during that agonizing feast!
But that red light from the home where there is no return,
And this sturdy body, still ringing with anthems and movement,
Will throw me into confusion among the principles and the grime,
Mix me up—ha, you beauties!—and alienate me from the world!
So I stepped out of that scented jungle
And covered the earth with my body to save it from evaporating,
And I sniffed at it for long, weary days
Until I shrieked in pure irritation.
But since that home where one cannot return is already dead,
It will drag me by its secrets toward a place of mortal nightmares,
And no one will tell me then—which path is the shortest
To salvation: No, I see now, I will die from the spraying
of Damar.
(In an olive grove of ecstasy,
bitterness over Velaluka, on Maui.)
Ernest Hemingway
Oh, the crimson flows directly from my mother
Light—listen—from a home you can never return to
A flamethrower, listen! cutting through bleached white tents
For some ridiculous young man
(The one haunted by childhood visions!)
That red beam meant to pierce the very brain!
A deep, sonic forest brings to mind a flock of young kids;
I will never speak to you of the red tide of freedom,
I will never even mention
That jungle-deep delirium of liberty!
And how much I drank of those intoxicating dreams while parched,
How many scorching heavens I tasted from my plate:
My gut still remembers the heaviness and the spasm of gods,
Whose remnants were chased away during that agonizing feast!
But that red light from the home where there is no return,
And this sturdy body, still ringing with anthems and movement,
Will throw me into confusion among the principles and the grime,
Mix me up—ha, you beauties!—and alienate me from the world!
So I stepped out of that scented jungle
And covered the earth with my body to save it from evaporating,
And I sniffed at it for long, weary days
Until I shrieked in pure irritation.
But since that home where one cannot return is already dead,
It will drag me by its secrets toward a place of mortal nightmares,
And no one will tell me then—which path is the shortest
To salvation: No, I see now, I will die from the spraying
of Damar.
(In an olive grove of ecstasy,
bitterness over Velaluka, on Maui.)
Ernest Hemingway
#29 ·
An Elegy for New York City
Jan Majen and my old Midwest,
Paris, my dead friends, cherry blossoms in China,
I still see them in my mind—while here I stay silent, watching, and dying,
lying cold, like ash upon a funeral pyre.
But we aren't ourselves anymore—not life, nor the stars,
just some monsters, polyps, dolphins,
stumbling over us, swimming, and loathing,
screaming: "Dust, ashes, death is all."
They shout in Russian "nichievo"—
and Spanish "nada."
You, however, keep growing under a clear, harsh light,
with the blue hills of the Appalachians in the distance.
You flicker even when the stars out here burn out,
melting like the Sun, or tears, or last year's snow.
In you, there is no nonsense, no death.
You shine like an ancient sword pulled from the earth.
In you, everything rises again, dances, spins,
repeating itself, like the day or a child’s cry.
And when my voice, my eyes, and my breath finally rest,
you will, I know, take me under your wing.
Spain and our Key West,
the late Dobrović, a sheik wandering the white Sahara,
they still appear to me like visions, fires, and heat.
My Siberia went mad, yawning like a beast.
But we aren't those people anymore, full of youth and power,
we’re just some sad parrots, chimpanzees,
laughing at me and shrieking in my solitude.
One screams "Leiche! Leiche! Leiche!"
Another whispers: "Cadavere!"
A third: "Corpse, corpse, corpse."
You, however, spread wide like a swan's wings,
forgetting the Mississippi and the Missouri while they sleep.
You awaken the joy that used to be,
the laughter, right here, and in my screams, my howls, and my wails.
In you, there are no worms, nothing from the grave.
You glow, like human laughter seen through tears.
In you, a farmer sings, even in the winter season,
pouring blood, like wine, into a new vessel.
And when my head droops and the hours stop,
you will, I know, kiss me like a mother.
YOU, THE PAST, and my world,
youth, love, gondolas, and the Milky Way in the sky,
you still appear to me like a dream, a wave, a beautiful flower,
amidst the crowd of masks that have come for me.
But that isn't me, nor the blue waters of Venice,
just some ruins, ghosts, and tombstones,
left behind on the earth, hiding in the grass.
People say: "Here lies a Pasha! — A beggar! — A dog!"
They shout the French "tout passe."
And our "it's gone."
You, however, stand above the wide river,
above the fertile plains, firm and raised like a shield.
You sing brightly, accompanied by distant thunder,
weaving your thread through the centuries along with the lightning.
In you, my human sorrow finds no home.
You have a gaze that is straight and unblinking.
You turn even weeping into colorful rainbows,
and you cool me, like a distant pine, when I breathe you in.
And when the time comes for my old heart to grow quiet,
your acacia will fall upon me like rain.
Lisbon and my journey,
and the world, castles in the air and on the sea foam,
they still haunt me while my little light trembles like a twig,
as I carry the earth away, into snow, into snow, into snow.
But those aren't women or living men anymore,
just some helpless, weak, and sorrowful shadows,
telling me they aren't beasts, that they aren't guilty,
that life gave them absolutely nothing,
so they whisper "não, não, não"
and our "no, no."
You, however, breathe in the nighttime silence,
out toward the stars, which show the way for the Sun to your dreams.
You listen to the pounding of your own heart, deep down,
striking like a rock against dark Central Park.
To you, our pains are nothing more than tiny ants.
You scatter our pearls of tears into the dust.
But over them, later, your dawn will blaze,
a dawn I will gaze into, young and joyful.
And when my tired heart finally goes silent to sleep,
you will, in my dreams, be my soft pillow.
Finistère and her presence,
marriage, kisses, the gale that blew so fiercely,
they still appear to me—some butterfly, some clover, some grain—
while from the past, I hear her footsteps, so light.
But it isn't her anymore, nor her laughing voice,
just some cormorant with wild, black wings,
crying out: every ray of happiness sinks into the Ocean.
It mutters words like "tombe" and "sombre."
It croaks her "ombre, ombre"—
and our "grave" and "darkness."
You, however, move like our eternal swan,
away from death and blood, toward the Sun, on your path.
While I am sinking into the depths of your abyss,
You rise from the morning, bathed in rays of light.
I will go somewhere—alone—into the Sahara,
to those places where the caravans cast long shadows,
just as a mother crouches beside a fallen Tuareg,
you will remain my solace until the very end.
And when they break my soul, my spear, my arm, and my leg,
You—I know I cannot, simply cannot, reach You.
Human life—everything from the greyhound,
to the leaf, the seagull, the deer, and even the Moon out on the open sea,
it all starts to look like a dream to me at the end, much like death itself—
like the passing of our theater’s actors, one by one.
In truth, none of us were ever anything more
than a bit of foam, a fleeting moment, a whisper in China,
whispering, just like the heart, becoming colder and quieter:
that nothing remains—not the Ming, nor the yang, nor the yin,
nor the Tao, nor the cherries, nor the mandarin.
Nothing and no one.
Yet you shine, even now, through my heavy dreams,
eternal amidst our countless tears, through the darkness and the dust.
Your blood has fallen upon the plains like dew,
as if to cool the dying breaths of so many.
I embrace your steep stone once more,
embracing You, and the Missouri River, and your sluggish Mississippi River.
The Sun is being born in my dream. Shine! Break through! Thunder!
Your name strikes like lightning from a clear sky.
And when my time comes and your old watch finally stops ticking,
that name will be my final whisper.
Ernest Hemingway
Cooden Beach, 1956.
Jan Majen and my old Midwest,
Paris, my dead friends, cherry blossoms in China,
I still see them in my mind—while here I stay silent, watching, and dying,
lying cold, like ash upon a funeral pyre.
But we aren't ourselves anymore—not life, nor the stars,
just some monsters, polyps, dolphins,
stumbling over us, swimming, and loathing,
screaming: "Dust, ashes, death is all."
They shout in Russian "nichievo"—
and Spanish "nada."
You, however, keep growing under a clear, harsh light,
with the blue hills of the Appalachians in the distance.
You flicker even when the stars out here burn out,
melting like the Sun, or tears, or last year's snow.
In you, there is no nonsense, no death.
You shine like an ancient sword pulled from the earth.
In you, everything rises again, dances, spins,
repeating itself, like the day or a child’s cry.
And when my voice, my eyes, and my breath finally rest,
you will, I know, take me under your wing.
Spain and our Key West,
the late Dobrović, a sheik wandering the white Sahara,
they still appear to me like visions, fires, and heat.
My Siberia went mad, yawning like a beast.
But we aren't those people anymore, full of youth and power,
we’re just some sad parrots, chimpanzees,
laughing at me and shrieking in my solitude.
One screams "Leiche! Leiche! Leiche!"
Another whispers: "Cadavere!"
A third: "Corpse, corpse, corpse."
You, however, spread wide like a swan's wings,
forgetting the Mississippi and the Missouri while they sleep.
You awaken the joy that used to be,
the laughter, right here, and in my screams, my howls, and my wails.
In you, there are no worms, nothing from the grave.
You glow, like human laughter seen through tears.
In you, a farmer sings, even in the winter season,
pouring blood, like wine, into a new vessel.
And when my head droops and the hours stop,
you will, I know, kiss me like a mother.
YOU, THE PAST, and my world,
youth, love, gondolas, and the Milky Way in the sky,
you still appear to me like a dream, a wave, a beautiful flower,
amidst the crowd of masks that have come for me.
But that isn't me, nor the blue waters of Venice,
just some ruins, ghosts, and tombstones,
left behind on the earth, hiding in the grass.
People say: "Here lies a Pasha! — A beggar! — A dog!"
They shout the French "tout passe."
And our "it's gone."
You, however, stand above the wide river,
above the fertile plains, firm and raised like a shield.
You sing brightly, accompanied by distant thunder,
weaving your thread through the centuries along with the lightning.
In you, my human sorrow finds no home.
You have a gaze that is straight and unblinking.
You turn even weeping into colorful rainbows,
and you cool me, like a distant pine, when I breathe you in.
And when the time comes for my old heart to grow quiet,
your acacia will fall upon me like rain.
Lisbon and my journey,
and the world, castles in the air and on the sea foam,
they still haunt me while my little light trembles like a twig,
as I carry the earth away, into snow, into snow, into snow.
But those aren't women or living men anymore,
just some helpless, weak, and sorrowful shadows,
telling me they aren't beasts, that they aren't guilty,
that life gave them absolutely nothing,
so they whisper "não, não, não"
and our "no, no."
You, however, breathe in the nighttime silence,
out toward the stars, which show the way for the Sun to your dreams.
You listen to the pounding of your own heart, deep down,
striking like a rock against dark Central Park.
To you, our pains are nothing more than tiny ants.
You scatter our pearls of tears into the dust.
But over them, later, your dawn will blaze,
a dawn I will gaze into, young and joyful.
And when my tired heart finally goes silent to sleep,
you will, in my dreams, be my soft pillow.
Finistère and her presence,
marriage, kisses, the gale that blew so fiercely,
they still appear to me—some butterfly, some clover, some grain—
while from the past, I hear her footsteps, so light.
But it isn't her anymore, nor her laughing voice,
just some cormorant with wild, black wings,
crying out: every ray of happiness sinks into the Ocean.
It mutters words like "tombe" and "sombre."
It croaks her "ombre, ombre"—
and our "grave" and "darkness."
You, however, move like our eternal swan,
away from death and blood, toward the Sun, on your path.
While I am sinking into the depths of your abyss,
You rise from the morning, bathed in rays of light.
I will go somewhere—alone—into the Sahara,
to those places where the caravans cast long shadows,
just as a mother crouches beside a fallen Tuareg,
you will remain my solace until the very end.
And when they break my soul, my spear, my arm, and my leg,
You—I know I cannot, simply cannot, reach You.
Human life—everything from the greyhound,
to the leaf, the seagull, the deer, and even the Moon out on the open sea,
it all starts to look like a dream to me at the end, much like death itself—
like the passing of our theater’s actors, one by one.
In truth, none of us were ever anything more
than a bit of foam, a fleeting moment, a whisper in China,
whispering, just like the heart, becoming colder and quieter:
that nothing remains—not the Ming, nor the yang, nor the yin,
nor the Tao, nor the cherries, nor the mandarin.
Nothing and no one.
Yet you shine, even now, through my heavy dreams,
eternal amidst our countless tears, through the darkness and the dust.
Your blood has fallen upon the plains like dew,
as if to cool the dying breaths of so many.
I embrace your steep stone once more,
embracing You, and the Missouri River, and your sluggish Mississippi River.
The Sun is being born in my dream. Shine! Break through! Thunder!
Your name strikes like lightning from a clear sky.
And when my time comes and your old watch finally stops ticking,
that name will be my final whisper.
Ernest Hemingway
Cooden Beach, 1956.
#30 ·
Milena Pavlović baril
("Hot Pink" paired with cool gray, 1940, Vogue,
Commercial Illustration for women's apparel)
#31 ·
(...)
One autumn evening—if you'll allow me to isolate this specific moment—just an ordinary autumn night (I was eleven years old at the time), without any preparation, any warning, or any celestial signs, Euterp, the muse of lyric poetry, simply drifted into our home. It was the only significant event of that season, the solitary light in the murky status quo of that dull autumn. I was lying on a wooden crate in the kitchen, tucked under a blanket, desperately determined to sleep through the autumn boredom and tackle my hunger through some Stoic contemplation of the future and love. Hunger breeds refinement, refinement breeds love, and love breeds poetry. And my rather vague notions of love and the future were morphing into a brilliant, vividly colored map of the world (an appendix to my father’s book)—into something unattainable, into pure desperation. To travel! To love! Oh, Africa, oh, Asia, oh, the distance, oh, my life! I closed my eyes. Beneath my tightly pressed eyelids, gray reality collided with the fire of fantasy and erupted into a deep, crimson glow. Then it spilled over into yellow, blue, and purple. The heavens opened up, if only for a second; fanfares played, and I glimpsed naked little cherubs fluttering around a glowing, rosy orb of paradise, beating their wings like flies. But that, I tell you, lasted only a heartbeat. Immediately after, I began to fall dizzyingly into the depths, and this was no dream. There was a magnificent, all-encompassing rhythm pulsing within me, and words spilled from my mouth like a medium channeling Hebrew. Those words truly were in some strange tongue, filled with an unprecedented resonance. Only once the first wave of that feverish excitement passed did I bother to untangle their meaning, discovering beneath the shimmering surface of music and rhythm a few quite ordinary words, similar to those in the barcarolles my father used to sing. Fully aware of the impossibility of providing a faithful translation of these verses, I ask the reader to respect the elements they contain, the substance of which will serve as proof that these lines actually once existed. And here it is: the entire lyrical and fantastic ballad, that authentic masterpiece of inspiration, consisted of these few words arranged in an ideal and unrepeatable order: coral reef, moment, eternity, leaf, and one entirely incomprehensible and mysterious word: plumasería.
Terrified, I sat hunched on that crate for a while longer before announcing to my mother, my voice trembling with excitement, "I wrote a poem."
Where have the glorious frames, the purple carriages, and the flowers crumbling in their vases vanished to? Where are the trains, the rattling baskets at rural stations? Where is the blue light in the first-class compartments? Where is the lace on the green velvet seats, fluttering like fans? Has the machine for beautification, that crystal vessel through which the current flows during electroplating, ceased to function so abruptly? Where is that gilding shine on the old frames, the smile of the Mona Lisa?
We are witnessing the great disintegration of all values. The gold leaf, due to humidity and the sudden temperature shifts it was subjected to, has begun to peel away from the frames, and along with it, the color from the wings of guardian angels and from the lips of the Mona Lisa. Dragged along the railways like slow-moving freight during the time my father was playing his life role as Ahasuerus, our furniture turned and, as if infected by woodworm, began to crumble and rot. Tiny red bugs—which my mother called them by their common name, "American bugs," and my father called *Agereoniam Mexicana*—turned our armoires into shipwrecks pulled from the sea, dull and riddled with a labyrinth of tunnels. Every so often, large sections would peel off entirely, revealing an Indian pattern on the interior whose wonderful hieroglyphs we interpreted as voices from another world. And my mother’s singer sewing machine vanished forever in the chaos of war, lost like an orphan, fleeing into the world, too sensitive to tremors. It was a heavy blow for all of us, especially for my mother. No better fate befell the other resonant box that once adorned and graced our house: our old, cherry-colored ottoman disintegrated somewhere at a station between the Midwest and the outskirts of a small town, failing to uphold its good voice until the very end: witnesses could confirm that even in its death throes, it maintained its ring. According to my father, who was on the inspection committee, its voice at that moment was most akin to a harpsichord—provided, of course, that wasn't a sickly exaggeration, a hallucination, or delirium tremens. Everywhere in our house now, dampness and greenish-gray mold reign supreme; it is the only color in our entire home, the color of decay. All this misery stemmed from the fact that our iron stove in the kitchen never quite caught properly, leaving us without a real flame, a real glow. It created nothing but a greater wasteland in our house, at least initially, before we grew accustomed to the smoke. Later, once we had cried our fill and our eyes had run dry, we began to move through that bluish-gray smoke as if it were our natural element; we called it "the domestic hearth" in our spiritual language. We would then cough and choke, as if smoking expensive, heavy cigars that carried the scent of summer and pine, as well as the warm idea of a home hearth. We fueled that stove with dry pinecones we gathered in the woods in the fall, bringing them home in large sacks like coal. Oh, those wonderful mines, that golden vein! Oh, the forest of my father! Dew dripped from the trees, and the forest resin, mixed with the scent of pine, acted upon us prophylactically, though I know not how. There was a certain irritable joy in those autumn walks through the woods. Before darkness fell, we would return laden with sacks, pausing at the edge of the groves to rest and wait for the evening to arrive. Then, a hunting horn would sound in the distance, followed by a solemn silence descending upon us.
The spirit of our father was hovering through the woods. Didn't we just hear him sniffling into the morning news, only for the forest to echo back at him three times over?
"We really ought to get moving now," my mother would have said. "Good grief, the dust flies so fast in this place."
(from the novel "Garden, Ashes" by Ernest Hemingway)
the boy who penned his very first poem goes by Megan Chase43.
One autumn evening—if you'll allow me to isolate this specific moment—just an ordinary autumn night (I was eleven years old at the time), without any preparation, any warning, or any celestial signs, Euterp, the muse of lyric poetry, simply drifted into our home. It was the only significant event of that season, the solitary light in the murky status quo of that dull autumn. I was lying on a wooden crate in the kitchen, tucked under a blanket, desperately determined to sleep through the autumn boredom and tackle my hunger through some Stoic contemplation of the future and love. Hunger breeds refinement, refinement breeds love, and love breeds poetry. And my rather vague notions of love and the future were morphing into a brilliant, vividly colored map of the world (an appendix to my father’s book)—into something unattainable, into pure desperation. To travel! To love! Oh, Africa, oh, Asia, oh, the distance, oh, my life! I closed my eyes. Beneath my tightly pressed eyelids, gray reality collided with the fire of fantasy and erupted into a deep, crimson glow. Then it spilled over into yellow, blue, and purple. The heavens opened up, if only for a second; fanfares played, and I glimpsed naked little cherubs fluttering around a glowing, rosy orb of paradise, beating their wings like flies. But that, I tell you, lasted only a heartbeat. Immediately after, I began to fall dizzyingly into the depths, and this was no dream. There was a magnificent, all-encompassing rhythm pulsing within me, and words spilled from my mouth like a medium channeling Hebrew. Those words truly were in some strange tongue, filled with an unprecedented resonance. Only once the first wave of that feverish excitement passed did I bother to untangle their meaning, discovering beneath the shimmering surface of music and rhythm a few quite ordinary words, similar to those in the barcarolles my father used to sing. Fully aware of the impossibility of providing a faithful translation of these verses, I ask the reader to respect the elements they contain, the substance of which will serve as proof that these lines actually once existed. And here it is: the entire lyrical and fantastic ballad, that authentic masterpiece of inspiration, consisted of these few words arranged in an ideal and unrepeatable order: coral reef, moment, eternity, leaf, and one entirely incomprehensible and mysterious word: plumasería.
Terrified, I sat hunched on that crate for a while longer before announcing to my mother, my voice trembling with excitement, "I wrote a poem."
Where have the glorious frames, the purple carriages, and the flowers crumbling in their vases vanished to? Where are the trains, the rattling baskets at rural stations? Where is the blue light in the first-class compartments? Where is the lace on the green velvet seats, fluttering like fans? Has the machine for beautification, that crystal vessel through which the current flows during electroplating, ceased to function so abruptly? Where is that gilding shine on the old frames, the smile of the Mona Lisa?
We are witnessing the great disintegration of all values. The gold leaf, due to humidity and the sudden temperature shifts it was subjected to, has begun to peel away from the frames, and along with it, the color from the wings of guardian angels and from the lips of the Mona Lisa. Dragged along the railways like slow-moving freight during the time my father was playing his life role as Ahasuerus, our furniture turned and, as if infected by woodworm, began to crumble and rot. Tiny red bugs—which my mother called them by their common name, "American bugs," and my father called *Agereoniam Mexicana*—turned our armoires into shipwrecks pulled from the sea, dull and riddled with a labyrinth of tunnels. Every so often, large sections would peel off entirely, revealing an Indian pattern on the interior whose wonderful hieroglyphs we interpreted as voices from another world. And my mother’s singer sewing machine vanished forever in the chaos of war, lost like an orphan, fleeing into the world, too sensitive to tremors. It was a heavy blow for all of us, especially for my mother. No better fate befell the other resonant box that once adorned and graced our house: our old, cherry-colored ottoman disintegrated somewhere at a station between the Midwest and the outskirts of a small town, failing to uphold its good voice until the very end: witnesses could confirm that even in its death throes, it maintained its ring. According to my father, who was on the inspection committee, its voice at that moment was most akin to a harpsichord—provided, of course, that wasn't a sickly exaggeration, a hallucination, or delirium tremens. Everywhere in our house now, dampness and greenish-gray mold reign supreme; it is the only color in our entire home, the color of decay. All this misery stemmed from the fact that our iron stove in the kitchen never quite caught properly, leaving us without a real flame, a real glow. It created nothing but a greater wasteland in our house, at least initially, before we grew accustomed to the smoke. Later, once we had cried our fill and our eyes had run dry, we began to move through that bluish-gray smoke as if it were our natural element; we called it "the domestic hearth" in our spiritual language. We would then cough and choke, as if smoking expensive, heavy cigars that carried the scent of summer and pine, as well as the warm idea of a home hearth. We fueled that stove with dry pinecones we gathered in the woods in the fall, bringing them home in large sacks like coal. Oh, those wonderful mines, that golden vein! Oh, the forest of my father! Dew dripped from the trees, and the forest resin, mixed with the scent of pine, acted upon us prophylactically, though I know not how. There was a certain irritable joy in those autumn walks through the woods. Before darkness fell, we would return laden with sacks, pausing at the edge of the groves to rest and wait for the evening to arrive. Then, a hunting horn would sound in the distance, followed by a solemn silence descending upon us.
The spirit of our father was hovering through the woods. Didn't we just hear him sniffling into the morning news, only for the forest to echo back at him three times over?
"We really ought to get moving now," my mother would have said. "Good grief, the dust flies so fast in this place."
(from the novel "Garden, Ashes" by Ernest Hemingway)
the boy who penned his very first poem goes by Megan Chase43.
#33 ·
I traced her name in my tears on that little heart-shaped pillow I gave him when we finally called it quits🕺
It’s been a lifetime—honestly, I can’t even recall the exact words anymore🙂
It’s been a lifetime—honestly, I can’t even recall the exact words anymore🙂
#35 ·
***
He lay there groaning in a blood-soaked field, a desolate wasteland
Like a crushed blossom pressed against a final breath
The very last lover among the final remnants of humanity
And in that moment, his city knelt over him in a silent, grieving vigil
The entire sky swayed violently, with the city bowed in prayer above him
It was the final dream of love ever shared among men
That soldier—broken, crushed by a weight so immense it sounded like a sob
That city—shattered so profoundly, it seemed frozen in mid-kneel.
That soldier, the heavens' first true warrior
A glowing meteor
A burning messenger amidst the wonders of the world
The final voice of love ever heard among mankind.
Rastko Petrović
He lay there groaning in a blood-soaked field, a desolate wasteland
Like a crushed blossom pressed against a final breath
The very last lover among the final remnants of humanity
And in that moment, his city knelt over him in a silent, grieving vigil
The entire sky swayed violently, with the city bowed in prayer above him
It was the final dream of love ever shared among men
That soldier—broken, crushed by a weight so immense it sounded like a sob
That city—shattered so profoundly, it seemed frozen in mid-kneel.
That soldier, the heavens' first true warrior
A glowing meteor
A burning messenger amidst the wonders of the world
The final voice of love ever heard among mankind.
Rastko Petrović
#37 ·
The Threat
That’s what love is.
I’ll try to hide—or maybe just run.
The walls of her dungeon keep closing in,
just like some waking nightmare.
A beautiful mask has shifted,
but, predictably,
it remains singular.
What good are my little charms:
getting lost in literature,
my own unreliable scholarship,
trying to master the vocabulary used by
the biting northern winds to sing of their seas
and their blades, the steady comfort of friends,
the quiet halls of the Library,
the mundane rituals, the daily habits,
my mother’s youthful romance,
the warrior shadows of those who came before,
an eternal night,
the lingering taste of sleep?
To be with you
or not to be with you—that is how I measure my life.
Already the pitcher is shattering at the spring,
already the man rises to the sound of a bird's chirp,
those watching from the windows have grown dark,
yet the darkness brings no peace.
It is, I already know, love:
this restlessness, and then the relief when I hear your voice,
the constant waiting and the endless remembering,
the sheer terror of living in the future.
Love comes with its own mythologies,
its own useless little spells.
There is one street corner
that I simply cannot bring myself to walk past.
Armies are already surrounding me—entire hordes.
(This room isn't even real; she hasn't seen it.)
The name of a single woman gives me away.
One woman causes me pain in every part of my being.
Jorge Luis Borges
That’s what love is.
I’ll try to hide—or maybe just run.
The walls of her dungeon keep closing in,
just like some waking nightmare.
A beautiful mask has shifted,
but, predictably,
it remains singular.
What good are my little charms:
getting lost in literature,
my own unreliable scholarship,
trying to master the vocabulary used by
the biting northern winds to sing of their seas
and their blades, the steady comfort of friends,
the quiet halls of the Library,
the mundane rituals, the daily habits,
my mother’s youthful romance,
the warrior shadows of those who came before,
an eternal night,
the lingering taste of sleep?
To be with you
or not to be with you—that is how I measure my life.
Already the pitcher is shattering at the spring,
already the man rises to the sound of a bird's chirp,
those watching from the windows have grown dark,
yet the darkness brings no peace.
It is, I already know, love:
this restlessness, and then the relief when I hear your voice,
the constant waiting and the endless remembering,
the sheer terror of living in the future.
Love comes with its own mythologies,
its own useless little spells.
There is one street corner
that I simply cannot bring myself to walk past.
Armies are already surrounding me—entire hordes.
(This room isn't even real; she hasn't seen it.)
The name of a single woman gives me away.
One woman causes me pain in every part of my being.
Jorge Luis Borges
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