The Period Poem

Emtithal Mahmoud

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

By Mary Oliver.

H/T to young mr Nicholas Mulvey. 

The child has a hundred languages

No way. The hundred is there.

The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.
The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.

And they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.

~Loris Malaguzzi
(translated by Lella Gandini here. h/t to Mr Key)

KT

I've said it more than once, and I'll say it again. Many times. This girl's a prophet. 

Saul Williams - Not In Our Name (The Pledge of Resistance)

bleed

by the amazing Dominique Christina.

tri-lingual

purple for prince

the black bruins

And again...

Kate Tempest: Hopelessly Devoted 

Lonely Daze

Kate Tempest does it again.

secret books in eden

"But Tom got into a book, crawled and grovelled between the covers, tunneled in like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands."

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

More Brand New

brand new ancients

I'm in love with kate tempest. 

beautiful

The Moths 

 The doctor puts the scalpel to my chest and presses it in. Wait, I’m not asleep yet I say. The doctor doesn’t hear me. He tears the scalpel down to my navel and plunges his hands inside. I have to save this patient he yells as he begins pulling things out. First my stomach, then my intestines, then a few sniffing and uncertain mice. A wrench, a handful of hair, my liver. After the fish slides out, flopping and gasping, it’s your turn. You leap out, do a pirouette and a curtsey. You’ve always made magnificent entrances. Then, some moths.

Timothy Wojcik via Scud

I see teacups in your smiles

come closer.
come into this. come closer.

you are quite the beauty. if no one has ever told you that before know that
now. you are quite the beauty. there is joy in how your mouth dances with
your teeth. your mouth is a sign of how sacred your life truly is. come into
this. true of heart come into this. you are true of heart. come closer. come
closer. know that whatever God prays to He asked it to help Him make
something of worth. He woke from His dreams scraped the soil form the spaces
inside Himself made you and was happy. you make the Lord happy.
come into this.
come closer.

know that something softer than us but just as holy planted the pieces of
Himself into our feet that we might one day find our way back to Him. you
are almost home.

come closer come into this. there are birds beating their wings beneath your
breastplate gentle sparrows aching to sing come aching hearts come soldiers
of joy doormen of truth come true of heart come into this.

my heart was too big for my body so I let it go and most days this world has
thinned me  to where I am just another cloud forgetting another flock of
swans but believe me when I tell you my soul has squeezed into narrow
spaces. place your hand beneath your head when you sleep tonight and you may
find it there making beauty as we sleep as we dream as we turn over when I
turn over in the ground may the ghosts that I have asked answers of do the
turning kneading me into crumbs of light and into this thing love thing
called life. come into it!

come you wooden museums
you gentle tigers
negro farces in two broken scenes.
come rusting giants!

I see teacups in your smiles upside down glowing. your hands are like my
heart. on some days how it trembles. let us hold them together. I am like
you. I too at times am filled with fear. but like a hallway must find the
strength to walk through it. walk through this with me. walk through this
with me. through this church birthed of blood and muscle where every move
our arms take every breath we swallow is worship.

bend with me. there are bones in our throats. if we choke it is only on
songs.

-Anis Mojgani

#RageForGaza

In solidarity and with love.

November

This time last year I was in Oslo with an Oregonian, a Mexican American and a fellow Bristolian watching these guys be fucking incredible. "I want to live inside their songs." Yes please. 

donut