Boundaries

Mattia on Unsplash

I have these here for me

even though you think they

are some reflection on you

and maybe in a way, they are

because your obliviousness

is the linchpin of this measure

My boundaries are protection

from the emotional interruption

that you cause in my life

and when I say you, it’s not just you

because so many people

try to cross a line that they know

is drawn in the sand for a reason

If you are confused about boundaries

it’s likely because you don’t have any

and that is why you are unprotected

in the wild of everyday life

allowing others to suck your blood

and sap your energy

I don’t feel bad about my boundaries,

I feel proud about my boundaries

because the confidence of self-care

is the mindful practice I need

to make the back half all it should be

and

I am fine with you not being along

for this wonderful ride

Jonathan Greene

Relato sentimental da memória

 

empowernetwork

 

Amor e tempo é um conflito

que se resolve sempre com dor e esquecimento.

Porque compreender não quer dizer amar,

mas afastar-se mais: já o suspeitava

há muitos anos, quando ainda exercia arquitectura.

Aprendo tudo de novo.

Agora preciso apenas de lealdade

a alguma coisa vaga e solitária,

dura como uma rocha no meio do mar.

Às vezes a mente dos velhos

engrena com fúria a sua lógica.

Vejam-na deambular pelas suas memórias:

percorre uma costa desolada,

porque compreender não quer dizer amar,

mas afastar-se mais. Aprendo tudo de novo.

Joan Margarit

The Quiet Line

 

In the garden of morning,

where the dew settles like whispers,

I find my edges, soft yet firm,

as the earth meets the sky.

A robin calls from the oak,

reminding me of the gentle art of saying no,

a boundary as natural as the river’s course,

winding, deliberate,

through the patient land.

Here, in the stillness,

I build my walls with care,

not to keep out the world,

but to hold close what is tender within me,

a small sanctuary of peace,

where the heart can rest,

unfettered by the pull of others’ desires.

I learn from the wild geese,

who fly together, yet apart,

each knowing its place in the sky,

each honouring the space that keeps them aloft.

And so, I too, shall keep my distance,

not from love,

but from the weight of it,

when it presses too hard against the boundaries

I have drawn in the sand.

For in these lines,

I find my freedom,

and in this freedom,

I find myself,

whole, unbroken,

a quiet flame burning brightly in the dusk.

Per Norrgren

Sex is divine transcendence

 

 I. REVELATION

Sex is divine transcendence.

I was fifteen. The air split.

A light - or was it noise? - entered through the bones.

I felt myself blur, melt, re-form.

It wasn’t pleasure, it wasn’t pain. It was eruption.

The skin became a mirror.

The mirror became a storm.

Every breath fractured into colours I couldn’t name.

Time folded, and I saw the animal inside the girl

stretching, screaming, being born - exactly like a fool.

I fell through myself.

I thought it was death; but it was beginning.

Something wrote itself across my ribs -

a sentence made of pulse.

Since then, every word I write smells faintly of that light.

Every line remembers the shiver that named me real.

I am inspired by sexual energy -

and I am scared of the power it holds over me.

But I love my sex drive as much as I love you, amour.

II. WITNESS

Sex is a threshold.

Not body only - breath, shadow, echo.

A small death that opens the room of the self.

Through it I see the angel again.

He stands where the air folds - silent, astonished -

as if beholding the first word.

He does not bless. He witnesses.

Then he disappears into the white noise of the world.

After, I write.

The hand trembles; the page smells of smoke.

I understand: this act is language.

Every tremor becomes a syllable.

Every silence, a door.

No one taught me this.

I found it alone, like a secret passage.

I entered - and something in me stayed there,

listening, translating.

Sex as mirror.

Sex as prayer.

Sex as the beginning of art.

III. WOUND

It happened once, in another life -

or perhaps it was the birth of this one.

A body met another, and the air split open.

Terror and beauty arrived together, like twins.

He said I was beautiful.

The words floated between us, trembling,

almost divine in their simplicity.

And as the world bent inward, I asked:

“What is beauty, really?”

He smiled - a smile that seemed older than us both.

“Beauty,” he said, “is art.”

The room vanished.

Only the sentence remained, suspended in the light,

and from it the rest of my life began to write itself.

IV. CREATION

I lost myself inside him.

No thought. No shame. Only the blur.

Something dark passed through us -

his hands, my silence, the trembling air.

He hurt me, and the hurt became a river,

pouring out of me, burning, almost holy.

I heard my own voice cry out:

It’s not right, you’re cruel.

He stopped, his mouth a shadow against mine.

No tears came. Only another cry -

What is cruelty?

He said nothing.

The silence spoke the oldest language I know.

And in that silence, I understood -

that creation and cruelty are sisters,

that art is born where pain loses its name.

And I began to call that wound - God.

Jeanne Vessantra

On Impermanence

 

Mark Squires

Who can resist the strangulating grip of time?

That which exists today is not there tomorrow

Like shooting stars which vanish in the flicker of an eye

Life comes and goes quicker than a speeding arrow

When someone dear dies and our heart bleeds

And pours our anguish of wordless grief

Remember everything has to eventually die

Like bubbles bursting in a matter of time brief

The only constant in life is its inconstancy

With time, our existence could become a myth

As every sunrise follows a sundown

Each birth leads to an eventual death

In the fluidity of time, we are in a state of flux

Don't obdurately clutch at something in your arms

Instead loosen your grip and let things go

With the ease of water running down your palms

Every lovely flower that blossoms once

Fades in time and eventually turns brown

If a leaf clings tenaciously to the tree

When autumn blasts strike, it falls down

Thus when cruelly expelled by the tree that held it close

Down it lies withered, trampled by treading feet

To die and dissolve in the soil to make it fecund

Allowing fresh life to seeds lying dormant in wait

Impermanence being in the grand design of things

To nothing in this world, one can permanently cling

So, willingly give way to herald in the new,

As autumn leaves cannot be laundered for the spring!

Valsa George

In Lieu of Flowers

 

Aleksandar Nakic

Although I love flowers very much, I won’t see them when I’m gone. 

So in lieu of flowers:  Buy a book of poetry written by someone still alive, 

sit outside with a cup of tea, a glass of wine, and read it out loud, 

by yourself or to someone, or silently.

Spend some time with a single flower. A rose maybe. Smell it, touch the petals. 

Really look at it. 

Drink a nice bottle of wine with someone you love.

Or, Champagne. 

And think of what John Maynard Keynes said, 

“My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne.” 

Or what Dom Perignon said when he first tasted the stuff: 

“Come quickly! I am tasting stars!” 

Take out a paint set and lay down some colours.

Watch birds. Common sparrows are fine. Pigeons, too. Geese are nice. Robins.

In lieu of flowers, walk in the trees and watch the light fall into it. 

Eat an apple, a really nice big one. I hope it’s crisp. 

Have a long soak in the bathtub with candles, maybe some rose petals.

Sit on the front stoop and watch the clouds. 

Have a dish of strawberry ice cream in my name. 

If it’s winter, have a cup of hot chocolate outside for me. 

If it’s summer, a big glass of ice water. 

If it’s autumn, collect some leaves and press them in a book you love. I’d like that. 

Sit and look out a window and write down what you see. Write some other things down. 

In lieu of flowers, 

I would wish for you to flower. 

I would wish for you to blossom, to open, to be beautiful.

Shawna Lemay 

in, The Flower Can Always Be Changing.  

I speak with the future

 

Pi Longo

We sit on our skeletons’ bones. 

We hear with our skeletons’ bones.

We speak of beauty by moving our jaws and our teeth.

The original meaning of Paradise: a place, 

a walled garden. 

Our lives, our stories, this hour inside one.

A staircase from Piranesi. A hummingbird drinking.

Outside it, vanishing species and rivers.

Outside it, Nanjing, Ninevah, Dresden.

Outside it, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, Kyiv. Here.

The world starts and ends, starts, ends, ends again,

restarts.  

A kalpa is brief, and wall-less.

Unborn ones, take nothing for granted.

Not nectar, not thirst.

May your lives be uneclipsed, your failures be passing.

May you have your portions of beauty, of grief, 

in a garden whose plants and birds I cannot imagine. 

Jane Hirshfield

Everything is waiting for you

 

Greg Rakozy

 

Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. As if life

were a progressive and cunning crime

with no witness to the tiny hidden

transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny

the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice. You must note

the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you freedom.

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

The stairs are your mentor of things

to come, the doors have always been there

to frighten you and invite you,

and the tiny speaker in the phone

is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the

conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterably

themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

David Whyte

Ghazal

 

Esra Tekin

There is no desire to speak again; whom to ask, what to say?

I, who was treated ill, what should I not read, what not to say?

What should I tell that honey for me is like poison!

I cry; the fist of the cruel! It teases. Would I not say?

There is no one who knows my affliction, none I trust;

For what should I cry, laugh, die, and live today?

I and this faith; the grief of my failure, and this wishfulness;

I cannot do anything; and the words of affection, if only I could say.

O my heart, there was spring and there was this season of comfort.

But I cannot fly anymore. I want to know to whom should I say ...

Though I am quiet and cannot remember any song,

Yet all the time, something stirs in my heart that I should say.

Ah, remember the good day when this cage was broken;

That loneliness is gone, my delight, I sing the cares away.

I am a frail stick that trembles in air each time;

An Afghan daughter who can say wherever she needs to say.

It is night and these words come to me

By the call of my voice words come to me

What fire blazes in me, what water do I get?

From my body, the fragrance of my soul comes to me

I do not know from where these great words come

The fresh breeze takes loneliness away from me

That from the clouds of light comes this light

That there is no other wish that comes to me

The cry of my heart sparkles like a star

And the bird of my flight touches the sky

My madness can be found in his book

O do not say no, my master, O look once at me

It is like the day of judgment

Like doomsday my silence comes at me

I am happy that the giver gives me silk

And all night, all along these verses come to me

Nadia Anjuman

Nazm

 

Vladimir Polikarpov

O the one who hides in the mountain of unfamiliarity!

O you that sleep in the quietness of the pearl.

O who remains in the memories!

Bring the memories of transparent water.

In a river like forgetfulness, my mind is full of dust.

The voice that comes from the mountain makes me think

That from the one who destroys, how can you get your golden string?

That the storm of cruelty affects the faith.

How can you get the comfort of a moon from a silver leaf?

There is no death after this!

If the river stops to flow,

And if the clouds open a way to your heart,

And yes, if the daughter of the moon blesses you with her smiles.

If the mountains become soft, greenery grows,

Fruit grows.

And one was kind, from all the unkind.

Will the sun rise?

Will the memories rise with it too?

Those memories that are hidden from our eyes

And while frightened from the flood and the rain of cruelness

Will the light of hope appear?

Nadia Anjuman

Sweet darkness

 

 When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb

tonight.

The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

David Whyte

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

 

StockCake

 The world is full of women

who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself

if they had the chance. Quit dancing.

Get some self-respect

and a day job.

Right. And minimum wage,

and varicose veins, just standing

in one place for eight hours

behind a glass counter

bundled up to the neck, instead of

naked as a meat sandwich.

Selling gloves, or something.

Instead of what I do sell.

You have to have talent

to peddle a thing so nebulous

and without material form.

Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way

you cut it, but I've a choice

of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.

Like preachers, I sell vision,

like perfume ads, desire

or its facsimile. Like jokes

or war, it's all in the timing.

I sell men back their worse suspicions:

that everything's for sale,

and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see

a chain-saw murder just before it happens,

when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple

are still connected.

Such hatred leaps in them,

my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary

hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads

and upturned eyes, imploring

but ready to snap at my ankles,

I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge

to step on ants. I keep the beat,

and dance for them because

they can't. The music smells like foxes,

crisp as heated metal

searing the nostrils

or humid as August, hazy and languorous

as a looted city the day after,

when all the rape's been done

already, and the killing,

and the survivors wander around

looking for garbage

to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.

Speaking of which, it's the smiling

tires me out the most.

This, and the pretence

that I can't hear them.

And I can't, because I'm after all

a foreigner to them.

The speech here is all warty gutturals,

obvious as a slab of ham,

but I come from the province of the gods

where meanings are lilting and oblique.

I don't let on to everyone,

but lean close, and I'll whisper:

My mother was raped by a holy swan.

You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.

That's what we tell all the husbands.

There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here

but you would understand.

The rest of them would like to watch me

and feel nothing. Reduce me to components

as in a clock factory or abattoir.

Crush out the mystery.

Wall me up alive

in my own body.

They'd like to see through me,

but nothing is more opaque

than absolute transparency.

Look--my feet don't hit the marble!

Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,

I hover six inches in the air

in my blazing swan-egg of light.

You think I'm not a goddess?

Try me.

This is a torch song.

Touch me and you'll burn.

Margaret Atwood

in, Morning in the Burned House

Interior: The Suburbs

 

StockCake

 There is no rest for the mind 

in a small house. It moves, looking for God, 

with a mysterious eye fixed on the bed, 

into a cracked egg at breakfast, 

looking for glory in an arm-chair, 

or simply noting the facts of life 

in a fly asleep on the ceiling. 

The mind, sunk in quiet places, 

(like old heroes) sleeps no more, 

but walks abroad in a slouch hat 

performing adultery at violent street corners; 

then, trembling, returns, 

sadly directs its mysterious eye 

into a coffee-cup. There is no rest 

for there are many miles to walk in the small house, 

traveling past the same chairs, the same tables, 

the same glassy portraits on the walls, 

flowing into darkness.

There is no victory in the mind, 

but desperate valor, 

shattering the four walls, 

disintegrating human love, 

until the iron-lidded mysterious eye 

(lowered carefully with the frail body 

under churchyard gardens) 

stares upward, luminous, inevitable, 

piercing solar magnitudes 

on a fine morning.

Horace Gregory

in, Poem-a-Day

Palavras

 

Freepik

 Palavras 

que apenas desconjuntadas 

se deixam escutar 

as nossas 

nascidas em gargantas 

sob o cerco 

de venenos carnívoros 

estremecendo no espaço 

como ao vento 

a roupa 

mas mais vagarosas 

mais lavradas por um 

pessoalíssimo fogo 

palavras difundidas a direito 

sobranceiras à gravidade 

e os dias 

barrados à entrada 

como em certos lugares 

os bêbedos 

palavras 

seladas com um gesto 

única pontuação 

entre os descendentes 

da fome 

braço que se dobra 

para ampliar em si 

o destino 

de um corpo alheio 

e será

sempre assim

o encontro

uma paisagem destruída

e nós

os alheados

da carnificina

Vasco Gato