A Look at the In-between: The Last of Nod

“listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go” 

― E.E. Cummings

(best quote... ever)

    

 

 

 



 

     “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”

― Alfred Tennyson

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“My fingers curl through the holes in the wicker, through the wet grass beneath it, trying to hold tight to the sharp blades of the present. Somewhere in my brain a sinkhole is bubbling over, and each bubble contains a scene from a tiny sunken world ... I have never been the prophet of my own past before. It makes me wonder how the healthy dreamers can bear to sleep at all, if sleep means that you have to peer into that sinkhole by yourself. ... I had almost forgotten this occipital sorrow, the way you are so alone with the things you see in dreams.”
― Karen Russell, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

“As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.”
― Anne Sexton

 






“We love the things we love for what they are.”
― Robert Frost


 

A Blessing James Wright Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.

A Blessing

James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

 




  

“What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”
― Walt Whitman

“Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.”
― Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels

 

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

 

every single day

By John Straley

(After Raymond Carver’s Hummingbird)

Suppose I said the word “springtime”

and I wrote the words “king salmon”

on a piece of paper

and mailed it to you.

When you opened it

would you remember that afternoon we spent

together in the yellow boat

when the early whales were feeding

and we caught our first fish of the year?

Or would you remember that time off Cape Flattery

when you were a little girl:

your father smoking, telling stories as he ran the boat,

then the tug and zing of that very first fish

spooling off into the gray-green world;

you laughing and brushing back your hair

before setting the hook?

I know I am hard to understand sometimes

particularly when you are standing

at the post office with only a piece of paper

saying “king salmon” on it

but just think of it as a promissary note

and that electric tug, that thrill

pulling your mind into deep water

is how I feel about you every,

single day.

  \


   
 

Still Burning

Gerald Stern

Me trying to understand say whence

say whither, say what, say me with a pencil walking,

say reading the dictionary, say learning medieval

Latin, reading Spengler, reading Whitehead,

William James I loved him, swimming breaststroke

and thinking for an hour, how did I get here?

Or thinking in line, say the 69 streetcar

or 68 or 67 Swissvale,

that would take me elsewhere, me with a textbook

reading the pre-Socratics, so badly written,

whoever the author was, me on the floor of

the lighted stacks sitting cross-legged,

walking afterwards through the park or sometimes

running across the bridges and up the hills,

sitting down in our tiny diningroom,

burning in a certain way, still burning.

 



 

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“If you're reading this...
Congratulations, you're alive.
If that's not something to smile about,
then I don't know what is.”
― Chad Sugg, Monsters Under Your Head

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
― Khalil Gibran

 

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”
― Charles Bukowski

 

    

“I dreamed I spoke in another's language,
I dreamed I lived in another's skin,
I dreamed I was my own beloved,
I dreamed I was a tiger's kin.

I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,
And when I breathed a garden came,
I dreamed I knew all of Creation,
I dreamed I knew the Creator's name.

I dreamed--and this dream was the finest--
That all I dreamed was real and true,
And we would live in joy forever,
You in me, and me in you.”
― Clive Barker, Days of Magic, Nights of War

 

“Lovers alone wear sunlight.”
― E.E. Cummings

 

“Music is the universal language of mankind.” 
    -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

“She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood.
She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.”
― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things