Sharon Olds
As the guests arrive at my son’s party
they gather in the living room—
short men, men in first grade
with smooth jaws and chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
jostling, jockeying for place, small fights
breaking out and calming. One says to another
How old are you? Six. I’m…
My interests are varied and include the Middle East, parenting, literature, my family and politics in general.
About me Ask me anything Submit
About me Ask me anything Submit
April 17, 2012
blues and bare bones: Rite of Passage
April 10, 2012
Don’t Flinch
By Adrienne Rich
Lichen-green lines of shingle pulsate and waver
when you lift your eyes. It’s the glare. Don’t flinch
The news you were reading
(who tramples whom) is antique
and on the death pages you’ve seen already
worms doing their normal work
on the life that was: the chewers chewing
at a sensuality that wrestled doom
an anger steeped in love they can’t
even taste. How could this still
shock or sicken you? Friends go missing, mute
nameless. Toss
the paper. Reach again
for the Iliad. The lines
pulse into sense. Turn up the music
Now do you hear it? can you smell smoke
under the near shingles?
This poem first appeared in Granta 111: Going Back. Read a new poem by Adrienne Rich in the latest issue of Granta, Exit Strategies.
April 3, 2012
What Kind of Times Are These
There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.
March 31, 2012
"A thinking woman sleeps with monsters."
— Adrienne Rich, feminist poet and essayist. (via blankpagesandinvisibleink)
March 14, 2012
No choice
By Jamie Etheridge
I don’t want to be silent
But I cannot not speak
I don’t want to be safe
But the future is dangerous
And your past eludes me
I don’t want to be greedy
Being broke means everything
I don’t want to be angry
But there is no peace
I don’t want to answer
For your wrongs, they cheat me
I don’t want to be taboo
But when everything is forbidden
My choices are already made for me.
March 14, 2012
"
Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
“Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress.
“Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
“Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.
“Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.
“Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggle, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
“Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again.
“Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
“Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.”
"—
Kahlil Gibran - The Garden Of The Prophet.
(via mai-ziyada)
(via doctorofnothing)
March 12, 2012
"Antony
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest—
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men—
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me."
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest—
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men—
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me."
— Julius Caesar
Act III, Scene II
William Shakespeare
(Source: shakespeare.mit.edu)
February 13, 2012
February 12, 2012
Omar Khayyam (23)
Fish said to duck, frantic,
Will the water ever return
if the river jumps its course?
Duck replied, When you and I
are skewered and kebob,
let it be a river or
let it be mirage.
Trans. Juan Cole
Whinfield 23
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Surah Yunus Chap. 10 Verse 44
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It’s camping season
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Ballerina - Ghada Al Kandari
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I LOVE the prussian blue of my new carbon paper! (Taken with instagram)
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“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”— Ayn Rand
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In Walking in Roman Culture, Timothy M. O’Sullivan eloquently explains that how and why a person walked were crucial cultural...
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Busy. ——————————————————————— #sramyan #documentit #kuwait #streetphotography #sramyan_almobarakiya #almobarakiya #iphoneography #streetphoto_bw...
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Finding long lost books and longer lost pictures inside. (Taken with instagram)
