The calm existence that is mine when I Am worthy of myself!

Edouard Vuillard

I am afraid

because of the foolishness

I have spoken.

I must diet

on silence;

strengthen myself

with quiet.

Where is the wisdom   

with which I may be medicined?

I will walk by myself

and cure myself

in the sunshine and the wind.

Jean Hugo



The path was hidden

under the fallen leaves; and here and there

the stream was choked. Where it forced a way

the ripples flashed a second.

She spoke unkindly but it was the truth:

I shared the sunshine like a leaf, a ripple;

thinking of this, sunned myself

and, for the moment, was content.






Lucy Grossmith




dearchaterina








Nastia Sleptsova


Alberto Morrocco

I like the sound of the street—

but I, apart and alone,

beside an open window

and behind a closed door.

Matthew Sharack








***
title - William Wordsworth
all lines from a poem 'Autobiography: New York'
BY CHARLES REZNIKOFF

the pathos of 'in vain'

Geoffrey Stein


 The important thing to remember 
 about this is that everyone is wrong except for me. 


...the last cigarettes are smoked, the loaves are sliced,
and lest this be taken for wry sorrow,
drown the spider in wine.

you are much more than simply dead:
I am a dish for your ashes...



Alina Vergnano



In the first case you are a man, 
in the second you're no better than a bird. 
Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped. 






Erika Kuhn








minicingmockingbird




Rikka Sormunen








Vanessa Bell 

***
2. line - Bukowsky
3. line - Dostoyevsky
4. line - Pilinszky

"leaving the mark"

Carolyn Swiszcz




sacha braunig








Kati Immonen

The diaphanous satins of a January window...






Patrick William Adam






Sergei Vinogradov


sbergeron00





“The greatest experience open to man then is 
the recovery of the commonplace. Coffee in the morning 
and whiskeys in the evening again without fear. 
Books to read without that shadow falling across the page.” 


elizabeth mayville

Gabriella Barouch







***
1. line - S. Plath
2. line - Peter De Vries
3,4. line - Oriah Mountain Dreamer

###

Are We There Yet?

by Dobby Gibson

You only have to make her one grilled cheese

in the suffocating heat of summer

while still wearing your wet swim trunks

to know what it’s like to be in love.

And you only have to sit once

for a haircut in the air conditioning

with the lovely stylist to forget all about it,

and to forget that anything in the universe

ever existed prior to the small, pink sweater

now brushing softly against your neck.

In this world, every birth is premature.

How else to explain all of this silence,

all of this screaming,

all of those Christmas card letters

about how well the kids are doing in school?

We’re all struggling to say the same old things

in new and different ways.

And so we must praise the new and different ways.

I don’t like Christmas.

I miss you that much.

For I, too, have heard the screaming,

and I, too, have tried to let it pass,

and still I’ve been up half the night

as if I were half this old,

and like you, I hate this kind of poetry

just as much as my life depends upon it.

They’re giving away tiny phones for free these days,

but they’ve only made

a decent conversation more precious.

One medicine stops the swelling,

another medicine stops the first medicine.

Just like you, I entered this world

mad and kicking, and without you,

it’s precisely how I intend to go.