—MUSCLE CARS DROVE A TRUCK RIGHT THROUGH MY HEART

 

 

“The truth of life is its mystery.” Joyce Carol Oates

 

“I feel as if the pandemic taught me some not-so-great lessons--live small, do less, stay home, do your work, stay in your lane.

But I keep realizing my best self is curious, it wants to see new things, it doesn't want to be fearful, it wants to live a full and vibrant life.

I have a few friends telling me of how terrible the next few years are going to be--if they are going to be so terrible, shouldn't we push into that terribleness with beauty? With art? With joy? “ Kellie Russell Agodon

 

"The older I get, the more I find that you can only live with those who free you, who love you with an affection that is as light to bear as it is strong to feel.” Albert Camus

  

“When I’m in a slump, I comfort myself by saying, If I believe in dinosaurs, then somewhere, they must be believing in me. And if they believe in me, then I can believe in me. Then I bust out of my slump.” Mookie Wilson, Left-fielder for the New York Mets

 

"I know somebody and they cry for you

They lie awake at night and dream of you

I bet you never even know they do, but

Somebody's crying

I know somebody and they called your name

A million times and still you never came

They go on loving you just the same

I know that somebody's trying."

--Chris Isaak

 

“What is Hell? I believe it is the suffering of being unable to love.” ~Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

“Hope is the thing with feathers.” Emily Dickinson

 

“I was literally writing because that’s my form of therapy. Because that’s the worst part, man, when you are alone and you feel like, as much as you try and describe your situation, no one knows that in their world like you do in yours… I just think a lot of music in general that people relate to comes from hard times.” Kelly Clarkson

 

“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist, and that there are few of them. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” John Steinbeck

 

“We'll be rich, Ali – and we'll buy ourselves a little piece of heaven.” R.W. Fassbinder from “Fear Eats the Soul”

 

"When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears. Like that sky. It's rain and sun both, noon and midnight. [...] I think of the lips I've kissed, and of the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I'm all those things at once. I'm sure there are times when you wouldn't even recognize me. Extreme in misery, excessive in happiness". Albert Camus

 

 “At times when you can’t feel love, sometimes all it takes is your friends showering love upon you. Love is real. Permanence is not. Life is suffering, but we survive it.” Shawn Misener

  

“My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That’s heaven. That’s gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.” Cormac McCarthy

 

Me and Alma

 

Time holds us together with a strong hand.

Nothing is allowed to go away on its own.

Not fish, snow nor grass.

All must issue one from the other.

This woman is my flesh, my heavy bones.

She turns as if I am the tree 

and Alma its leaves.

I the green the wind of her is undoing.

Soon there will be nothing so different together

as she and I. Stone and water, dirt and fern.

--Linda Gregg

 

 “The artist's role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That's how I see it. Otherwise, I don't know why you do it.” Amiri Baraka

  

There is no one who 

will feed the yearning.

Face it. You will have to

Do it yourself.

---Gloria Anzaldúa

 

 A Ritual to Read to Each Other

 

If you don’t know the kind of person I am

and I don’t know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors around us

storming out to wreck through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,

but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

-William Stafford

 

The Abandoned Valley

Can you understand being alone so long

you would go out in the middle of the night

and put a bucket into the well

so you could feel something down there

tug at the other end of the rope?

― Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven

  

Young Brown Girl / Barbara Jane Reyes

 

“Because so much depends upon the suppression of us, the erasure of us, the omission of us; because we are not made to scald, to starve, to stuff in closets; because we have our own lyrics to drop; because we inherit our mothers' immodest tales

 

  If you’re going to try, go all the way.

otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the way.

this could mean losing girlfriends,

wives, relatives, jobs and

maybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.

it could mean freezing on a park bench.

it could mean jail,

it could mean derision,

mockery,

isolation.

isolation is the gift,

all the others are a test of your

endurance, of how much you really want to

do it.

and you’ll do it

despite rejection and the worst odds

and it will be better than

anything else

you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,

go all the way.

there is no other feeling like

that.

you will be alone with the gods

and the nights will flame with

fire.

do it, do it, do it.

do it.

all the way

all the way.

you will ride life straight to

perfect laughter, its

the only good fight

there is.

– Charles Bukowski

 Post Meridian / Mary Ruefle

 

“The children in ragged bedclothes

begged for a story

and had the door closed, very softly,

in their faces.

Years later, that was their story.

It was a long story. It took a bottle

of brandy and two nights of rain

to reach the end.

 

  “Poetry is of absolutely no practical use, they said. None whatsoever.” Padraig O Tuama