dip your toes into the galaxies, because it’s yours to explore tonight
Untitled
dreams don't interest me. that this should be real is a richer possibility.
perhaps middle class crime is mostly in the head, or in and around the bed. battery, assault, abduction, rape and murder were dourly fantasised when appropriate. but it’s something other than morals, more like taste, politesse, that holds us back.
‘le mauvais goût mène au crime’
the narrative compression of storytelling, especially in the movies, beguiles us with happy endings into forgetting that sustained stress is corrosive of feeling. it’s the great deadener. those moments of joyful release from terror are not so easily had.
you have to measure yourself by other people - there really is nothing else
but every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone teaches you something about yourself
imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity
- it is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality
“Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,”
Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends.
J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.
Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.
Je ne regarderai ni l’or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j’arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.
i want to know that little acts can change the world
“i have loved him too much to feel no hate for him.” august strindberg
friendship isn’t a big thing, it’s a million little things
This isn’t my first time here. This isn’t my last time here.
These aren’t the last words I’ll share.
But just in case, I’m trying my hardest to get it right this time around.
was it flinty manhood women tasted, kissing a set up like that, or yesterday’s vindaloo ? - movember won’t be missed
if my heart was a compass you’d be north
You can only fit so many words in a postcard, only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.
It is hard to build a body out of words. I have tried. We have both tried. Instead of lying your head against my chest I tell you about the boy who lives downstairs from me, who stays up all night long practising his drumset. The neighbours have complained, they have busy days tomorrow but he keeps on thumping through the night, convinced, I think, that practice makes perfect.
Instead of holding my hand you tell me about the sandwich you made for lunch today, how the pickles fit so perfectly against the lettuce.
Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. Repeat the same mistakes, over and over, and you don’t get any closer to Carnegie Hall, even I know that. Repeat the same mistakes, over and over, and you don’t get any closer. You never get any closer.
Is there a word for the moment you win tug of war, when the weight gives and all that extra rope comes tumbling towards you? How even though you’ve won, you still end up with muddy knees and scratches on your hands? Is there a word for that? I wish there was. I would’ve said it, when we were finally alone together on your couch, neither one of us with anything left to say.
Still now, I send letters into space, hoping that some mailman somewhere will track you down, and recognize you from the descriptions in my poems, that he will place the stack of them in your hands and tell you, “There is a girl who still writes you. She doesn’t know how not to.”
there is no hope for the hopelessly romantic
reality’s a lovely place, but i wouldn’t want to live there
