(Posts tagged words)

“I remember grief as a hollow, / so sharp it felt like hunger, / so large I felt exceptional.”

— Jenny Qi, from “Commonalities”

Hanif Abdurraqib, On Seatbelts and Sunsets

https://www.triangle.house/hanif-abdurraqib-on-seatbelts-and-sunsets

“Love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth. Only love can give us the strength to go forward in the midst of heartbreak and misery. Only love can give us the power to reconcile, to redeem, the power to renew weary spirits and save lost souls. The transformative power of love is the foundation of all meaningful social change. Without love our lives are without meaning. Love is the heart of the matter. When all else has fallen away, love sustains.”

— bell hooks

Ilya Kaminsky on the question of poetry as political witness and resistance from “Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky (Garth Greenwell, Poets & Writers March/April 2019)

bell hooks, from all about love

Fiona Apple lyrics from her new album that made me go completely feral:

- And I've always been too smart for that, but you know what? / My heart was not.

- Saying I'm not stylish enough and I cry too much, and I listened because / I hadn't found my own voice yet / So all I could hear was the noise that / People make when they don't know shit / But I didn't know that yet.

- And I know none of this, will matter in the long run / But I know a sound, is still a sound around no one / And while I'm in this body, I want somebody to want / And I want, what I want and I want / You to love me.

- I grew up in the shoes they told me I could fill / Shoes that were not made for running up that hill / And I need to run up that hill.

- I would beg to disagree / But begging disagrees with me.

- I'd like to buy you a pair of pillow-soled hiking boots / To help you with your climb / Or rather, to help the bodies that you step over, along your route / So they won't hurt like mine.

- I resent you for being raised right / I resent you for being tall / I resent you for never getting any opposition at all / I resent you for having each other / I resent you for being so sure / I resent you for presenting your life, like a fucking propaganda brochure.

- Don't want to hurt you, but I don't want to hurt myself even more / I’m sorry.

- And I've been used so many times / I've learned to use myself in kind.

- Ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies.

- She left it behind, with a note / One line it said, "I don't know if I'm coming across, but I'm really trying" / She was very kind.

- No love is like any other love / So, it would be insane to make a comparison with you.

- People like us, we play with a heavy balloon / Keep it up to keep the devil at bay but it always falls way too soon.

- I spread like strawberries! / I climb like peas and beans! / I've been sucking it in so long / That I'm busting at the seams.

- People like us get so heavy and so lost sometimes / So lost and so heavy that the bottom is the only place that we can find / We get dragged down, down to the same spot enough times in a row / The bottom begins to feel like the only safe place that you know.

- When I met you I was fine with my nothing / I grew with you and now I've changed / What I've become is something I can't be without your loving / Be good to me, it isn't a game.

- When you resist me, hon, I cease to exist / Because I only like the way I look when I look in through your eyes.

- And she's trying to cut the cord / She's tired of planting her knees on the cold, hard floor of facts / Trying to act like the other girl acts.

- Now I understand, you're a human / And you got to lie, you're a man / And you got to get what you want / How you want it, cause so do I / And I wanted to try / Why did you not want to try? / Why did you take it all away?

- On I go, not toward or away / Up until now it was day, next day / Up until now in a rush to prove / But now I only move to move.

phoebe bridgers / lucy dacus / mitski / japanese breakfast on sad girl music