poem by rilke

Entrance

Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything;
yours is the last house before the far off:
whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is huge
and like a word which grows ripe in silence.
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let it go...

endless

it is time to know
time to time to time to time to
the time has come to
be beneath everything
sit beneath it all
and wait and wait and wait the time has
come
to wait and sit beneath
it all
and to know
it all and sit and wait and be
beneath
time
beneath
waiting
time is to know
the time is time to wait beneath
waiting
time is to come and sit
to sit and to wait and to be
come sit
time

Awesomeness

This is a poem by my good friend John Gentile, a writer of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Here is his awesome blog on which he interviews Kanye West among other musicians: www.MusicInInk.com


Man, what is going down at the Mickey D's?
I'll go there about once a week
they have a delicious grilled chicken salad
five bucks and a quarter
and it is hella tasty
another buck for a sweet tea (not bad)
and when I go
I go on random days
not like always on monday or thursday or something
but every time i go
sitting in the back
there is morbidly obese woman
so obese that she can hardly walk with a cane
she's early 50s with rings around her stomach like tires
thats not weird
here's what is:
she has two kids who are either indian or pakistani
but she's clearly white
and they are like six and eight
and sometimes she's really nasty to them
and sometimes she's very nurturing
and there's always a persian man in an accountant-style suit sitting across from her
and he's clearly not their dad
you can tell by how he addresses the kids
Every time I see the pillow woman and the persian man,
they are exchanging information in their spiral-bound notebooks
And always asking about when so-and-so is going to meet them at the Mickey D's
but I never see so-and-so, but they keep talking about him (them)
Are they running an illegal business?
Marriage on demand?
Immigration fraud?
Child sex slaves!?
or maybe they just run a part time accounting firm...?
Or maybe a closet-arranging business for fun...?
But that's not the feeling that I get.
Man, what the hell is going down at the Mickey D's?

What is black in the heart
is ice in the mind
and covers the front of the mind
like a hand over the heart.
What is true in the stomach
is crooked in the eye
and loosens a string from the eye
into the great bilge of the stomach.
What is gray in art
is dead in the day
like a fixture rooted to day
during a grand stampede of art.
What is broken in the light
is trusted in silence
and ruins the answers of silence
like a gun fired into light.

little angry poem

I'm tired of carrying around heavy shit
all the time.

I'm so tired of my arms hurting and
knowing that I am doing this to myself.

I'm tired of packing all my shit and bringing it
in various bags to my boyfriend's;
everything I've ever owned in grocery
bags and cotton bags whose straps frequently
break, my laptop and clothes and shoes
my healthy food my workout
shorts and sneakers and
all of my notebooks, everything
I've ever read and liked and thought I might
think about later.
Dump you in my car.

And my arms are rings of red and purple,
these pain bracelets I wear.

I'm tired of promising myself
that the more I bear the more I will
keep.

And I'm so sick and fucking tired
of having to prove my worth by
barreling through this massive world,
because the only way to make
progress is by breaking what
I myself have built.

I want to lay back and
be caught by the sun.

I'm so sick of trying
to be good.

So sick of trying to be
all that there is.

And I'm even more bitter about
knowing my limits and reaching them
and then saying
I want more
I want to keep going until
all of it recedes
and I can no longer keep track
of the distance between us.
I am so bitter about
always being this close to the button
that gives up the world
and collides me with its pain
as if I alone were capable of
understanding.

Lines on a Tuesday

Some people like to
create an inner struggle

says my dad
you children did that

in order to be able to
handle the world.

B is trying to
quit smoking

smoking creates
something bad

in order to
take it away.

I remember sitting alone
on a bus

rising with the jagged
bumps of the road

wishing for something to
go wrong

just to feel how far
from normal

I could be.
I remember leaning

over guardrails
sticking my head out

windows
feeling delivered

into wind, frightened
of falling, loving

the idea
of falling, of failing,

thrilled with
the love that held me

and that it could be
taken away.

"you're still not a special snowflake"


This morning I went for a
run

tried to stay in the
shade

the heat exhausted me
quickly

felt like quitting the entire
time.

Afterwards, the pool was
cold

I leaned back, to cool my
head.

Inside Casey lay on the
couch

face swollen, etched with dried
blood.

I showered and Brian and I got
food

fries and sandwiches and
Mountain Dews

then came home, out of the
sun.

On TV Casey watches a violent
movie

on his laptop Brian plays obscure
music

I go upstairs to check out my
hair.

All day we mingle mindlessly in the
house

and Casey sleeps and Brian
smokes

and I watch promises break into
poems.