#poe

Every thought about death takes a moment of life away. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #life #literature #literature-quotes #poetry

All paths lead to death, our premature sacrifice for future spawn (from Elixir) ↗

— Bryan Murphy

#poetry #death

We returned to our palaces, these Kingdoms, but no longer at ease here in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#poetry #death

I had never known any man to die while speaking in terza-rima ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#hemingway #humor #poets #terza-rima #death

Scarring smiles, hidden tears, You stand, heads bowed and revere The soul before us, burnt and torn Her faded essence, we sadly mourn And though she walked a path of lies Her spirit surely still shall rise And among her own, she can be at peace An eternal angel, she’s been released. ↗

— Amelia Mysko

#eulogy #poem #death

If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct. ↗

— Saul Williams

#favourite #going #gonna #lie #other

Ego Tripping I was born in the congo I walked to the fertile crescent and built the sphinx I designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every one hundred years falls into the center giving divine perfect light I am bad I sat on the throne drinking nectar with allah I got hot and sent an ice age to europe to cool my thirst My oldest daughter is nefertiti the tears from my birth pains created the nile I am a beautiful woman I gazed on the forest and burned out the sahara desert with a packet of goat's meat and a change of clothes I crossed it in two hours I am a gazelle so swift so swift you can't catch me For a birthday present when he was three I gave my son hannibal an elephant He gave me rome for mother's day My strength flows ever on My son noah built new/ark and I stood proudly at the helm as we sailed on a soft summer day I turned myself into myself and was jesus men intone my loving name All praises All praises I am the one who would save I sowed diamonds in my back yard My bowels deliver uranium the filings from my fingernails are semi-precious jewels On a trip north I caught a cold and blew My nose giving oil to the arab world I am so hip even my errors are correct I sailed west to reach east and had to round off the earth as I went The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid across three continents I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal I cannot be comprehended except by my permission I mean...I...can fly like a bird in the sky... ↗

— Nikki Giovanni

#age

The History Teacher Trying to protect his students' innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time. The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as "How far is it from here to Madrid?" "What do you call the matador's hat?" The War of the Roses took place in a garden, and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan. The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses, while he gathered up his notes and walked home past flower beds and white picket fences, wondering if they would believe that soldiers in the Boer War told long, rambling stories designed to make the enemy nod off. ↗

— Billy Collins

#age

God, A Poem 'I didn't exist at Creation, I didn't exist at the Flood, And I won't be around for Salvation To sort out the sheep from the cud- 'Or whatever the phrase is. The fact is In soteriological terms I'm a crude existential malpractice And you are a diet of worms ↗

— James Fenton

#poetry #diet

The Dieter's Daughter Mom's got this taco guy's poem taped to the fridge, some ode to celery, which she is always eating. The celery, I mean, not the poem which talks about green angels and fragile corsets. I don't get it, but Mom says by the time she reads it she forgets she's hungry. One stalk for breakfast, along with half a grapefruit, or a glass of aloe vera juice, you know that stuff that comes from cactus, and one stalk for lunch with some protein drink that tastes like dried placenta, did you know that they put cow placenta in make-up, face cream, stuff like that? Yuck. Well, Mom says it's never too early to wish you looked different, which means I got to eat that crap too. Mom says: your body is a temple, not the place all good twinkies go to. Mom says: that boys remember girls that're slender. Mom says that underneath all this fat there's a whole new me, one I'd really like if only I gave myself the chance. Mom says: you are what you eat, which is why she eats celery, because she wants to be thin, not green or stringy, of course-- am I talking too fast?-- but thin as paper like the hearts we cut out and send to ourselves, don't tell anyone, like the hearts of gold melons we eat down to the bitter rind. ↗

— Anita Endrezze

#mothers-and-daughters #patriarchy #poetry #women #diet