You don’t know me, but I knew you when
you said you carved your wrist like a turkey
on Thanksgiving, and I thought about running
out of the room to release my cries, but instead,
I swallowed back the bones you broke of mine.
That was the first time in nine months I’ve been
forced to listen to someone cut my scars open—
they bled down my arm as you spoke.
You said, “If you’ve ever gone through a
break-up, you probably know what it feels like
to have someone make your heart feel like
a pile of dog shit,” and I wanted to run up
to you and tell you someone tried to hang
themselves in front of me once and in English,
we’re learning about ethics but I still don’t know
if it was ethical or not to kill myself over it.
And after all that, if I told you a girl told me she
was dying but I ignored her, would you judge me?
I bet you would. I bet you wouldn’t get me.
If I saw you on the street, I wouldn’t look twice
and if I knew you well, we probably wouldn’t
get along, but I barely resisted the urge to hug
you because you are not afraid of your hurt.
While I shiver at the anticipation of my
own voice, you share so much of yourself,
and while my voice shakes, you scream.
Listen
the dust dances tooa poetry reading by:
the dust dances too
i’m intoxicated by the way you drink
up the sun, with your lips, and tongue
and open palms,
the warm air fills up our lungs
and i long so much
to touch all of the places
that light drips from your skin.
Audio Recording on Thursday morning
Ally reads Ode to Psyche by John Keats….really badly probably.
Not even listening to it before I upload…god I’m sure it’s tragic.
Enjoy~ Jenny
The Brain is Wider than the Sky Emily Dickinson
My reading of “The Brain is Wider Than the Sky” by Emily Dickinson.
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
Sylvia Plath Reads "A Birthday Present" (1962)
Sylvia Plath reads “A Birthday Present.” Written in September of 1962, recorded in October. Background and full text: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/29/sylvia-plath-reads-a-birthday-present-1962/
I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair by Pablo Neruda
This is my reading of “I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair” by Pablo Neruda. I tried to make it sexy because it’s a sexy poem, but not quite sure I succeeded. Hope you enjoy it all the same.
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
Howl
Allen GinsbergAllen Ginsberg reads his poem ‘Howl’.
All in the Golden Afternoon
Lewis CarrollMy reading of Lewis Carroll’s ‘All in the golden afternoon’, the poem at the start of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It recalls the famous riverboat excursion down the Isis in July 1862, when the ‘tale of Wonderland’ was first told to the Liddell sisters. It is worth noting that the three girls mentioned in the poem, Prima, Secunda and Tertia, are in fact Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell respectively. There is a kind of haunting, even melancholic nostalgia to the poem, suggested by the beautiful final stanza:
Alice! a childish story take,
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined
In Memory’s mystic band,
Like pilgrim’s withered wreath of flowers
Plucked in a far-off land.
Anna Świrszczyńska, "Poetry Reading"
I’m curled into a ball
like a dog
that is cold.
Who will tell me
why I was born,
why this monstrosity
called life.
The telephone rings. I have to give
a poetry reading.
I enter.
A hundred people, a hundred pairs of eyes.
They look, they wait.
I know for what.
I am supposed to tell them
why they were born,
why there is
this monstrosity called life.
Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
(Submitted by eighteendollars)
Listen
lightly, they say.
scream, they say.
come home, they say.
love me, they say.
what is, they say?
who’s they?
they
are the organization of fakes and
face-lift liars. the crooks
who squeeze the trigger
before it’s even to your face.
they are you
and me
and my lover
and her friends
and my mom
my dad
my brothers
and ex-lovers:
they are them
and we are they.
Jonny Greenwood - When God Decided to Invent
Jonny Greenwood reading ‘when god decided to invent’ by E.E. Cummings
Listen
That Melancholy, E.E. Cummings
Poetry Reading
They gather
in droves
at a
decayed library
seeking the
light only
a few
glimmer under.
Cornered
in her mind
she has
found Zen,
as she spews
the rhythms of
a thousand ages.
They stare
in delight
at this creature’s
grasp of the
beautifully absurd.
She leaves
her spatial imprint
betwixt the
books she once read
and the minds
that are now fed.
