“So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.”
Isaac Asimov in The Gods Themselves
Author: Christina's Words
“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford
“Bring Me the Girls ” by Ashe Vernon
Bring me the girls still rough around the edges,
who never knew the word ‘pretty’—
girls with teeth for tearing.
Bring me the bruised knuckle girls,
the heavy-hearted girls,
the girls who got locked up in towers
and found a way out.
Bring me the girls
who kept the roses with the weeds,
the callous and the thorns.
Bring me the girls
with exoskeletons of iron,
hands worked to the bone.
You were not beautiful enough for them,
but you are beautiful.
You are viscous and hungry,
tall and terrible,
You are more than they made of you.
You are hurting.
But you are powerful.
“You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,”… (Capote)
“You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”
“What Cowboys Know About Love” by Louis McKee
Last night on the sports channel
I watched the rodeo.
Those cowboys have it right;
the best and the beauty of it.
You cannot win, so you ride
for as long as you can and enjoy it.
When you dismount,
whether it be on your own or not,
it won’t look pretty. You’ll limp off.
But you’ll feel good; your heart
will be pounding like it never has,
and walking away, one crazy step
after another, your ears will ring
with the loud approval
of those who never felt so good.
“The Highway” by W. S. Merwin
It seems too enormous just for a man to be
Walking on. As if it and the empty day
Were all there is. And a little dog
Trotting in time with the heat waves, off
Near the horizon, seeming never to get
Any farther. The sun and everything
Are stuck in the same places, and the ditch
Is the same all the time, full of every kind
Of bone, while the empty air keeps humming
That sound it has memorized of things going
Past. And the signs with huge heads and starved
Bodies, doing dances in the heat,
And the others big as houses, all promise
But with nothing inside and only one wall,
Tell of other places where you can eat,
Drink, get a bath, lie on a bed
Listening to music, and be safe. If you
Look around you see it is just the same
The other way, going back; and farther
Now to where you came from, probably,
Than to places you can reach by going on.
“The Highway” by W.S. Merwin, from The First Four Books of Poems. © Copper Canyon Press, 2000.
Words ... for the Time Being 