my piano: May 2009

Being Screwed-Up

screw up, Slang.
a. to ruin through bungling or stupidity
b. to make a botch of something; blunder.
c. to make confused, anxious, or neurotic.

Dictionary.com Unabridged

Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

"Well, I screwed it up real good, didn't I?"

(Richard M. Nixon)

Eat Your Heart Out

I've come by, she says, to tell you
that this is it. I'm not kidding, it's
over. this is it.
I sit on the couch watching her arrange
her long red hair before my bedroom
mirror.
she pulls her hair up and
piles it on top of her head-
she lets her eyes look at
my eyes-
then she drops her hair and
lets it fall down in front of her face.
we go to bed and I hold her
speechlessly from the back
my arm around her neck
I touch her wrists and hands
feel up to
her elbows
no further.
she gets up.
this is it, she says,
this will do. well,
I'm going.
I get up and walk her
to the door
just as she leaves
she says,
I want you to buy me
some high-heeled shoes
with tall thin spikes,
black high-heeled shoes.
no, I want them
red.
I watch her walk down the cement walk
under the trees
she walks all right and
as the pointsettas drip in the sun
I close the door.

Charles Bukowski

Relaxation

re·lax·a·tion (rē'lāk-sā'shən)
n.
1. The act of relaxing or the state of being relaxed.
2. Refreshment of body or mind; recreation: played golf for relaxation.
3. A loosening or slackening.
4. A reduction in strictness or severity.
5. Physiology The lengthening of inactive muscle or muscle fibers.
6. Physics The return or adjustment of a system to equilibrium following displacement or abrupt change.
(...)

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

"We should all relax about life because you don't have a clue as to what's really going on."

(Barry Sonnenfeld)

Relax

Do you recall that happy bike
With bundles on our backs?
How near to heaven it was like
To blissfully relax!
In cosy tavern of good cheer
To doff our heavy packs,
And with a mug of foamy beer
Relax.

Learn to relax: to clean the mind
Of fear and doubt and care,
And in vacuity to find
The perfect peace that's there.
With lassitude of heart and hand,
When every sinew slacks,
How good to rest the old bean and
Relax, relax.

Just sink back in an easy chair
For forty winks or so,
And fold your hands as if in prayer,
--That helps a lot, you know.
Forget that you are you awhile,
And pliable as wax,
Just beatifically smile . . .
Relax, relax, relax.

Robert Service

Holding one's tongue

hold one's tongue
Also, hold or keep one's peace. Keep quiet, remain silent,

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.

"It's very important in life to know when to shut up. You should not be afraid of silence."
(Alex Trebek)

*Photo by Yimmys Yayo

Words, Wide Night

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

Carol Ann Duffy

Ardor

ar·dor (är'dər)
n.
Fiery intensity of feeling.
Strong enthusiasm or devotion; zeal.
Intense heat or glow, as of fire.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

"Among absent lovers, ardor always fares better."

(Sextus Propertius)

You cannot put a Fire out

You cannot put a Fire out—
A Thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a Fan—
Upon the slowest Night—

You cannot fold a Flood—
And put it in a Drawer—
Because the Winds would find it out—
And tell your Cedar Floor—

Emily Dickinson

Astonishment

Astonishment

1. The condition of one who is stunned. Hence: Numbness; loss of sensation; stupor; loss of sense.
2. Dismay; consternation.
3. The overpowering emotion excited when something unaccountable, wonderful, or dreadful is presented to the mind; an intense degree of surprise; amazement.
4. The object causing such an emotion.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary,
© 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

"Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway
to the incomprehensible."

(Eugene Ionesco)

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why (Sonnet XLIII)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Explosion

(for you...)

Just because...
... you are TNT. We are TNT. For the good and the bad, the best and the worst. In bed and out of it. My temper and your words. My insistence and your runaways. My stubborness and your carpe diem. My love and your hate. We are TNT.

Secret

secret
(...)

noun
8.something that is or is kept secret, hidden, or concealed.
9.a mystery: the secrets of nature.
10.a reason or explanation not immediately or generally apparent.
11.a method, formula, plan, etc., known only to the initiated or the few: the secret of happiness; a trade secret.
12.a classification assigned to information, a document, etc., considered less vital to security than top-secret but more vital than confidential, and limiting its use to persons who have been cleared, as by various government agencies, as trustworthy to handle such material.
(...)

14.in secret, unknown to others; in private; secretly: A resistance movement was already being organized in secret.

Dictionary.com Unabridged

Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009

"Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets."

(Paul Tournier)

*Photo by Emmy L.

Hidden

If you place a fern
under a stone
the next day it will be
nearly invisible
as if the stone has
swallowed it.

If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.

No one sees
the fuel that feeds you.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Sorrow

Sorrow

To feel pain of mind in consequence of evil experienced, feared, or done; to grieve; to be sad; to be sorry.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary,

"Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps."

(William Blake)

"Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow."

(Rene Descartes)

The Sorrow Of Love

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.

William Butler Yeats

Antecipation

Anticipation or being enthusiastic, is an emotion involving pleasure (and sometimes anxiety) in considering some expected or longed-for good event, or irritation at having to wait.

in Wikipedia

"You know what's better than sex?
Antecipation! Antecipation, my friend!"
(Dr. McDreamy, Grey's Anatomy)

Yes Yes

when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.

Charles Bukowski

Identity

identity i·den·ti·ty (ī-děn'tĭ-tē)n.
The set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.
The distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity; individuality.

The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary

"I don't need to worry about identity theft because no one wants to be me."

(Jay London)

This Is A Photograph Of Me

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

Margaret Atwood

Submission

submission
(...)

2: the condition of being submissive, humble, or compliant

3: an act of submitting to the authority or control of another

in Merriam Webster Dictionary

“Submission to one wrong brings on another”
(Latin Proverb)

*Photo by Hugo Tinoco, "Fantasmas"

Contusion

Color floods to the spot, dull purple.
The rest of the body is all washed-out,
The color of pearl.

In a pit of a rock
The sea sucks obsessively,
One hollow thw whole sea's pivot.

The size of a fly,
The doom mark
Crawls down the wall.

The heart shuts,
The sea slides back,
The mirrors are sheeted.

Sylvia Plath

Thankfulness

Thankfulness

1. gratefulness: warm friendly feelings of gratitude (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)

2. Gratitude, appreciation, or thankfulness is a positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thankfulness)

3. The state of being thankful (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thankfulness)

"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful."

(Buddha)

*Photo by Jeff Farmer

A Little Prayer

Let us be thankful, Lord, for little things -
The song of birds, the rapture of the rose;
Cloud-dappled skies, the laugh of limpid springs,
Drowned sunbeams and the perfume April blows;
Bronze wheat a-shimmer, purple shade of trees -
Let us be thankful, Lord of Life, for these!

Let us be praiseful, Sire, for simple sights; -
The blue smoke curling from a fire of peat;
Keen stars a-frolicking on frosty nights,
Prismatic pigeons strutting in a street;
Daisies dew-diamonded in smiling sward -
For simple sights let us be praiseful, Lord!

Let us be grateful, God, for health serene,
The hope to do a kindly deed each day;
The faith of fellowship, a conscience clean,
The will to worship and the gift to pray;
For all of worth in us, of You a part,
Let us be grateful, God, with humble heart.

Robert Service

Bowing out

Main Entry: bow out
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: back out
Synonyms: bail out, drop out, exit, leave, make one's exit, pull out, quit, retire, walk away from, withdraw

Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus,

"All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves."

(Amelia Barr)

The Going

Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow's dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
Where I could not follow
With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

Never to bid good-bye
Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why do you make me leave the house
And think for a breath it is you I see
At the end of the alley of bending boughs
Where so often at dusk you used to be;
Till in darkening dankness
The yawning blankness
Of the perspective sickens me!

You were she who abode
By those red-veined rocks far West,
You were the swan-necked one who rode
Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
And, reining nigh me,
Would muse and eye me,
While Life unrolled us its very best.

Why, then, latterly did we not speak,
Did we not think of those days long dead,
And ere your vanishing strive to seek
That time's renewal? We might have said,
"In this bright spring weather
We'll visit together
Those places that once we visited."

Well, well! All's past amend,
Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know
That such swift fleeing
No soul foreseeing--
Not even I--would undo me so!

Thomas Hardy

Lament

Lament

La*ment"\, n. [L. lamentum. Cf. Lament, v.]

1. Grief or sorrow expressed in complaints or cries; lamentation; a wailing; a moaning; a weeping.

Torment, and loud lament, and furious rage. --Milton.

2. An elegy or mournful ballad, or the like.

in Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

"If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping."

(Sophocles)

*Photo by Hugo Lucas

Lament (Whom will you cry to, heart?)

Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.

Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry
of jubilation, unripe.
But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of joy.
Loveliest in my invisible
landscape, you that made me more known
to the invisible angels.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Expectation

In the case of uncertainty, expectation is what is considered the most likely to happen. An expectation, which is a belief that is centred on the future, may or may not be realistic. A less advantageous result gives rise to the emotion of disappointment. If something happens that is not at all expected it is a surprise. An expectation about the behavior or performance of another person, expressed to that person, may have the nature of a strong request, or an order.

in Wikipedia

"I can't imagine going on when there are no more expectations."

(Edith Evans)

*photo by Missy

"I don't have expectations. Expectations in your life just lead to giant disappointments."

(Michael Landon)

Expectation—is Contentment

Expectation—is Contentment—
Gain—Satiety—
But Satiety—Conviction
Of Necessity

Of an Austere trait in Pleasure—
Good, without alarm
Is a too established Fortune—
Danger—deepens Sum—

Emily Dickinson

Retreat

re·treat
n.
The act or process of withdrawing, especially from something hazardous, formidable, or unpleasant.
The process of going backward or receding from a position or condition gained.
A period of seclusion, retirement, or solitude.
A period of group withdrawal for prayer, meditation, or study: a religious retreat.
(...)
A place affording peace, quiet, privacy, or security.
A period of seclusion, retirement, or solitude.
A period of group withdrawal for prayer, meditation, or study: a religious retreat.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth EditionCopyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

"Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul."

(Marcus Aurelius)

*Photo by Yanire Fernandez

Cause And Effect

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

Charles Bukowski

Deviousness

de·vi·ous (dē'vē-əs)
adj.
Not straightforward; shifty: a devious character.
Departing from the correct or accepted way; erring: achieved success by devious means.
Deviating from the straight or direct course; roundabout: a devious route.
Away from a main road or course; distant or removed.

[From Latin dēvius, out-of-the-way : dē-, de- + via, road; see wegh- in Indo-European roots.]
de'vi·ous·ly adv., de'vi·ous·ness n.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

I Made A Mistake

I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked "are these yours?"

and she looked and said,
"no, those belong to a dog."

she left after that and I haven't seen
her since. she's not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes
are still there. I take the Maltese cross
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.

I keep searching the streets for that
blood-wine battleship she drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.

I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.

a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.

Charles Bukowski

Segregation

seg·re·ga·tion

(sěg'rĭ-gā'shən) n.
The act or process of segregating or the condition of being segregated.
The policy or practice of separating people of different races, classes, or ethnic groups, as in schools, housing, and public or commercial facilities, especially as a form of discrimination.
Genetics The separation of paired alleles or homologous chromosomes, especially during meiosis, so that the members of each pair appear in different gametes.

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. "

(Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Photo by WildFlowerAfternoons

Segregation

I stood beside the silken rope,
Five dollars in my hand,
And waited in my patient hope
To sit anear the Band,
And hear the famous Louie play
The best hot trumpet of today.

And then a waiter loafing near
Says in a nasty tone:
"Old coon, we don't want darkies here,
Beat it before you're thrown."
So knowin' nothin' I could do
I turned to go and--there was Lou.

I think he slapped that Dago's face;
His voice was big an' loud;
An' then he leads me from my place
Through all that tony crowd.
World-famous Louie by the hand
Took me to meet his famous Band.

"Listen, you folks," I heard him say.
"Here's Grand-papa what's come.
Savin' he teached me how to play,
I mighta been a bum.
Come on, Grand-pop, git up an' show
How you kin trumpet Ol' Black Joe."

Tremblin' I played before his Band:
You should have heard the cheers.
Them swell folks gave me such a hand
My cheeks was wet wi' tears . . .
An' now I'm off to tell the wife
The proudest night o' all ma life.

Robert Service

On pins and needles

pins and needles
–noun
1.
a tingly, prickly sensation in a limb that is recovering from numbness.—Idiom
2.
on pins and needles, in a state of nervous anticipation: The father-to-be was on pins and needles.
Origin: 1800–10

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

"By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour."
(Victor Hugo)

there are so many tictoc...

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly

we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.

(So,when kiss Spring comes
we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don't make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to
kiss me)

e.e. cummings

Faith

Faith is the confident belief in the truth of or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. It is also used for a belief, without proof. Informal usage of the word "faith" can be quite broad, and may be used standardly in place of "trust", "belief", or "hope". For example, the word "faith" can refer to a religion itself or to religion in general. As with "trust", faith involves a concept of future events or outcomes.

Faith is often used in a religious context, as in theology, where it almost universally refers to a trusting belief in a transcendent reality, or else in a Supreme Being and said being's role in the order of transcendent, spiritual things. Faith is in general the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true. It is the belief and the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, based on his or her authority and truthfulness.

The English word faith is dated from 1200–50, from the Latin fidem, or fidēs, meaning trust, akin to fīdere to trust.

in Wikipedia

"Faith: not wanting to know what is true."

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

Caravaggio, "Madonna del Rosario"

The Conversation Of Prayer

The conversation of prayers about to be said
By the child going to bed and the man on the stairs
Who climbs to his dying love in her high room,
The one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move
And the other full of tears that she will be dead,

Turns in the dark on the sound they know will arise
Into the answering skies from the green ground,
From the man on the stairs and the child by his bed.
The sound about to be said in the two prayers
For the sleep in a safe land and the love who dies

Will be the same grief flying. Whom shall they calm?
Shall the child sleep unharmed or the man be crying?
The conversation of prayers about to be said
Turns on the quick and the dead, and the man on the stair
To-night shall find no dying but alive and warm

In the fire of his care his love in the high room.
And the child not caring to whom he climbs his prayer
Shall drown in a grief as deep as his made grave,
And mark the dark eyed wave, through the eyes of sleep,
Dragging him up the stairs to one who lies dead.

Dylan Thomas

Pride

Pride is, depending upon context, either a high sense of the worth of one's self and one's own or a pleasure taken in the contemplation of these things. One definition of pride in the first sense comes from Augustine: "the love of one's own excellence." (...)

Pride is sometimes viewed as excessive or as a vice, sometimes as proper or as a virtue. While some philosophies such as Aristotle's consider pride a profound virtue, most world religions consider it a sin. The Roman Catholic Church lists pride as the most deadly of the seven deadly sins.
According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, proud comes from late Old English prud, probably from Old French prude "brave, valiant" (11th century), from late Latin term prode "advantageous, profitable", which comes from prodesse "to be useful". The sense of "having a high opinion of oneself", not in French, may reflect the Anglo-Saxons' opinion of the Norman knights who called themselves "proud", like the French knights preux.
When viewed as a virtue, pride in one's appearance and abilities is known as virtuous pride, greatness of soul or magnanimity, but when viewed as a vice it is often termed vanity or vainglory. (...)

Nietzsche saw pride as an example of a previous, master set of morals that had been replaced with slave moralities. In this, pride was good, because it acknowledges the good and the noble, rejecting the weak and insipid. Without pride, Nietzsche argued, we will remain subservient. (...)

in Wikipedia

TO YOU:

«Há pouco, recebi uma SMS. “Estou orgulhosa de ti.” Não respondi. (...) É verdade. Está “orgulhosa de mim”. Há alguém que perde tempo para me dizer isto.»

I'll always be proud of you. I am.

Rebecca Goldstein, INCOMPLETUDE, Gradiva, Tradução de David Gaspar

Proud of my broken heart, since thou didst break it

Proud of my broken heart, since thou didst break it,
Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,

Proud of my night, since thou with moons dost slake it,
Not to partake thy passion, my humility.

Thou can'st not boast, like Jesus, drunken without companion
Was the strong cup of anguish brewed for the Nazarene

Thou can'st not pierce tradition with the peerless puncture,
See! I usurped thy crucifix to honor mine!

Emily Dickinson

Fool's Paradise

fool's paradise n.

A state of delusive contentment or false hope.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,

by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

"Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter."

(Jessamyn West)

Kinkade, "Starway to Paradise"

A Fairly Sad Tale

I think that I shall never know
Why I am thus, and I am so.
Around me, other girls inspire
In men the rush and roar of fire,
The sweet transparency of glass,
The tenderness of April grass,
The durability of granite;
But me- I don't know how to plan it.
The lads I've met in Cupid's deadlock
Were- shall we say?- born out of wedlock.
They broke my heart, they stilled my song,
And said they had to run along,
Explaining, so to sop my tears,
First came their parents or careers.
But ever does experience
Deny me wisdom, calm, and sense!
Though she's a fool who seeks to capture
The twenty-first fine, careless rapture,
I must go on, till ends my rope,
Who from my birth was cursed with hope.
A heart in half is chaste, archaic;
But mine resembles a mosaic-
The thing's become ridiculous!
Why am I so? Why am I thus?

Dorothy Parker

Spontaneity

Noun
spontaneity - the quality of being spontaneous and coming from natural feelings without constraint;

Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2008 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

“Spontaneity is the quality of being able to do something just because you feel like it at the moment, of trusting your instincts, of taking yourself by surprise and snatching from the clutches of your well-organized routine, a bit of unscheduled plea”

*Photo by Unknown Author

Barefoot

Loving me with my shows off
means loving my long brown legs,
sweet dears, as good as spoons;
and my feet, those two children
let out to play naked. Intricate nubs,
my toes. No longer bound.
And what's more, see toenails and
all ten stages, root by root.
All spirited and wild, this little
piggy went to market and this little piggy
stayed. Long brown legs and long brown toes.
Further up, my darling, the woman
is calling her secrets, little houses,
little tongues that tell you.

There is no one else but us
in this house on the land spit.
The sea wears a bell in its navel.
And I'm your barefoot wench for a
whole week. Do you care for salami?
No. You'd rather not have a scotch?
No. You don't really drink. You do
drink me. The gulls kill fish,
crying out like three-year-olds.
The surf's a narcotic, calling out,
I am, I am, I am
all night long. Barefoot,
I drum up and down your back.
In the morning I run from door to door
of the cabin playing chase me.
Now you grab me by the ankles.
Now you work your way up the legs
and come to pierce me at my hunger mark

Anne Sexton

Distrust

Noun Singular
distrust
Plural
uncountable

distrust (uncountable)

Lack of trust or confidence.

“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”
T.S. Eliot quotes

*Photo by Isabel Silva, "A Máscara"

The Trusting Heart

Oh, I'd been better dying,
Oh, I was slow and sad;
A fool I was, a-crying
About a cruel lad!

But there was one that found me,
That wept to see me weep,
And had his arm around me,
And gave me words to keep.

And I'd be better dying,
And I am slow and sad;
A fool I am, a-crying
About a tender lad!

Dorothy Parker

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