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Hollowness

hol·low
n.

A void; an emptiness: a hollow in one's life.


The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,

Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

"Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life. "

(Merle Shain)

*Photo by Picasso

Empty my Heart, of Thee
587

Empty my Heart, of Thee—
Its single Artery—
Begin, and leave Thee out—
Simply Extinction's Date—

Much Billow hath the Sea—
One Baltic—They—
Subtract Thyself, in play,
And not enough of me
Is left—to put away—
"Myself" meanth Thee—

Erase the Root—no Tree—
Thee—then—no me—
The Heavens stripped—
Eternity's vast pocket, picked—

Emily Dickinson

Madness

mad·ness
n.

The quality or condition of being insane.

Great folly

Fury; rage.

Enthusiasm; excitement.


The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,

Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company

"If this be not love, it is madness,

and then it is pardonable."

(William Congreve)

Gigolo

Pocket watch, I tick well.
The streets are lizardly crevices
Sheer-sided, with holes where to hide.
It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac,

A palace of velvet
With windows of mirrors.
There one is safe,
There are no family photographs,

No rings through the nose, no cries.
Bright fish hooks, the smiles of women
Gulp at my bulk
And I, in my snazzy blacks,

Mill a litter of breasts like jellyfish.
To nourish
The cellos of moans I eat eggs --
Eggs and fish, the essentials,

The aphrodisiac squid.
My mouth sags,
The mouth of Christ
When my engine reaches the end of it.

The tattle of my
Gold joints, my way of turning
Bitches to ripples of silver
Rolls out a carpet, a hush.

And there is no end, no end of it.
I shall never grow old. New oysters
Shriek in the sea and I
Glitter like Fontainebleu

Gratified,
All the fall of water an eye
Over whose pool I tenderly
Lean and see me.


Sylvia Plath

...

"Today, I woke up with her on my mind.

And I'm not sorry for it.

I want her to be mine."

(D.G.)

*Photo by unknown author





But Not To Me

The April night is still and sweet
With flowers on every tree;
Peace comes to them on quiet feet,
But not to me.

My peace is hidden in his breast
Where I shall never be;
Love comes to-night to all the rest,
But not to me.

Sara Teasdale

Feelings "still to be explained"

That is solemn we have ended

934

That is solemn we have ended
Be it but a Play
Or a Glee among the Garret
Or a Holiday

Or a leaving Home, or later,
Parting with a World
We have understood for better
Still to be explained.

Emily Dickinson

Letting go...

let go

a. to release one's grasp or hold: Please let go of my arm.
b. to free; release.
c. to cease to employ; dismiss: Business was slack and many employees were let go.
d. to become unrestrained; abandon inhibitions: She'd be good fun if she would just let go and enjoy herself.
e. to dismiss; forget; discard: Once he has an idea, he never lets go of it.

(unknown source)

"Sometimes you just have to let go..."

(A. D. L.)

*Photo by unknown author

That Day

This is the desk I sit at
and this is the desk where I love you too much
and this is the typewriter that sits before me
where yesterday only your body sat before me
with its shoulders gathered in like a Greek chorus,
with its tongue like a king making up rules as he goes,
with its tongue quite openly like a cat lapping milk,
with its tongue -- both of us coiled in its slippery life.
That was yesterday, that day.
That was the day of your tongue,
your tongue that came from your lips,
two openers, half animals, half birds
caught in the doorway of your heart.
That was the day I followed the king's rules,
passing by your red veins and your blue veins,
my hands down the backbone, down quick like a firepole,
hands between legs where you display your inner knowledge,
where diamond mines are buried and come forth to bury,
come forth more sudden than some reconstructed city.
It is complete within seconds, that monument.
The blood runs underground yet brings forth a tower.
A multitude should gather for such an edifice.
For a miracle one stands in line and throws confetti.
Surely The Press is here looking for headlines.
Surely someone should carry a banner on the sidewalk.
If a bridge is constructed doesn't the mayor cut a ribbon?
If a phenomenon arrives shouldn't the Magi come bearing gifts?
Yesterday was the day I bore gifts for your gift
and came from the valley to meet you on the pavement.
That was yesterday, that day.
That was the day of your face,
your face after love, close to the pillow, a lullaby.
Half asleep beside me letting the old fashioned rocker stop,
our breath became one, became a child-breath together,
while my fingers drew little o's on your shut eyes,
while my fingers drew little smiles on your mouth,
while I drew I LOVE YOU on your chest and its drummer
and whispered, "Wake up!" and you mumbled in your sleep,
"Sh. We're driving to Cape Cod. We're heading for the Bourne
Bridge. We're circling the Bourne Circle." Bourne!
Then I knew you in your dream and prayed of our time
that I would be pierced and you would take root in me
and that I might bring forth your born, might bear
the you or the ghost of you in my little household.
Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed
but this is the typewriter that sits before me
and love is where yesterday is at.

Anne Sexton

Moan

moan
n.

A low, sustained, mournful cry, usually indicative of sorrow or pain.

A similar sound: the eerie moan of the night wind.

Lamentation.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,

Fourth EditionCopyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

*Photo by unknown author

moan... (7)

moan
(is)
ing

the she of the
sea
un

der a who
a he a moon a
magic out

of the black this which of
one street leaps quick
squirmthicklying lu

minous night
mare som
e w

hereanynoevery
ing(danc)ing
wills&weres


e.e. cummings

Foreboding

fore·bod·ing
n.
A sense of impending evil or misfortune.

An evil omen; a portent.


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

"No more the blue skies.
No more sunny sundays, walking hand in hand,
smiling kisses, naked bodies.
The rain has come."

(A. D. L.)

*Photo by Picasso

October

Books litter the bed,
leaves the lawn. It
lightly rains. Fall has
come: unpatterned, in
the shedding leaves.

The maples ripen. Apples
come home crisp in bags.
This pear tastes good.
It rains lightly on the
random leaf patterns.

The nimbus is spread
above our island. Rain
lightly patters on un-
shed leaves. The books
of fall litter the bed.

James Schuyler

Tough Luck (tough cookies)

tough luck

(and tough cookies)

interj.
That is too bad.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions

by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.

"Bad Day.
Desperately need a hair cut,

a change of colour (going dark),

and a strong drink."

(A. D. L.)

*Photo by Ellen von Unwerth

Bad Day At The Beauty Salon


I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull. I needed a job, but first, I needed a haircut.

So I head for this beauty salon on Avenue B.
I'm gonna get a hairdo.
I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted bitch red and rake them down the chalkboard of the job market's soul.

So I go in the beauty salon.

This beautiful Puerto Rican girl in tight white spandex and a push-up bra sits me down and starts chopping my hair:
"Girlfriend," she says, "what the hell you got growing outta your head there, what is that, hair implants? Yuck, you want me to touch that shit, whadya got in there, sandwiches?"

I just go: "I'm sorry."

She starts snipping my carefully cultivated Johnny Lydon post-Pistols hairdo. My foul little dreadlocks are flying around all over the place but I'm not looking in the mirror cause I just don't want to know.

"So what's your name anyway?" My stylist demands then.
"Uh, Maggie."
"Maggie? Well, that's an okay name, but my name is Suzy."
"Yeah, so?"
"Yeah so it ain't just Suzy S.U.Z.Y, I spell it S.U.Z.E.E, the extra "e" is for extra Suzee."

I nod emphatically.

Suzee tells me when she's not busy chopping hair, she works as an exotic dancer at night to support her boyfriend named Rocco. Suzee loves Rocco, she loves him so much she's got her eyes closed as she describes him:
"6 foot 2, 193 pounds and, girlfriend, his arms so big and long they wrap around me twice like I'm a little Suzee sandwich."

Little Suzee Sandwich is rapt, she blindly snips and clips at my poor punk head. She snips and clips and snips and clips, she pauses, I look in the mirror: "Holy shit, I'm bald."

"Holy shit, baby, you're bald." Suzee says, finally opening her eyes and then gasping.

All I've got left is little post-nuke clumps of orange fuzz. And I'll never get a receptionist job now.

But Suzy waves her manicured finger in my face: "Don't you worry, baby, I'm gonna get you a job at the dancing club."

"What?"

"Baby, let me tell you, the boys are gonna like a bald go go dancer."

That said, she whips out some clippers, shaves my head smooth and insists I'm gonna love getting naked for a living.

None of this sounds like my idea of a good time, but I'm broke and I'm bald so I go home and get my best panties. Suzee lends me some 6 inch pumps, paints my lips bright red, and gives me 7 shots of Jack Daniels to relax me.

8pm that night I take the stage.

I'm bald,
I'm drunk,
and by god,
I'm naked.


HOLY SHIT I'M NAKED IN A ROOM FULL OF STRANGERS THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE RECURRING NIGHTMARES WE ALL HAVE ABOUT BEING BUTT NAKED IN PUBLIC, I AM NAKED, I DON'T KNOW THESE PEOPLE, THIS REALLY SUCKS.

A few guys feel sorry for me and risk getting their hands bitten off by sticking dollars in my garter belt. My disheveled pubic hairs stand at full attention, ready to poke the guys' eyes out if they get too close.

Then I notice this bald guy in the audience, I've got a new empathy for bald people, I figure maybe it works both ways, maybe this guy will stick 10 bucks in my garter.

I saunter over.

I'm teetering around unrhythmically, I'm the surliest, unsexiest dancer that ever go-go across this hemisphere. The bald guy looks down into his beer, he'd much rather look at that than at my pubic mound which has now formed into one vicious spike so it looks like I've got a unicorn in my crotch.

I stand there weaving through the air.

The strobe light is illuminating my pubic unicorn. Madonna's song Borderline is pumping through the club's speaker system for the 5th time tonight: "BORDERLINE BORDERLINE BORDERLINE/LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE." And suddenly, I start to wonder: What does that mean anyway?

"LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE"

What?

Screw me so much my eyes pop out, I go blind, end up walking down 2nd Avenue crazy, horny, naked and blind? What?

There's a glitch in the tape and it starts to skip.

"Borderl...ooop.....Borderl....ooop...Borderlin.....ooop"

I stumble and twist my ankle. My g-string rides between my buttcheeks making me twitch with pain. My head starts spinning, my knees wobble, I go down on all fours and puke all over the bald guy's lap.

So there I am. Butt naked on all fours. But before I have time to regain my composure, the strip club manager comes over, points his smarmy strip club manager finger at me and goes:
"You're bald, you're drunk, you can't dance and you're fired."

I stand up.

"Oh yeah, well you stink like a sneaker, pal." I peel off one of my pumps and throw it in the direction of his fat head then I get the hell out of there.

A few days later I run into Suzee on Avenue A. Turns out she got fired for getting me a job there in the first place. But she was completely undaunted, she dragged me up to this wig store on 14th Street, bought me a mouse brown shag wig, then got us both telemarketing jobs on Wall Street.

And I never went to a beauty salon again.


Maggie Estep

OH!

oh
interj.
1. Used to express strong emotion, such as surprise, fear, anger, or pain.
2. Used in direct address: Oh, sir! You forgot your keys.
3. Used to indicate understanding or acknowledgment of a statement.

in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'

(Lewis Carroll)

*Photo by Picasso

Oh

It is snowing and death bugs me
as stubborn as insomnia.
The fierce bubbles of chalk,
the little white lesions
settle on the street outside.
It is snowing and the ninety
year old woman who was combing
out her long white wraith hair
is gone, embalmed even now,
even tonight her arms are smooth
muskets at her side and nothing
issues from her but her last word - "Oh." Surprised by death.

It is snowing. Paper spots
are falling from the punch.
Hello? Mrs. Death is here!
She suffers according to the digits
of my hate. I hear the filaments
of alabaster. I would lie down
with them and lift my madness
off like a wig. I would lie
outside in a room of wool
and let the snow cover me.
Paris white or flake white
or argentine, all in the washbasin
of my mouth, calling, "Oh."
I am empty. I am witless.
Death is here. There is no
other settlement. Snow!
See the mark, the pock, the pock!

Meanwhile you pour tea
with your handsome gentle hands.
Then you deliberately take your
forefinger and point it at my temple,
saying, "You suicide bitch!
I'd like to take a corkscrew
and screw out all your brains
and you'd never be back ever."
And I close my eyes over the steaming
tea and see God opening His teeth.
"Oh." He says.
I see the child in me writing, "Oh."
Oh, my dear, not why.


Anne Sexton

Heavyheartedness

heav⋅y-heart⋅ed  
–adjective sorrowful; melancholy; dejected.


Related forms:

heav⋅y-heart⋅ed⋅ly, adverb
heav⋅y-heart⋅ed⋅ness, noun


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

"Go, forget me - why should sorrow, O'er that brow a shadow fling? Go, forget me - and to-morrow, brightly smile and sweetly sing. Smile - though I shall not be near thee; Sing - though I shall never hear thee. "

(Charles Wolfe)

*Photo by unknown author

Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell

Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No God, no Demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once.
Heart! Thou and I are here, sad and alone;
I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,
To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.
Why did I laugh? I know this Being's lease,
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads;
Yet would I on this very midnight cease,
And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds;
Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,
But Death intenser—Death is Life's high meed.


John Keats

On Sadness, Loneliness, Darkness and (living) Death...

*Photo by Nils Vils

Nothing But Death

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

Pablo Neruda

SOLD - STORY & CLARK SPINET - $325
Beautiful piano transitioning between the Art Deco era and Modernism. The sound is quite rich. Come hear for yourself.