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Start by following Jorie Graham.
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“This is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed.”
―
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed.”
―
“This is freedom. This is the face of faith, nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself.
Also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here hands full of sand, letting it
sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not chose words. I am free to go.
I cannot, of course, come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.”
― Never
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself.
Also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here hands full of sand, letting it
sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not chose words. I am free to go.
I cannot, of course, come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.”
― Never
“...love / is turning out the lights when others do, a curfew we / would take / for sails.”
―
―
“the feeling of being a digression not the link in the argument,
a new direction, an offshoot, the limb going on elsewhere,
and liking that error, a feeling of being capable because an error,
of being wrong perhaps altogether wrong a piece from another set
stripped of position stripped of true function
and loving that error, loving that filial form, that break from perfection
where the complex mechanism fails, where the stranger appears in the clearing,
out of nowhere and uncalled for, out of nowhere to share the day.”
― The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems, 1974-1994
a new direction, an offshoot, the limb going on elsewhere,
and liking that error, a feeling of being capable because an error,
of being wrong perhaps altogether wrong a piece from another set
stripped of position stripped of true function
and loving that error, loving that filial form, that break from perfection
where the complex mechanism fails, where the stranger appears in the clearing,
out of nowhere and uncalled for, out of nowhere to share the day.”
― The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems, 1974-1994
“There is a feeling the body gives the mind
of having missed something, a bedrock poverty, like falling
without the sense that you are passing through one world,
that you could reach another
anytime. Instead the real
is crossing you,
your body an arrival
you know is false but can't outrun. And somewhere in between
these geese forever entering and
these spiders turning back,
this astonishing delay, the everyday, takes place.”
― The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems, 1974-1994
of having missed something, a bedrock poverty, like falling
without the sense that you are passing through one world,
that you could reach another
anytime. Instead the real
is crossing you,
your body an arrival
you know is false but can't outrun. And somewhere in between
these geese forever entering and
these spiders turning back,
this astonishing delay, the everyday, takes place.”
― The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems, 1974-1994
“Towards the end of the season it is not bad to have the body. To have experienced joy as the mere lifting of hunger is not to have known it less.”
―
―
“The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop.
—Jorie Graham, from “Mind,” Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts. (Princeton University Press; First Edition edition June 21, 1980)”
― Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop.
—Jorie Graham, from “Mind,” Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts. (Princeton University Press; First Edition edition June 21, 1980)”
― Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts
“Touch pain with great curiosity.”
―
―
“It is the solstice. A diamond of energy holds us. We breathe, and what we call the next moment between us, where I take your empty hand and we start home, emptied of attempt and emptied of survival skill, is love.”
―
―
“Low tide, free day, nothing being memorialized here today—memories float, yes, over the place but not memories any of us now among the living possess—open your hands—...to take up whatever it is the spirit must take up, & what is the melody of that, the sustained one note of obligatory hope, taken in...”
―
―
“One day: stronger wind than anyone expected. Stronger than ever before in the recording of such. Unnatural says the news. Also the body says it.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“& all the blood that has been wasted—all of it—gathers into deep coherent veins in the earth and calls itself history—& we make it make sense— & we are asked to call it good.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“that we be founded on infinite smallness”
― Swarm: Poems – A New York Times Notable Book
― Swarm: Poems – A New York Times Notable Book
“…yet, listen, there was rain, then the swift interval before evaporation, & the stillness of brimming, & the wet rainbowing where oil from exhaust picks up light, sheds glow, then echoes in the drains where deep inside the drops fall individually, plink, & the places where birds interject, & the coming-on of heat, & the girl looking sideways carrying the large bouquet of blue hydrangeas, shaking the water off, & the wondering if this is it, or are we in for another round, a glance up, a quick step over the puddle carrying speedy clouds, birdcall now confident again, heat drying…”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“and angle of vision, dust, gravity, solitude,
and the part of the law which is the world's waiting
and the part of the law which is my waiting,
and the part which is my impatience—now; now?—
though there are, there really are
things in the world, you must believe me.”
―
and the part of the law which is the world's waiting
and the part of the law which is my waiting,
and the part which is my impatience—now; now?—
though there are, there really are
things in the world, you must believe me.”
―
“May I break your even weave, loosen your knot,
and if i break you are you mine?”
― The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems, 1974-1994
and if i break you are you mine?”
― The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems, 1974-1994
“Always breathing-in this pre-life, exhaling this post. Something goes away, something comes back. But through you. Leaving no trail but self. As trails go not much of one. But patiently you travel it. Your self.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“I see you my planet, I see your exact rotation now on my floor—I will not close these eyes in this my planet...
I don’t want the moon and the stars, I want to lie here arms spread on your almost eternal turn and on the matter the turn takes-on as it is turned by that matter—Earth—as my mind lags yet is always on you,
how huge you carrying me are—and there is never hurry— and nothing will posit you as you carry the positors—as you carry the bottom of the river and its top and the clouds on its top, watery, weak, and the clouds one looks up to to see as they too turn—”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
I don’t want the moon and the stars, I want to lie here arms spread on your almost eternal turn and on the matter the turn takes-on as it is turned by that matter—Earth—as my mind lags yet is always on you,
how huge you carrying me are—and there is never hurry— and nothing will posit you as you carry the positors—as you carry the bottom of the river and its top and the clouds on its top, watery, weak, and the clouds one looks up to to see as they too turn—”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“Now listen for the pines, the bloom, its glittering, the wild hacking of sea, bend in each stream, eddy of bend—listen—hear all skins raveling, unending—hear one skin clamp down upon what now is no longer missing. Here you are says a voice in the light, the trapped light. Be happy.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“What is the structure of freedom but this, & grace, & the politics of time—look south, look north—yes—east west compile hope synthesize exceed look look again hold fast attach speculate drift drift recognize forget—terrible gush—gash—of form of outwardness, & it is your right to be so entertained, & if you are starting to feel it is hunger this gorgeousness, feel the heat fluctuate & say my name is day, of day, in day, I want nothing to come back, not ever, & these words are mine, there is no angel to wrestle, there is no intermediary, there is something I must tell you, you do not need existence, these words, praise be, they can for now be said. That is summer. Hear them.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“Accelerate. Immediate. Be incessant. Be disindividuated.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“& the breeze passes by so generously, & the air has the whole earth in its mind and it thinks it, thinks it...
the sensation of falling, the general theory of relativity, the nest of meaning—you can sit in your exile and, to the tune of the latest song, the recording of what was at some moment the song of the moment, the it song, the thing you couldn’t miss—it was everywhere—everyone was singing it—you can find your mind and in the firelight catch up on that distant moment’s news.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
the sensation of falling, the general theory of relativity, the nest of meaning—you can sit in your exile and, to the tune of the latest song, the recording of what was at some moment the song of the moment, the it song, the thing you couldn’t miss—it was everywhere—everyone was singing it—you can find your mind and in the firelight catch up on that distant moment’s news.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“Today I am getting my instructions. I am getting them from something holy.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“...when will we open them again our eyes, this must all be from the world of shut eyes, one’s temples feel the cold, maybe one is inside a seashell, one is what another force is hearing—how lovely, we are being handed over to another force, listen, put this to your ear—the last river we know loses its form, widens, as if a foot were lifted from the dancefloor but not put down again, ever…”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“...there is cloud on blue ground up there, & wind which the eye loves so deeply it would spill itself out and liquefy to pay for it—”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“the grace that I feel at the center of my palms as if my hands were leaves and light were coursing through some hole in their grasp, the machine of time coming in, as chlorophyll could—I was not yet so tired of believing— I was still in the very beginning of being human,
accompanied by my prayer that you be spared from anything at all, from everything, and of course also its opposite, that everything happen to you in large sheets of experience as I tug back the chain-ends and push you out”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
accompanied by my prayer that you be spared from anything at all, from everything, and of course also its opposite, that everything happen to you in large sheets of experience as I tug back the chain-ends and push you out”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“…stilling—very still—breathing into this oxygen which also pockets my looking hard, just that, takes it in, also my thinking which I try to seal off, my humanity, I was not a mistake is what my humanity thinks, I cannot go somewhere else than this body…”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“The flame of sun which will come out just now for a blinding minute into your eyes is saving nothing, no one, take your communion, your blood is full of barren fields, they are the future in you you should learn to feel and love: there will be no more: no more: not enough to go around: no more around: no more: love that.”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“...hypoxic zones is almost no more oxygen→then there is→no more→oxygen→for real→ picture that says the speaker→who are you→where are you→going down into the dead zones→water not water→the deeper you go he says the→scarier it gets→because there’s→nothing there→there are no→fish→no organisms→alive→no→no life→so it’s just us→dead zones→bigger than the Sahara he says→the largest lifeless spaces this side of the moon→he says→she says→who is this speaking to me→I am the upwelling→I am the disappearing→”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
“Consider the body of the ocean which rises every instant into me, & its ancient evaporation, & how it delivers itself to me, how the world is our law, this indrifting of us into us, a chorusing in us of elements, & how the intermingling of us lacks intelligence, makes reverberation, syllables untranscribable, inclingings, & how wonder is also what pours from us…”
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
― [To] The Last [Be] Human
