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“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Leaves of Grass
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Leaves of Grass
“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”
― Selected Poems
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”
― Selected Poems
“Judas: I’ll tell you what I know: I watched you trip over your own dusty feet to heal the sick, the blind, the lame, the unclean, any two-bit stranger stubbed their fuckin’ toe! When some lowly distant relative - too cheap to buy enough wine for his own fuckin’ wedding - suddenly runs out of booze - no problem, you just presto change-o and it was fuckin’ Miller time in ol’ Canaan again, wasn’t it, bro? But when I fuckin’ needed you - where the fuck were you, huh?!
Jesus: Judas-
Judas: You forgave Peter and bullshit Thomas - you knocked Paul of Tarsus off a horse - you raised Lazarus from the fuckin’ dead- but me? Me? Your ‘heart’? What about me? What about me, Jesus? Huh? You just, you just - I made a mistake! And if that was wrong, then you should have told me! And if a broken heart wasn’t sufficient reason to hang, THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT, TOO!
Jesus: Don’t you think that if I knew that it would have changed your mind… That I would have?
Judas: All I know is that you broke me unfixable […]”
― The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
Jesus: Judas-
Judas: You forgave Peter and bullshit Thomas - you knocked Paul of Tarsus off a horse - you raised Lazarus from the fuckin’ dead- but me? Me? Your ‘heart’? What about me? What about me, Jesus? Huh? You just, you just - I made a mistake! And if that was wrong, then you should have told me! And if a broken heart wasn’t sufficient reason to hang, THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT, TOO!
Jesus: Don’t you think that if I knew that it would have changed your mind… That I would have?
Judas: All I know is that you broke me unfixable […]”
― The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
“And what I need you to believe is that if you hate who I love, you do not know me at all. And make no mistake, "Who I Love" is every last one. I am every last one. People ask of me: Where are you? Where are you?...Verily I ask of you to ask yourself: Where are you? Where are you?”
― The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
― The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
“What is it that we need to overcome in order to truly be “Ourselves”?”
― The Last Days of Judas Iscariot: A Play
― The Last Days of Judas Iscariot: A Play
Literary Fiction by People of Color
— 13351 members
— last activity 7 hours, 25 min ago
This can include genre fiction that is literary (e.g. speculative fiction, historical fiction, etc.), as long as it's written by a person of color (Af ...more
Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)
— 16249 members
— last activity 1 hour, 14 min ago
The world is made up of two kinds of people: first, those who love classics, and second, those who have not yet read a classic. Be bold and join us as ...more
50 books to read before you die
— 12029 members
— last activity May 07, 2026 08:38AM
These are the named books: 1 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien 2 1984 by George Orwell 3 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 4 The Gra ...more
Laska’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Laska’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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