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  • Category: poetry

    • dorothy parker

      Posted at 9:50 am by jasminedesirees, on June 9, 2016

      I have a 12 hour train ride to North Dakota on Saturday, so I’ve been looking for some new books to help pass the time.

      So far, I’m interested in this one or this one, but I also came across The Portable Dorothy Parker. It’s not available on Kindle, and the hard copy won’t arrive before I leave, but some of her quotes are too good not to share:

      “Razors pain you,
      Rivers are damp,
      Acids stain you,
      And drugs cause cramp.
      Guns aren’t lawful,
      Nooses give,
      Gas smells awful.
      You might as well live.”
      -Enough Rope

      “In youth, it was a way I had,
      To do my best to please.
      And change, with every passing lad
      To suit his theories.

      But now I know the things I know
      And do the things I do,
      And if you do not like me so,
      To hell, my love, with you.”

      “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”

      “If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.”

      “I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.”

      “A hangover is the wrath of grapes.”

      “Three be the things I shall never attain:
      Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.”

      Posted in art, books, inspiration, loveliness, poetry, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged authors, dorothy parker, quotes, writing
    • i wrote this for you

      Posted at 6:59 am by jasminedesirees, on April 19, 2016

      I was creeping around on Amazon last weekend, I can’t even remember what I was looking for, but I had some new book recommendations based on recent purchases. I fell down the recommendation rabbit hole, but eventually found some excerpts from a book, I Wrote This For You, that I loved.

      As per usual, I spent the next two hours reading everything I could find by the author, but I will probably still end up buying the book. A few of my favourite quotes below:

      “Forget about your lists and do what you can because that’s all you can do. Phone up the people you miss and tell them you love them. Hug those close to you as hard as you can. Because you are always only a drunk driver’s stupidity, a nervous shopkeeper’s mistake, a doctor’s best attempts and an old age away from forever.”

      “You’re just another story I can’t tell anymore.”

      “We clutch that picture to our hearts because we expect each other to always be the people in that picture. But people change. People aren’t pictures. And you can either take a new picture or throw the old one away.”

      “This is my skin. It keeps out the rain and words I’d rather not hear like “I’m tired” or “I’m fine” or “We need to talk.” This is my skin and it’s thick. This is not your skin. Yet you are still under it.”

      “To you, it was just picking flowers. To them, it was a massacre.”

      “I’ll see you at your funeral, if you’ll see me at mine. I’ll wait at the edges for your ghost to rise (until the end of time). We’ll find someplace nice to haunt, an abandoned beach house filled with memories of summer sunburns. Children will giggle as we tickle their feet at night and they’ll never know the bad dreams we fight. We’ll make our own heaven.”

      “As your body cuts through the air, think of only the things that made you smile, the people that made you love, the ideas that made you strong. Remember, those things will never happen again but they cannot unhappen.”

      “I read what you leave in public spaces. The songs you reference. The quotes you quote. I know it’s about me. I can feel you thinking of me.”

      You can get the book here. Also, I just got this in the mail last week and I am SO excited about it. Give me all the books.

      Posted in books, inspiration, other things, poetry | 0 Comments | Tagged books, i wrote this for you, jon ellis, poetry, quotes, writing
    • salt

      Posted at 8:16 am by jasminedesirees, on March 24, 2016

      I came across a poem by Nayirrah Waheed last weekend, and immediately set out to ready everything she had ever written. I ordered her book of poetry, Salt, and I can’t wait for it to get here.

      A few of my favourite lines:

      i have always been the woman of my dreams

      i am mine before i am ever anyone else’s

      my mother was my first country, the first place i ever lived

      what can i do when the night comes out and i break into stars

      stay is a sensitive word we wear who stayed and who left in our skin forever

      Posted in art, poetry, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged art, inspiration, nayirrah waheed, poetry, salt
    • loveliness

      Posted at 8:02 am by jasminedesirees, on January 29, 2016

      A few lovely things for a beautiful sunny day in Phoenix. I have a mango for breakfast, and absolutely no weekend commitments for the first time in 2016.

      loveliness

      loveliness

      loveliness

      loveliness

      loveliness

      Source

      Posted in art, inspiration, loveliness, poetry | 0 Comments | Tagged art, inspiration, loveliness, Nietzsche, quotes
    • the journey

      Posted at 8:50 am by jasminedesirees, on January 6, 2016

      I came across this poem just before the holidays, and I really liked the message, especially the last few lines.

      My mom always says “You can’t control what other people do”, as in, it doesn’t do you any good to stress and get upset over the things other people do, the only thing you can control is yourself and your actions, so just make sure you are doing what you need to be doing.

      Or to put it another way, I was talking to my brother while I was in Mexico and he said “My kindergarten teacher told us something on the first day of school that really stuck with me, she said ‘Just worry about yourself’ so that’s what I do”.

      One day you finally knew
      what you had to do, and began,
      though the voices around you
      kept shouting
      their bad advice–
      though the whole house
      began to tremble
      and you felt the old tug
      at your ankles.
      ‘Mend my life!’
      each voice cried.
      But you didn’t stop.
      You knew what you had to do,
      though the wind pried
      with its stiff fingers
      at the very foundations,
      though their melancholy
      was terrible.
      It was already late
      enough, and a wild night,
      and the road full of fallen
      branches and stones.
      But little by little,
      as you left their voices behind,
      the stars began to burn
      through the sheets of clouds,
      and there was a new voice
      which you slowly
      recognised as your own,
      that kept you company
      as you strode deeper and deeper
      into the world,
      determined to do
      the only thing you could do–
      determined to save
      the only life you could save.

      -Mary Oliver

      Posted in inspiration, loveliness, poetry | 0 Comments | Tagged mary oliver, poem, poetry, the journey
    • loveliness

      Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on December 3, 2015

      A few lovely things for today, when I’m snuggling up under the covers and dreaming of Christmas in Mazatlan. Wake me up when December ends.

      loveliness

      loveliness

      loveliness

      loveliness

      loveliness

      Source

      Posted in art, favourites, inspiration, loveliness, poetry, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged Alice in Wonderland, inspiration, Lewis Carrol, loveliness, photography, quotes
    • loveliness

      Posted at 9:34 am by jasminedesirees, on September 23, 2015

      A few lovely things for today, when I’m back in Arizona for 11 days in a row, the longest unbroken stretch since May.

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      Source

      Posted in art, inspiration, loveliness, photography, poetry, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged art, inspiration, life, loveliness, photography, quotes
    • loveliness

      Posted at 10:24 am by jasminedesirees, on July 22, 2015

      A few lovely things for today, when I’m enjoying my gypsy summer (currently back in California), but also trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

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      Posted in art, inspiration, loveliness, poetry, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged art, inspiration, loveliness, poetry, quotes
    • a swinger of birches

      Posted at 8:30 am by jasminedesirees, on February 18, 2015

      Have always loved this poem. “So was I once myself a swinger of birches”.

      Birches

      When I see birches bend to left and right
      Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
      I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
      But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
      As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
      Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
      After a rain. They click upon themselves
      As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
      As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
      Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
      Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
      Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
      You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
      They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
      And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
      So low for long, they never right themselves:
      You may see their trunks arching in the woods
      Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
      Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
      Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
      But I was going to say when Truth broke in
      With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
      I should prefer to have some boy bend them
      As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
      Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
      Whose only play was what he found himself,
      Summer or winter, and could play alone.
      One by one he subdued his father’s trees
      By riding them down over and over again
      Until he took the stiffness out of them,
      And not one but hung limp, not one was left
      For him to conquer. He learned all there was
      To learn about not launching out too soon
      And so not carrying the tree away
      Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
      To the top branches, climbing carefully
      With the same pains you use to fill a cup
      Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
      Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
      Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
      So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
      And so I dream of going back to be.
      It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
      And life is too much like a pathless wood
      Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
      Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
      From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
      I’d like to get away from earth awhile
      And then come back to it and begin over.
      May no fate willfully misunderstand me
      And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
      Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
      I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
      I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
      And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
      Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
      But dipped its top and set me down again.
      That would be good both going and coming back.
      One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
      -Robert Frost
      Posted in art, poetry | 0 Comments | Tagged a swinger of birches, birch trees, poetry, robert frost, writing
    • and the moon and the stars and the world

      Posted at 7:32 am by jasminedesirees, on January 27, 2015

      Still have one more post to share from our Mt. Rinjani adventure, but for today, some Bukowski. I shared some more passages of his that I like here, as well.

      Long walks at night–
      that’s what good for the soul:
      peeking into windows
      watching tired housewives
      trying to fight off
      their beer-maddened husbands.

      – Charles Bukowski

      Posted in art, inspiration, loveliness, poetry | 0 Comments | Tagged art, bukowski, charles bukowski, poetry, quotes, writing
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