❤️

 

In this world

we walk on the roof of hell,

gazing at flowers.

Kobayashi Issa

Fig Cartography

How to begin this? There’s a dead wasp

in the depths of every fig you’ve ever eaten.

These days, I’m trying not to take everything

as metaphor, but still. It’s the audacity I find

hard to bear. My friend considers every fig

an erotic revelation—sends me photographs

of splayed red flesh and through her eyes

I am there. Something already drenched

and begging for ravage. This is what desire does.

It makes an obscenity of the earth. And I think

I can never tell her, never risk the ruin. Who

am I to lodge a seed of venom and exoskeleton?

And then I think: she knows, of course

she already knows. It is so easy to love something

with a secret wasp heart. I don’t know why

we love like this, except to say: you felt it too,

didn’t you? First you shirk and then you lean

closer, longing for sweetness, but better than that,

longing for the crunch of legs between your teeth.

Jane Flett

.

Japanese sweet potatoes

Karaage drums

The Song

From somewhere
a calm musical note arrives.
You balance it on your tongue,
a single ripe grape,
till your whole body glistens.
In the space between breaths
you apply it to any wound
and the wound heals.

Soon the nights will lengthen,
you will lean into the year
humming like a saw.
You will fill the lamps with kerosene,
knowing somewhere a line breaks,
a city goes black,
people dig for candles in the bottom drawer.
You will be ready. You will use the song like a match.
It will fill your rooms
opening rooms of its own
so you sing, I did not know
my house was this large.

Naomi Shihab Nye

.

My Cats

I know. I know.
they are limited, have different
needs and
concerns.

but I watch and learn from them.
I like the little they know,
which is so
much.

they complain but never
worry,
they walk with a surprising dignity.
they sleep with a direct simplicity that
humans just can't
understand.

their eyes are more
beautiful than our eyes.
and they can sleep 20 hours
a day
without
hesitation or
remorse.

when I am feeling
low
all I have to do is
watch my cats
and my
courage
returns.

I study these
creatures.

they are my
teachers.

Charles Bukowski

.

Ja jang myun

“Not knowing when the Dawn would come,

I open every door.”

Emily Dickinson