I have hopein who I am becoming.I have belief in every scar and disgraceful wordI have ever spokenor been toldbecause it is still teaching meand I have hope in who I am becoming.They say it takes 756 days to run to someone you loveand they also say that the only romance worth fighting foris the one with yourselfand I know by nowthat they say a lot of things,people talking everywherewithout saying a word,but if it took me all those years to learn myselfor teach myselfhow to look into the mirrorwithout breaking itI know for a fact that it was a fight worth fighting.I stood up for my own head and so did my heartand we are coming to terms with ourselves.Shaking hands, saying ”let’s make this workfor we have places to goand people to seeand we will need each other”So I have hopein who I am becoming.It’s Julyand I have hope in who I am becoming.

It's been the longest timeSince I've been in this place,Where I spend my whole dayHoping I'll see your face.Then I script things to say,And maybe what you'd say back.You don't know it yet,But, girl, it's a factThat I can see us Staying up late,Talking all night,But I guess I'll have to wait.'Cause it's brand-new,Yeah, I know we just met. I want to be there with you, But not just yet.Girl, you've got that look,Like you're hard to impress.So I'm bumbling with words,'Cause my mind is a mess.You were out of the blueAnd you caught me by surprise,With a slight smile, that long stare,And a challenge in your eyesI could feel all thisIn that single look,Like you could see my soul.You could read me like a book,And I think it's something.Though I know we just met,I'm gonna get there with you.You just don't know it ... yet.

As Raimbaut dragged a dead man along he thought, ‘Ohcorpse, I have come rushing here only to be dragged along by theheels like you. What is this frenzy that drives me, this mania forbattle and for love, when seen from the place where your staringeyes gaze and your flung-back head knocks over stones? It’s thatI think of, oh corpse, it’s that you make me think of: but does anythingchange? Nothing. No other days exist but these of oursbefore the tomb, both for us the living and for you the dead. Mayit be granted me not to waste them, not to waste anything of whatI am, of what I could be: to do deeds helpful to the Frankish cause:to embrace, to be embraced by, proud Bradamante. I hope youspent your days no worse, oh corpse. Anyway to you the dice have already shown their numbers. For me they are still whirling in thebox. And I love my own disquiet, corpse, not your peace.

On the edge of dreaming when the brain lets go, when it stops its scheming, our blood runs slow... Then the heart speaks clearly of the things it knows, things it brought so dearly at the evening's glow... And a misty sunset fills the west with yellow, gold and scarlet red. The bowl of space a dawn sheds light upon our silky bed. For you I send refreshing rain to wash the past away. A quiet breeze drifts warmly across your tired face. It brings the scents from flower climbs, and leaves without a trace. With vines and newborn stars in our hair...undressed, bronzed platinum we are as summer in your golden church... Like whispers lost at sea...we soar beyond the sky of fire...in harmony within the clash of elements... Together lost and free to claim our each desire. Like leaves we float to earth, once more...forbidden passion, romantic eyes, and heated lips...two burning amber hearts released and drinking slowly mysterious champagne of heaven sweetest rest...

And I do. I do wonder, I think about it all the time. What it would be like to kill myself. Because I never really know, I still can't tell the difference, I'm never quite certain whether or not I'm actually alive. I sit here every single day. Run, I said to myself. Run until your lungs collapse, until the wind whips and snaps at your tattered clothes, until you're a blur that blends into the background. Run, Juliette, run faster, run until your bones break and your shins split and your muscles atrophy and your heart dies because it was always too big for your chest and it beat too fast for too long and you run.Run run run until you can't hear their feet behind you. Run until they drop their fists and their shouts dissolve in the air. Run with your eyes open and your mouth shut and dam the river rushing up behind your eyes. Run, Juliette.Run until you drop dead. Make sure your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you.Run, I said.

It was a very ordinary day, the day I realised that my becoming is my life and my home and that I don't have to do anything but trust the process, trust my story and enjoy the journey. It doesn't really matter who I've become by the finish line, the important things are the changes from this morning to when I fall asleep again, and how they happened, and who they happened with. An hour watching the stars, a coffee in the morning with someone beautiful, intelligent conversations at 5am while sharing the last cigarette. Taking trains to nowhere, walking hand in hand through foreign cities with someone you love. Oceans and poetry. It was all very ordinary until my identity appeared, until my body and mind became one being. The day I saw the flowers and learned how to turn my daily struggles into the most extraordinary moments. Moments worth writing about. For so long I let my life slip through my fingers, like water. I'm holding on to it now,and I'm not letting go.

6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,and I still don’t know which month it was thenor what day it is now.Blurred out linesfrom hangovers to coffeeAnother vagabond lost to love.4am alone and on my way.These are my finest moments.I scrub my skinto rid me from youand I still don’t know why I cried.It was just something in the way you took my heart and rearranged my insides and I couldn’t recognise the emptiness you left me with when you were done. Maybe you thought my insides would fit better this way, look better this way, to you and us and all the rest.But then you must have changed your mindor made a wrongbecause why did youleave?6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,and I still don’t know which month it was thenor what day it is now.I replace cafés with crowded bars and empty roads with broken bottlesand this town is healing me slowly but still not slow or fast enough because there’s no right way to do this.There is no right way to do this.There is no right way to do this.

Insofar as craft and poetics in a poem have a politics, I wanted to avoid that brittle enjambed-prose-sentence-lyric verse, where you have standard sentences snapped off and scattered decoratively across the page (which I might go out on a limb and say was characteristic of some leftist poets, Beat poets, street poets and populist poets of the 70s and 80s—all of whom I basically view as comrades, I should probably say, to this day) and on the other hand I also wanted my poetics to operate differently than those more right-wing academics—in practice—even if in their poems or statements they proclaim public leftist views or ideas—they remain academic poets, operating in elite university-supported circles, institutionalized and reading before institutional audiences, awarding grants and awards to each other, sitting on each other’s grants panels, awards and tenure committees, as Philip Levine admitted in an interview in Don’t Ask, 'giving prizes to friends.

Между другото, човек може да установи, че килията е идеално място да опознае себе си, да изследва реалистично и редовно процесите в собствения си мозък, както и чувствата си.

But I was youngand didn’t know betterand someone should have told me to capture every secondevery kiss & every nightBecause now I’m sitting here alone and it’s getting really hard to breath because tears are growing in my throat and they want to break out, but there are peoplewatchingand I just want to be somewhere silentsomewhere stillBut still I don’t want to be alone because I’m scared and lonelyand I don’t understandBecause I was alone my whole lifeMy whole lifeI was so damn lonely and I was content with thatbecause I liked myself and my own company and I didn’t need anyoneI thoughtBut then there was you .. ...So, someone should have told me that love is for those few brave who can handle the unbearable emptiness,the unbearable guilt and lack of oneself,Because I lost myself to someone I loveand I might get myself back one daybut it will take time, it will take time.This is gonna take some time.I wish someone would have told me this.Someone should have told me this.

My thoughts of you are a rainbow in splashing ocean waves...appearing...disappearing in sacred depths of skies the grasps of mine reach to the highest... Will you, ah, long for kissing me tonight? so I could feel the sweetest pleasure of your lips on mine... As we embrace in our dream, I'll dance your quiet loving tune deeply within. The softness of your gentle touch so ever fine..the painting fingertips caress my dewy glowing skin...and feel my heated inner flesh pulsate...they make my body sing like strings of violin...again.. The warmth of body yours so close... so real is the feeling of your beating heart against my chest...inhaling you is easy... I crave the safety of your soul arms around me. Joint passions together fully blooming, so wild, so intense..it makes time stand still... So kiss me, want tonight with golden, silver light of stars in darkest royal blue of velvet summer skies... To love you ~ I'm yours... I spread this crystal spring-like bliss under your feet...tread softly for you tread upon my dreams...

I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrowfor I am not a poem. I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspiredbut empty and weary from drinking too much at all timesand I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speakfor I don’t speak muchat alland my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too muchor not at alland never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am nota poembut an elegyat my bestbut unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that,but others are not.

Strange infatuation seems to grace the evening tide. I want you to be free, but it is your sorrow that has made a slave of me... I wish to know how to keep you... You rise like a tide in my oceans, shine bright like the moon over them, and darken the sky when you mysteriously leave... Forgive me, my Amphitrite, but you are all I know. The day is breaking now, the earth is dry and torn. I know you're tired from the violent storms. I do love you, and you are all I know. The look in your eyes has made a slave of me for eternity. Without you I seem to lose the power of speech. Without you, I am nothing at all. I once again feel you slipping from my reach. You grow me like an evergreen. You've never seen the lonely me at all. Let the wind and ocean water wash away a thousand memories, like sand. Gazing at this all you look back, turn around and continue to run... Run from the love that is chasing after... Exhausted and breathless you sit down on the diamond shore at last. Glance at the ocean - who could that be? Someone is coming. Worried, yet scared found, brought back to the one in search, you are truly happily thrilled to be in the arms of the one who loves...

Kroni i katunditShtegu qi çon te kroni asht shetija e katundarvet. Buzë mbramje me buljere në krah, dalin gra e vajza për me mbushun uj në krue. Ndeshen udhës shoqe me shoqe e shëndrrojnë dy fjalë.Dita asht e mundshme ndër katunde e ato biseda mbramjeje disi janë nji pushim e nji argtim. E ndërsa dielli prendon e hana del, kroni i mbushë buljerat nji nga nji tue kendue. Secilës vajzë e secilës grue i kendon nga nji kange te veçante, përse kroni te tana i njef. Vajzat i njef të vogla e i pau dalkadalë tue u rritë; gratë i njef nuse e i pau dalkadalë tue u plakë. Pasqyra e qetë e ujit mban kujtimin e të gjitha fytyrave. Kroni ne heshti te lehtë, i kendon gjithkuj kangen e mallëngjyeshme të kohës së kalueme. Por pak kush din ta marrë vesht... E shumta kalojnë habitshëm. Shuejnë etjen, mbushin buljerat e nuk e ndigjojnë. Kjo, ndoshta, asht ma mirë për to, sepse kanga e kronit shëndrrohet në vaj, tue jehue në thellsit e shpirtit. Atëherë ma mirë mos me ndigjue.

THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A lapis lazuli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept crocodile tears across the parched Los Angeles landscape.When Ivy was a child and she overheard adults talking about their break-ups, in her young feeble-formed mind, she imagined it in the most literal of essences. She once heard her mother speaking of her break up with an emotionally unavailable man.She said they broke up on 69th Street. Ivy visualized her mother and that man breaking into countless fragments, like a spilled box of jigsaw pieces. And she imagined them shattered in broken shards, being blown down the pavement of 69th Street.For some reason, on the drive home from Marcel’s apartment that next morning, all Ivy could think about was her mother and that faceless man in broken pieces, perhaps some aspects of them still stuck in cracks and crevices of the sidewalk, mistaken as grit.She couldn’t get the image of Marcel having his seizure out of her mind. It left a burning sensation in the center of her chest. An incessant flame torched her lungs, chest, and even the back door of her tongue. Witnessing someone you cared about experiencing a seizure was one of those things that scribed itself indelibly on the canvas of your mind. It was gut-wrenching. Graphic and out-of-body, it was the stuff that post traumatic stress syndrome was made of.