drunk sonnet 10 | daniel bailey

readpoems:

THE AIRPORT IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
THE GROCERY STORE IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
PETSMART IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
THE THAI PLACE IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST

MY OWN BED IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
INSIDE MY CAR IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
ALL THESE STREETS, THIS CITY, THIS STATE
THIS COUNTRY IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST

IN FRONT OF THIS TV IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
IN THIS BODY IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
IN THIS AIR IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST

I’M THINKING ABOUT EVOLUTION AND THE WAY WE CHANGE
AND HOW LONG IT WILL BE BEFORE I HAVE A TAIL AGAIN
AND I CAN FORGET ALL THAT’S HAPPENED

oh my GOD can someone like, come to my house and make me stop listening to the mountain goats cover of “sometimes i still feel the bruise”???

Kevin Prufer, “In a Beautiful Country”

poem-locker:

A good way to fall in love
is to turn off the headlights
and drive very fast down dark roads.

Another way to fall in love
is to say they are only mints
and swallow them with a strong drink.

Then it is autumn in the body.
Your hands are cold.
Then it is winter and we are still at war.

The gold-haired girl is singing into your ear
about how we live in a beautiful country.
Snow sifts from the clouds

into your drink. It doesn’t matter about the war.
A good way to fall in love
is to close up the garage and turn the engine on,

then down you’ll fall through lovely mists
as a body might fall early one morning
from a high window into love. Love,

the broken glass. Love, the scissors
and the water basin. A good way to fall
is with a rope to catch you.

A good way is with something to drink
to help you march forward.
The gold-haired girl says, Don’t worry

about the armies, says, We live in a time
full of love. You’re thinking about this too much.
Slow down. Nothing bad will happen.

i’m MOPING! i feel like FOUR SPECIFIC MOUNTAIN GOATS SONGS but really mostly black pear tree

Hell | Sarah Manguso

readpoems:

The second-hardest thing I have to do is not be longing’s slave.

Hell is that. Hell is that, others, having a job, and not having a job. Hell is thinking continually of those who were truly great.

Hell is the moment you realize that you were ignorant of the fact, when it was true, that you were not yet ruined by desire.

The kind of music I want to continue hearing after I am dead is the kind that makes me think I will be capable of hearing it then.

There is music in Hell. Wind of desolation! It blows past the egg-eyed statues. The canopic jars are full of secrets.

The wind blows through me. I open my mouth to speak.

I recite the list of people I have copulated with. It does not take long. I say the names of my imaginary children. I call out four-syllable words beginning with B. This is how I stay alive.

Beelzebub. Brachiosaur. Bubble-headed. I don’t know how I stay alive. What I do know is that there is a light, far above us, that goes out when we die,

and that in Hell there is a gray tulip that grows without any sun. It reminds me of everything I failed at,

and I water it carefully. It is all I have to remind me of you.

gininthecampari:

I usually maintain that my problem is just that I’m lazy. But when I actually sit down and try to spend several hours doing math, it turns out that I am, in fact, also stupid.

pipistrellus:

2017’s official fortune

things that are terrible: every single photo of me in my grandparents’ house, from every angle

i can’t believe you all just let me go around like this and never said anything

saundering:

ciphercoyote:

kitswulf:

isaacmemes:

ghettoinuyasha:

fckin:

I’m thinking about her

forbidden fruit

Why do grown ass adults want to eat Tide pods so much?

Because a ton of the visual/olfactory/textural sensory information these pods give me the match nutritionally-dense fruit. It’s got the oleic gleam of something high-fat like an avocado, but bright carotenoid-rich coloration like a berry that wants to be eaten by red-seeing primates and birds. It tends to smell sweet and slightly floral, enhancing that effect. Similarly, when you hold it, it is quite dense (denser than water), but very soft and liquid, once again reaffirming that this “fruit” has either high sugar or high fat content and almost no cellulose to it.

As a result, within me is a less-clever monkey just screaming to eat this delicious fruit in my hand about to go into the laundry, and it does in fact take willpower to tell him he’s a stupid monkey and this is a bubble of foul-tasting poison. But every time I do laundry, this fucking limbic monstrosity rises again and assures me it’s basically like a cherry but Even Better. I have legitimately debated just biting down on one in the hopes of inducing a deterrent memory to forestall this urge in the future, but that’s what my goddamn mammal-brain wants me to fucking do and I refuse to let it win.

Human Brain: Don’t eat the posion pod its fucking posion
Monkey Brain: Eat the fruit pod its fruit
Lizard Brain: The Washing Machine Is Vibrating Give It The Sex
Fish Brain: Climb inside the washing machine it is safe.

I have legitimately debated just biting down on one in the hopes of inducing a deterrent memory to forestall this urge in the future, but that’s what my goddamn mammal-brain wants me to fucking do and I refuse to let it win.

I lost this internal debate and can confirm that a detergent pod popping in your mouth like an overripe, strangely floral mouse carcass is not something that you want to happen to you, ever, but is an incredibly good deterrent.

sovietschoolboy:

i wish i had my copy of kafka’s diaries with me because every entry goes something like this:

Sunday. I woke up in great pain and coughed up blood. Had coffee. Later I went to the theatre and a woman looked at me, but I could not make eye contact because I am repulsive. I am full of terror. I wish Goethe was alive because only he truly understood me.