BruntForceTrauma

the best weekend scottyk: thinking about last weekend with...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:03:54 -0400

the best weekend

scottyk:

thinking about last weekend with @meanfannypack

collectivehistory: German air raid on Moscow, 1941, by Margaret...

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:34:58 -0500

collectivehistory:

German air raid on Moscow, 1941, by Margaret Bourke-White.

“What if I did, it’s a different matter with me! Maybe I do believe, but not quite....

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:33:45 -0500

“What if I did, it’s a different matter with me! Maybe I do believe, but not quite. Though I don’t fully believe, still I’m not going to say that God should be shot. Back when I was serving with the hussars, I kept reflecting about God. It’s an accepted fact in all poems that a hussar drinks and carouses; so, sir, maybe I did drink, but, would you believe, I used to jump out of bed in the middle of the night, just in my socks, and start crossing myself in front of the icon, asking God to send me faith, because even then I couldn’t be at peace: is there God, or not? I really have a hot time of it! In the morning I’d get distracted, of course, and faith would seem to disappear again, and generally I’ve noticed that faith always disappears somewhat during the day.”
-Kapiton Maximovich, in Demons

livelymorgue: Dec. 21, 1933: From the Mid-Week Pictorial....

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 03:20:08 -0400

livelymorgue:

Dec. 21, 1933: From the Mid-Week Pictorial. Americans visiting Paris celebrated the end of Prohibition in the United States in a “real two-fisted manner,” its original caption stated. Photo: The New York Times

theworstthingsforsale: Inspirational wall banner, your heart is...

Wed, 23 May 2012 20:07:54 -0400

theworstthingsforsale:

Inspirational wall banner, your heart is in the right place, but here’s some real advice from a wolf:

1. Howl a lot and do it all night long.

2. Eat cats and small animals from a neighborhood.

3. Turn into a dog and go live in the neighborhood.

4. You’re a dog now.

Boom

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:03:11 -0400

Boom:

“In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

theworstthingsforsale: Setting up food options for my parties...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:01:50 -0400

theworstthingsforsale:

Setting up food options for my parties was a disaster before I got a triple crock-pot! This time, I can have my warm mayonnaise, bubbling cream cheese, and hot greek yogurt ready for my guests as soon as they walk in the door.

As long as I don’t forget to order my pack of 275 frozen danishes for dipping, this party is going to be a success.

A Poem-A-Day Celebration: Marie Howe's "After the Movie"

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:54:11 -0400

A Poem-A-Day Celebration: Marie Howe's "After the Movie":

celebratepoetry:

“Simone Weil says that when you really love you are able to look at someone you want to eat and not eat them.”

The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles.

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:03:51 -0400

Lots of bad writing in this book. This part I liked.

“Port laughed abruptly, ‘And now you know [life’s] not like that. right? It’s more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don’t even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it’s nearly burned down to the end. And then’s when you’re conscious of the bitter taste’
‘But I’m always conscious of the unpleasant taste and of the end approaching,’ she said.
‘Then you should give up smoking.’
‘How mean you are!’ she cried.
‘I’m not mean!’ he objected, almost upsetting his class as he raised himself on his elbow to drink. ‘It seems logical doesn’t it? Or I suppose living’s a habit like smoking. You keep saying you’re going to give it up, but you go right on’”

"Flowers, clogs, or all of us outgrew our shoes"

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 04:32:31 -0400

Art in the ghetto.
Fumbling for dawn
in the twilight,
the twilight of life
in its dawn.

Every Poem

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:50:58 -0400

Every poem is a first poem
and every first poem is a
first love or rather each line
a first awkward advance with
eyes dancing tango and hearts
finding rhythm that speeds up once
finger touches arm and the nerves
fire boom! boom! like the
chaching! of a methaphor
fitting jigsaw-like into the
warp and woof of the cadence
of a poem that like those
words and glances and sleights
of hand doesn’t totally make sense yet.

I too sit inside the hall of God and laugh to myself not because I don’t believe but because I do...

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 04:44:19 -0400

I too sit inside the hall of God
and laugh to myself not because
I don’t believe but because
I do and I don’t understand
why or how or who are these people
and like you I question their sincerity
and how the hell they came to believe in hell
and judgment and heaven and
efficacious suffering and infinite grace
that is not an infinite jest but
one they feel in their bones when
they walk and in their skin when
they hug and in that nebulous heart when
they sing out loud the creeds
of old and affirm what many before
have affirmed or rejected or doubted
and sit down softly saying
“you better be fucking real”

"Flickering Mind" by Denise Levertov

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:23:15 -0400

Lord, not you,
it is I who am absent.
At first
belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places;
a quick glance, and away – and back,
circling.
I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.
I stop to think about you, and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows, into gleams that fret
unceasing over
the river’s purling and passing.
Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn. Not you,
it is I am absent.
You are the stream, the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow,
you the unchanging presence, in whom all
moves and changes.
How can I focus my flickering, perceive
at the fountain’s heart
the sapphire I know is there?

(via Jeff Keuss, http://www.jeffkeuss.com/blog/?p=1313)

livelymorgue: September 1962: For the first time in 31 years,...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:18:04 -0400

livelymorgue:

September 1962: For the first time in 31 years, the Empire State Building received “a top-to-toe going over.” The job took five months and spanned all 102 stories. The crew members, 42 workers and 3 superintendents, were “the sort of men who do not bobble at heights.” This picture appeared in a photo spread with the caption: “Work on the base of the tower begins at dawn — and halts for the day before the first sightseers arrive at the observation deck on the 86th floor, just below here.” Photo: Jack Manning/The New York Times

Things to worry about

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 06:48:10 -0400

Things to worry about:

F. Scott Fitzgerald to 11 year-old daughter away at summer camp:

“Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions”

False Binary

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 06:53:24 -0400

I love sponges but
they’re not quite edgy
enough, you know? They don’t cut
my hands but they’re greedy,
insatiable, bulimic:
the filling don’t fill.
I want something sharp or
no, something stable, that sits
resisting in the curve of my palm.
A bullet, harmless when
you squeeze, well, not the trigger,
thus the point. Docile then
use caution (!)
when you send it on
its way, the way it should go.
A bullet’s not a bullet, I mean
not really a bullet, unless it’s
being shot. Still, the squeeze
doesn’t make the sponge.

livelymorgue: Nov. 17, 1976: “Paul Chin paints billboards,”...

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:31:18 -0400

livelymorgue:

Nov. 17, 1976: “Paul Chin paints billboards,” reads the article accompanying this photograph. “Every weekday morning, provided it is not raining, snowing or dangerously windy, the 5-feet 6-inch Mr. Chin, a native of Hong Kong, climbs to the roofs of buildings and into his narrow studio — a scaffold.” Mr. Chin, the art director for Artkraft Strauss, created this King Kong billboard towering over Midtown Manhattan. Photo: D. Gorton/The New York Times

Jephthah's Vow

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:51:00 -0400

One of the more tragic / beautifully human passages in the Bible.

“So she said to him, ‘My father, if you have given your word to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, because the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the people of Ammon.’ Then she said to her father, ‘Let this thing be done for me: let me alone for two months, that I may go and wander on the mountains and bewail my virginity, my friends and I.’ So he said, ‘Go.’ And he sent her away for two months; and she went with her friends, and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. And it was so at the end of two months that she returned to her father, and he carried out his vow with her which he had vowed. She knew no man.”

Judges 11:38-9

Enid

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:59:08 -0500

How do you ask water
what it’s like
becoming steam?

Freeing as you loosen gravity’s grip
and inexorably mount the crooked
staircase toward the heavens, looking back
at your family who has resisted the boil?
Those around you wisps of whispers.

Is dissipation dissociation?
A forgetting of liquid roots,
of those times you gave life
as water tends to
and that other time it was taken from your side.
Alcohol—the great dehydrator.

What’s the point of having been
once memory becomes observation
in need of glasses and a textbook on
object permanence?
Forgotten as the cord of life
wraps around to its first frays.

Perhaps you ask like you ask
a frailing woman
what it’s like to watch her bold, dark
lifeline smudge slowly into the
fuzzy grey of dementia.

Dear Sir

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 05:26:37 -0500

I’m convinced
your hands are well moisturized,
not cracked like those
whose fingers like the feel of
the palm and the proximity of
whatever they encompass,
trying to have and to hold.

You said like water
life evaporates eventually but
does more for the skin
when it puddles up in
hands that open to the sky
than when greedy fists
squeeze out their desires through
the cracks between thumb and index,
middle and ring, etc, etc.
Because what you hold
you no longer have.