naranzarian

"Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool."

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:30:14 +0100

“Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool.”

- Robert Brault

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:30:32 +0100

"All the poets that you love listening to love lying to you. I’m not that egocentric to make you..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:30:24 +0100

“

All the poets that you love listening to
love lying to you.
I’m not that egocentric to make you believe that I’m not one of them.
I lie all the time,
mostly up here.

See, I’ve been doing this for a little while
and I’m starting to understand things:
poetry is not about telling you the truth.
It’s about telling you the version of a story
that gets the most reaction,
the one that flows the best on the mic,
the one that has all the lines
that the audience is going to like.

See, maybe the truth
isn’t supposed to rhyme so well.
Maybe it doesn’t have to rise to a crescendo.
The truth
never sounded like sound bites
and name dropping.

I promised myself I wouldn’t write poems about poetry,
but I woke up at 3 AM the other morning
and started spitting out all these lies that I couldn’t roll off my tongue
and thought that maybe at this hour
I could write a poem about honesty
without having to choreograph the hook at the end.

I woke up at 3 AM
and I’m having trouble remembering how to spell the word “wouldn’t”.

Four years ago, I featured at a youth slam in Jersey City,
and tried to show some children how poetry is supposed to sound cool.

Jessica sat in the front row
thinking I could teach her about spoken word.
I lied to her, in metaphor, for a half hour
only to hear the silence of a fifth grade explosion;
Jessica explained it to her thirteen year old peers
how rough her father’s beard stubble felt when her was drinking
and how a foster family is just a fresh coat of paint over stucco
when you’ve been running against the wall.

She didn’t actually say all this.
Not like I can.
But I could hear the inhalation of truth
in between breaths of her poetry.
Her name is not really Jessica.
I don’t remember what it is.
But for a moment, I can make you care about her,
even if she’s not real.

Don’t ask me.
You wouldn’t know the difference anyway.

I don’t write poems about honesty.
I’ve written three poems this year to make me sound cute to girls,
but not one about the medication that I’m taking
because there are some things
that I don’t fucking talk about.
Why am I 33 years old and still trying to sound cute to girls?

A couple weeks ago,
two friends asked me how my roommate is doing.

I use the word “roommate”
instead of referring to her as the girl I’m afraid of falling in love with
because she is the most beautiful overturned school bus that I have ever seen
and I slow down sometimes to watch the trauma.

And because she knows me.
Like how she knows that I look in the mirror too much,
and I always eat the last peanut butter cup,
and I fuck girls with my poems,
and use the word “roommate” too loosely.

And the poet in me
should’ve told them she’s doing just fine,
but I hadn’t memorized all the lines yet.
My best friend is not doing fine,
and I can’t fix it.

The students in my class
like me because I say the word “bullshit” during my lectures
and let them out early.

They don’t see that fear has me losing focus on the bullet points
when I’m thinking about how many slit wrists I’ll return home to tonight.
My roommate’s not suicidal
But it sounds sexier than saying
that she closes her eyes sometimes
when she’s changing lanes.

I lie.
Because it keeps me driving to work
instead of holding her all night and crying.

I need somebody to talk to
but poetry helps you meet people who want to fuck poets.
Who do you talk to when your best friend is biting off her cuticles,
while other girls are sharpening their nails?

I need to go to bed now.
I’m sorry I lied.
I’ll write the rest of this poem tomorrow,
when I can differentiate what’s none of your fucking business
and write poems with hooks that rhyme.
It doesn’t matter what you believe.
I’m tired of being the strong one all the time.

”

- “Liars, All of Us”, Chad Anderson

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Fri, 17 May 2013 21:30:28 +0100

"I always feel like a freak, because I’m never able to move on like this, you know? People just have..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:30:56 +0100

“I always feel like a freak, because I’m never able to move on like this, you know? People just have an affair, or even entire relationships; they break up and they forget. They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals. I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with. Because each person had their own specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That’s why I’m very careful with getting involved, because it hurts too much. Even getting laid; I actually don’t do that. I will miss the most mundane things of the person. Like I’m obsessed with little things. Maybe I’m crazy, but when I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late for school. One day she followed me to see why; I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees rolling on the sidewalk, or ants crossing the road; the way a leaf cast a shadow on a tree trunk; little things. I think it’s the same with people. I see little details in them, so specific to each of them, that move me, and that I miss, and will always miss. You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details. Like I remember the way your beard has a bit of red in it. And how the sun was making it glow that morning, right before you left. I remember that, and I missed it. I’m really crazy, right?”

- Richard Linklater

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Wed, 15 May 2013 21:30:30 +0100

"You didn’t love her. You just didn’t want to be alone. Or maybe, maybe she was good for your ego. Or..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:30:26 +0100

“You didn’t love her. You just didn’t want to be alone. Or maybe, maybe she was good for your ego. Or maybe she made you feel better about your miserable life, but you didn’t love her, because you don’t destroy the person that you love.”

- Callie Torres, The Heart of the Matter

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Mon, 13 May 2013 21:30:15 +0100

You licked houmousoff my fingerswhich is one wayto win an argument— “Love Poem for...

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:30:27 +0100

You licked houmous
off my fingers
which is one way
to win an argument

— “Love Poem for London”, Shailja Patel

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Sat, 11 May 2013 21:30:29 +0100

"I have always been tormented by the image of multiplicity of selves. Some days I call it richness;..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 21:30:54 +0100

“I have always been tormented by the image of multiplicity of selves. Some days I call it richness; and some other days I see it as a disease, a proliferation as dangerous as cancer. My first concept about the people around me was that all of them were coordinated into a whole, whereas I was made up of multitudes of selves, of fragments. I know I was upset as a child to discover that we had only one life. It seems to me that I wanted to compensate for this by multiplying experience. Or perhaps it always seems like this when you follow all your impulses and they take you in different directions. In any case, when I was happy, always at the beginning of a love, euphoric, I felt I was gifted for living many lives fully. It was only when I was in trouble, lost in a maze, stifled by complications and paradoxes that I was haunted or that I spoke of my “madness”, but I meant the madness of the poets.”

- Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anaïs Nin, Volume I 1931-1934

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Thu, 09 May 2013 21:30:21 +0100

"And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:30:18 +0100

“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it’s already happened.”

- Douglas Coupland, Life After God

"What kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in..."

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:30:00 +0100

“What kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, make use of you at night. To crave another while pecking your cheek. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it is mine to call.”

- Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

[source]

MANTRA TO OVERCOME DEPRESSION

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:30:00 +0100

Vitamin D. Sunlight. Go

outside. Get a good night

of sleep. Not too good.

Not shades drawn forever
good. Not like you used to.

Open the windows.

Buy more houseplants.
Breathe. Meditate. (One day,

you will no longer be

afraid of being alone
with your thoughts.)

Exercise. Actually exercise

instead of just googling it.
Eat well. Cook for yourself.

Organize your closet, the

garage. Drink plenty of water
and repeat after me:

I am not a problem

to be solved. Repeat after me:
I am worthy I am worthy I am

neither the mistake nor

the punishment. Forget to take
vitamins. Let the houseplant die.

Eat spoonfuls of peanut butter.

Shave your head. Forget
this poem. It doesn’t matter—

there is no wrong way

to remember the grace of your
own body; no choice

that can unmake itself.

There is only now, here,
look: you are already

forgiven.

– Sierra DeMulder

"I love everything that flows, everything that has time in it and becoming, that brings us back to..."

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 21:30:00 +0000

“I love everything that flows, everything that has time in it and becoming, that brings us back to the beginning where there is never end: the violence of the prophets, the obscenity that is ecstasy, the wisdom of the fanatic, the priest with his rubber litany, the foul words of the whore, the spittle that floats away in the gutter, the milk of the breast and the bitter honey that pours from the womb, all that is fluid, melting, dissolute and dissolvent, all the pus and dirt that in flowing is purified, that loses its sense of origin, that makes the great circuit toward death and dissolution. The great incestuous wish is to flow on, one with time, to merge the great image of the beyond with the here and now. A fatuous, suicidal wish that is constipated by words and paralyzed by thought.”

- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

[source]

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Fri, 29 Mar 2013 21:30:00 +0000

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History does not disclose the name of the first black person dragged onto a slave ship, the first...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:30:23 +0000

History does not disclose the name of the first black person dragged onto a slave ship, the first black person held in newly constructed prisons, or the first black person forcibly recruited to work on a colonial plantation. But black people have been arriving late ever since, hoping that the slavers have left, the ships traveled beyond the horizon, the whip silenced, the work done, the suffering gone.

Black time—whether you call it colored people time (CPT) or African timing (AT) or the deliciousness of syncopation—black time is about delay, interruption, break: strategic lateness.

Black time is long time, deep time, waiting time, excavated time, time around time. The not-here, the not-yet-there, the it-will-be-coming, the it-has-been-to-come, the it’s-not-wasn’t-yet, the it-was-just-here-yet-to-be-now. The fold, the crease, the wrinkle, the tick that does not tock. The tock that does not talk. The silence that does not break. The breaking that will not be broken. The.

You-just-missed-it.

Black time is hungry time. Ravenous time. Gluttonous time. Cannibal time.

Black time is waiting time, time after the reservation, time after other people’s time, time cut by other people’s time, time as didn’t-see-you, time as can-you-wait, time as you-again, time as I-don’t-have-time-for-this-shit.

Black time is dropped consonants, slipped sounds, skipped beats, don’t-wanna-ain’t-gonna-coz-it-don’t-make-no-difference time. Black time is learned time, doing time, time done, time-to-do, time-never-done, time-undone. Time-served, time-to-serve, time-serving, time-unserved, time-put-off, time-for-time, pipeline-time, skipping-time, cut-time, time-cut, cutting-time.

I haven’t seen you for a minute.

Sorry I’m posting this late. I was running behind.

– Black Time, Keguro Macharia

[source]

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:30:00 +0000

[source]

"Maybe I don’t want to relate to you. Maybe I don’t want you to say “I have felt the same way..."

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 21:30:00 +0000

“Maybe I don’t want to relate to you. Maybe I don’t want you to say “I have felt the same way before.”
Here’s a little fact about me: I like being alone. I like being by myself.
Here’s another fact: Sometimes I don’t want to be cheered up. Sometimes I just want to feel exactly what I’m feeling and I don’t want anyone to intervene.
I don’t want other people to relate to me. I want to feel my own things, not things that have been felt a million times before.
I am suffocating, breathing in old, recycled air. These words have been said before. These feelings have been felt before. What I want is something in this life that can be mine and no one else’s. I don’t care if that’s selfish. Let me be selfish.”

- Marianna Paige

[source]