http://oofpoetry.tumblr.com/

"When our breasts arrived as a kind of currency, we’d tug our camisoles low, use our newfangled..."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:16:54 -0400

“When our breasts arrived
as a kind of currency, we’d tug
our camisoles low, use
our newfangled bodies to haggle
with the ice cream man. The winner
was the girl who received her chocolate cone
for free, who sucked on candy cigarettes
the same way she wore a training bra.
That summer my pockets grew forests
of hand-tied maraschino cherry stems:
tampered evidence that I might one day be worthy
of kissing. In exchange for rides
on the handlebars of their bikes,
we’d let the boys bite
the beads off our candy
necklaces until the chokers
resembled punched out teeth.
From their slobber, blue and violet
stained my throat where the sweetness
had once been, so I suppose,
Your Honor, I was preparing
for him.”

- Megan Falley, “Beginning in an Ice Cream Truck and Ending in a Court Room (After Kim Addonizio)”

Photo

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 20:33:39 -0400

"It’s just so strange. You used to love me, and now you’re a stranger who happens to know all of my..."

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:53:29 -0400

“It’s just so strange.
You used to love me,
and now you’re a stranger
who happens to know all
of my secrets.”

- Clementine von Radics (via clementinevonradics)

clementinevonradics: Please Know: Whether it’s the days you burn more brilliant than the sun Or...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:27:36 -0400

clementinevonradics:

Please Know:

Whether it’s the days you burn more brilliant than the sun

Or the nights you collapse into my lap, curling your body
into a thousand broken questions

You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I will love you when you are a still day.

I will love you when you are a hurricane.

"I want to kiss you. Like big, fat kisses. Or angels. Or stars. Or something. I don’t know. Love..."

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:00:59 -0400

“I want to kiss you.
Like big, fat kisses. Or angels. Or stars.
Or something. I don’t know.
Love poems never make sense to me.
Poets say things like “Your teeth are flowers.”
or “Your eyes are miracles.” But you
aren’t miracles. Or flowers. You
are some sweet boy with a good smile
and a shaky heart. Come kiss me.
I’m in love with the miracle of your body
beside my body.”

- Love Poems, Clementine von Radics (via clementinevonradics)

"Do not fall in love With people like me. people like me will love you so hard that you turn into..."

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 22:00:37 -0400

“

Do not fall in love
With people like me.
people like me
will love you so hard
that you turn into stone
into a statue where people
come to marvel at how long
it must have taken to carve
that faraway look into your eyes

Do not fall in love with people like me
we will take you to
museums and parks
and monuments
and kiss you in every beautiful
place so that you can
never go back to them
without tasting us
like blood in your mouth

Do not come any closer.
people like me
are bombs
when our time is up
we will splatter loss
all over your walls
in angry colors
that make you wish
your doorway never
learned our name

do not fall in love
with people like me.
with the lonely ones
we will forget our own names
if it means learning yours
we will make you think
hurricanes are gentle
that pain is a gift
you will get lost
in the desperation
in the longing for something
that is always reaching
but never able to hold

do not fall in love
with people like me.
we will destroy your
apartment
we will throw apologies at you
that shatter on the floor
and cut your feet

we will never learn
how to be soft

we will leave.
we always do.

”

- Do Not Fall In Love With People Like Me, alonesomes

"We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine."

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:00:50 -0400

“We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.”

- Eduardo Galeano

“And oh, the oh my nape of the neck. The up-swept oh mynape of the neck. I could walk behind...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 22:00:39 -0400

“And oh, the oh my nape of the neck. The up-swept oh my
nape of the neck. I could walk behind anyone and fall in love.”

—Dorianne Lux, The Shape of Backs

"men want to fix you save you or fuck you I can’t be fixed and I don’t care to be saved"

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:00:49 -0400

“

men
want to fix you
save you
or fuck you

I can’t be fixed
and I don’t care to be saved

”

- Jeanann Verlee, “men”

"When he sleeps, the snoring does not bother me: the rhythmic growl, gravel shoved across the..."

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:00:55 -0400

“

When he sleeps,
the snoring does not bother me:
the rhythmic growl, gravel shoved
across the sidewalk of his throat.

It is the grasping, desperate way
in which he takes in air—his gulping lungs
as if every dream is filled with water
and he is trying to inflate
the life jacket under his skin.

I babble in my sleep. He believes
I am trying to tell him how my heart works,
says he will translate the manual one day.
I want to ask him: am I the ocean?
Are you drowning in everything
I don’t say when I’m awake?

”

- Sierra DeMulder, “Heart Apnea”

sofiemeanswisdom: french poem (by king_natasha)

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:01:06 -0400

sofiemeanswisdom:

french poem (by king_natasha)

"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving..."

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 22:00:45 -0400

“

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

”

- Aaron Freeman, “You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral”

"I thought leaving you would be easy, just walking out the door but I keep getting pinned against..."

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:00:57 -0400

“I thought leaving you would be easy,
just walking out the door
but I keep getting pinned against it
with my legs around your waist and it’s like
my lips want you like my lungs want air,
it’s just what they where born to do so
I am sitting at work thinking of you
cutting vegetables in my kitchen
your hair in my shower drain
your fingers on my spine in the morning
while we listen to Muddy Waters, I know
you will never be the one I call home
but the way you talk about poems
like marxists talk of revolution
it makes me want to keep trying.
I’m still looking for reasons to love you.
I’m still looking for proof you love me.”

- Clementine von Radics (via clementinevonradics)

My Mother's Hands

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 22:00:28 -0400

How you have spun whole worlds for
me between your fingers, cupped palms.
How you fed me, clothed me, taught me
the shape of trees and bodies and how
to brush my hair without hurting myself,
how I breathe only because you allowed
me to grow in your womb. Thank you for
the bed in your belly, mom. I am sorry for
the pale white scar on your abdomen,
for how I refused to let go, so they forced
you to let go of me first. I am sorry, too,
that I am not going to school to be a doctor
or a lawyer or some kind of engineer, but
your support is like the sun. Crucial. So
this is for your hands, those star-shaped
things that extend outward from your wrists,
that held me, that carried me, that love me.
You said I left scars on your hands, the
good kind that remind you of how things
were. When you open them and hold them
up to the light, I can see the faint outline
of a smaller heart in your palms. You smile,
close your fists. Tell me to never love
anyone without seeing their hands first.

Kristina Hayes

"The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you..."

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 20:01:00 -0400

“The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you reading?’”

- Françoise Sagan, “A Certain Smile”

"kisses are a better fate than wisdom"

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:00:42 -0400

“kisses are a better fate
than wisdom”

- e.e. cummings

"I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 20:00:52 -0400

“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”

- Pablo Neruda

"Once I spoke the language of the flowers. Once I understood each word the caterpillar said. Once I..."

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:00:36 -0400

“Once I spoke the language of the flowers. Once I understood each word the caterpillar said. Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings, and shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed. Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets, and joined the crying of each falling, dying flake of snow. Once I spoke the language of the flowers… How did it go? How did it go?”

- Shel Silverstein

"Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the..."

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 20:00:44 -0400

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay.”

- Janet Fitch

"As it has been said: Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small..."

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 22:00:27 -0400

“As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.”

- Anne Sexton