Related Recs

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someday i’ll love ocean vuong

After Frank O’Hara / After Roger Reeves Ocean, don’t be afraid.  The end of the road is so far ahead  it is already behind us.  Don’t worry. Your father is only your father  until one of you forgets. Like how the spine  won’t remember its wings  no matter how many times our knees  kiss the pavement. Ocean,  are you listening? The most beautiful part  of your body is wherever  your mother’s shadow falls.  Here’s the house with childhood  whittled down to a single red tripwire.  Don’t worry. Just call it horizon & you’ll never reach it.  Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not  a lifeboat. Here’s the man  whose arms are wide enough to gather  your leaving. & here the moment,  just after the lights go out, when you can still see  the faint torch between his legs.  How you use it again & again  to find your own hands.  You asked for a second chance  & are given a mouth to empty into.  Don’t be afraid, the gunfire  is only the sound of people  trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,  get up. The most beautiful part of your body  is where it’s headed. & remember,  loneliness is still time spent  with the world. Here’s  the room with everyone in it.  Your dead friends passing  through you like wind  through a wind chime. Here’s a desk  with the gimp leg & a brick  to make it last. Yes, here’s a room  so warm & blood-close,  I swear, you will wake—  & mistake these walls  for skin.

@capyboppy

May 7, 2024

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for grace, after a party by frank o'hara

You do not always know what I am feeling. Last night in the warm spring air while I was blazing my tirade against someone who doesn't interest         me, it was love for you that set me afire,      and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of strangers my most tender feelings                                   writhe and bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand, isn't there              an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside the bed?  And someone you love enters the room and says wouldn't                   you like the eggs a little different today?                 And when they arrive they are just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather is holding.

@caskeyc

Jan 13, 2025

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letter from tennessee Williams to Donald Windham

Ok - maybe not a poem and I’m stretching the boundaries of this prompt, but it’s an excerpt I always come back to. “I am sitting at my kitchen table waiting for my lover to arrive with lettuce and tomatoes and rum and sherry wine and a big floury loaf of bread in the fading sunlight. Coffee is percolating gently, and my mood is mellow. I have been very happy lately, just wallowing in it selfishly, knowing it will not last very long, which is all the more reason to enjoy it now. I suppose life always ends badly for almost everybody. We must have long fingers and catch at whatever we can while it is passing near us.”

@kubrickbro

Jul 1, 2024

Top Recs from @testtubeadult

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deleting apps

the fewer the better soon i will switch my browsers away from the info-eating tech giants and no one will find me (except when i want to return and be found)

@testtubeadult

Nov 19, 2024

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an object to identify with

for example. at this juncture of my life i am a brick wall. even a fortress, maybe. all obstacle. windows up high, no doors. something is happening inside, deep in the tower’s belly. the soft thing in the antechamber is glowing. it’s hardening like petrified wood. and no one would ever know, because it’s safe there. peaceful. no ego-drunk conquering lords come barreling in, no sad pilgrims, no tax collectors nor gamblers nor drunks nor pretty stable boys with ringlets enter here. the wall is impermeable and unscalable. every armchair explorer that has tried to climb it has given up, released and fallen into the waters below, more welcoming than the altitude. they, like most, were not ready for blisters. the brick wall is a happy wall, a technology without failures. press your face against it, hot from the sun, victorious

@testtubeadult

Nov 24, 2024

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discipline

money is tight this month, so i‘ll be making no further plans. i am telling myself that i will spend as little as possible. i will use my time to practice the solo creative tasks that gnaw away at my brain all day anyway, to journal and reflect, and to struggle to establish something of a routine again, until i can emerge feeling that i have a handle on myself (for now). sometimes it’s fun to be restrictive, reclusive. especially in the winter. during stretches like these, i like to think of myself as a hermit or an ascetic monk.

@testtubeadult

Jan 31, 2024