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nicwaslike.bsky.social
nic
@nicwaslike.bsky.social
72 followers 180 following 25 posts
probably crying over happy things right now
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nicwaslike.bsky.social
i go back to may 1937 by sharon olds #poetry
I Go Back to May 1937 By Sharon Olds I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks, the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its sword-tips aglow in the May air, they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody. I want to go up to them and say Stop, don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman, he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do, you are going to do bad things to children, you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of, you are going to want to die. I want to go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it, her hungry pretty face turning to me, her pitiful beautiful untouched body, his arrogant handsome face turning to me, his pitiful beautiful untouched body, but I don’t do it. I want to live. I take them up like the male and female paper dolls and bang them together at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to strike sparks from them, I say Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
June 14, 2025 at 12:41 AM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
we have not long to love by tennessee williams #poetry
We have not long to love./Light does not stay./The tender things are those/we fold away./Coarse fabrics are the ones/for common wear./In silence I have watched you/comb your hair./Intimate the silence,/dim and warm./I could but did not, reach/to touch your arm./I could, but do not, break/that which is still./(Almost the faintest whisper/would be shrill.)/So moments pass as though/they wished to stay./We have not long to love./A night. A day....
January 10, 2025 at 1:05 AM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
the years by alex dimitrov #poetry
All the parties you spent watching the room from a balcony where someone joined you to smoke then returned. And how it turns out no one had the childhood they wanted, and how they’d tell you this a little drunk, a little slant in less time than it took to finish a cigarette because sad things can’t be explained. Behind the glass and inside, all your friends buzzed. You could feel the shape of their voices. You could tell from their eyes they were in some other place. 1999 or 2008 or last June. Of course, it’s important to go to parties. To make life a dress or a drink or suede shoes someone wears in the rain. On the way home, in the car back, the night sky played its old tricks. The stars arranged themselves quietly. The person you thought of drove under them. Away from the party, (just like you) into the years.
December 31, 2024 at 10:05 PM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
RIP nikki giovanni #poetry
i hope i die/warmed/by the life that i tried/to live
December 10, 2024 at 12:57 PM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
wish by w. s. merwin #poetry
Please one more/kiss in the kitchen/before we turn the lights off.
November 30, 2024 at 9:43 PM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
again and again, even though we know love's landscape, rainer maria rilke #poetry
Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape and the little churchyard with its lamenting names and the terrible reticent gorge in which the others end: again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and again among the flowers, and look up into the sky.
November 27, 2024 at 3:22 PM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
in my dream, kristina mahr #poetry
In my dream you ask me if I’m gone and I say no, I’m right here, you’re the one who’s gone. You laugh. You laugh and you say, look at me. You laugh and you say, how can I be gone? And I echo it back, I echo it back. I look at you and I say, how can you be gone?
December 26, 2023 at 2:50 AM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
from blowing on the wheel by ada limón #poetry
And how mostly we say, Remember that time and we will nod because we do remember that time. Except for the few times we’ve forgotten, like that one time when H was trying to remind us of something and when we asked her what, she said, I don’t know, but you were there and I was there. And we were.
October 22, 2023 at 4:29 PM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
RIP louise glück #poetry
October 13, 2023 at 8:06 PM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
#poetry #storytelling
"But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I'm saying? Does it feel this way to you?" — Kazuo Ishiguro, in his Nobel prize (2017) acceptance speech. (via smiththeteacher)
October 13, 2023 at 12:42 AM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
laura gilpin #poetry
THE TWO-HEADED CALF Laura Gilpin Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum. But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.
October 11, 2023 at 8:22 PM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
#poetry
Matthew Olzmann MOUNTAIN DEW COMMERCIAL DISGUISED AS A LOVE РОЕМ Here's what I've got, the reasons why our marriage might work: Because you wear pink but write poems about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell at your keys when you lose them, and laugh, loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol, gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming. You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents of what you packed were written inside the boxes. Because you think swans are overrated. Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence. Because you underline everything you read, and circle the things you think are important, and put stars next to the things you think I should think are important, and write notes in the margins about all the people you're mad at and my name almost never appears there. Because you make that pork recipe you found in the (cont’d)
October 11, 2023 at 10:00 AM
nicwaslike.bsky.social
really need this one today #poetry
The Thing Is BY ELLEN BASS to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.
October 11, 2023 at 12:30 AM