Julien Baker, Ph. Pedro Becerra

'CURSES OF THE HEART" 🩸

Art By: @xis.lanyx

i am so hungry right now that i could stab a roman emperor and eat a salad made out of his remains

this is what it means to be human

Everything, Mary Oliver

The Breathing, Denise Levertov

A Prayer by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

Like a Small Café, That’s Love by Mahmoud Darwish (translated by Mohammad Shaheen)

Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara

Eating Together by Li-Young Lee

The Orange by Wendy Cope

The Quiet Machine, Ada Limón

To Go Mad, Paruyr Sevak

Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shrieks by Christopher Citro

Hammond B3 Organ Cistern, Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Peace XVIII, Khalil Gibran

Your Unripe Love, Paruyr Sevak (from “Anthology of Armenian poetry")

Here and Now by Peter Balakian

Ich finde dich (I find you) by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

I Want to Write Something So Simply by Mary Oliver

What's Not to Love by Brendan Constantine

Where does such tenderness come from? by Marina Tsvetaeva

You Are Tired (I Think) by E. E. Cummings

Living With the News by W.S.Merwin

What the Living Do by Marie Howe

i care (or do i?)

i wrote something about the burden of concern and care, and how it'll never be enough, and it'll never compare to that one completely perfect person that is always haunting your actions. enjoy.

“i want them to kiss” good for you! i want them tearing each other apart limb from limb just to feel something. i want them creating wounds and scars just to leave a permanent mark on the other. i want them poking and prodding mercilessly at each other’s most vulnerable secrets but keeping them nonetheless.

Jewelry by Moon and Serpent

i don't like what i'm becoming and a part of what i'm becoming antagonises the self-hatred that i use to regress

i grow with the same aches and pains in the same way that the house that i spent my childhood in did - the precise address and house always changing but the energy consistent - with groans as the wind blows past in unrelenting fury, with shudders as the heat boils down and with wails and the rain pummels down on the sturdy rooftop.

i grew steadily, but somehow shakily, like the strong bamboo outside my window yeah survives the tumultuous semantics of weather, yet bends at the lightest touch of breeze.

i wish to be like these childhood homes. steadfast and clean in their pure and joyful energy. i hope and pray as i grow that i can shed behind the parts of myself that i despise and have almost outgrown of, and that i can build myself anew.

i miss my childhood home, actually. even if i moved often as a child. perhaps i miss the simplicity of it all, of life when the most strenuous thing was moving a few streets away.

this is insane

i'm actually going insane because what do you mean the lines blurring between the physical and the mental effects, the "groans and shudders and wails" that might as well be you crying in the language of a building

the bamboo metaphor is absolutely genius because there's so much to unpick. the absolute unpredictable nature of it all? the irony of being able to withstand the harshest things but breaking down so easily when you're vulnerable. no one understands why you're so volatile yet so calm, so emotional and yet an adult in the body of a child. matured too fast, just as bamboo does?? actually incredible you're a genius???

the way this reads like a prayer and a promise is actually making me sick in the best way possible. i love the way it's hopeful but also so tragic. the fucked nostalgia you're capturing is something i've always wanted to describe and the fact that you wrote about this makes me feel understood but. in a way i'm sorry that i'm understood. it shouldn't be like that.

i'm so glad you showed me this because what do you mean you became the stable architecture and you are the house and you are now trying to be the walls that you were never certain would stay up for long enough

i'm so sorry you had to go through this, and i'm sorry that we're both able to bond over it, as beautiful as this poetry is. i'm keeping this one close to me. i hope you can get out of the circumstances one day.

thank you. thank you thank you thank you.

okay but can we talk about run by hozier? it’s so beautiful, so ethereal, so HOZIER

i do enjoy "living weapon" characters but specifically living weapons who did in fact do absolutely horrific things which at least a part of them enjoyed and thought was good and right at the time, and that no amount of not knowing any better or guilt they feel in hindsight will ever make up for. i love living weapons who are "irredeemable", and no it's not their fault that they were made that way or pointed in the directions they were by the hand that wielded them, and yes they are victims, but so were their victims. living weapons who some people will never be able to forgive, but who still wake up every day and try to do better than what's expected of them. a sword that uses its blade to cut wheat to make bread for the people who once lived in fear of its arc falling on their heads.