Anis Mojgani, “Here I Am,” Songs From Under The River

PSA:

1. If you are not silly, it is vital you become silly

2. If you are silly, you must stay silly

2. If you used to be silly but have stopped, you must make all efforts to return to silliness

The Zen of La Llorona

by Deborah Miranda

La Llorona rises over my town– a solitary curve, sharpened by someone else’s fury. I read a small gray Zen book Everyone loses everything. Lovers, families, friends, possessions, egos– we keep nothing of this world, not even our bodies. It’s as if you’d lost your favorite teacup, you see. No amount of searching, weeping or wailing will bring it back. If you want a drink, use a different container. Write a long series of passionate poems about your cup. Hell, write a whole book. Obsession is the mother of creation. But as you compose, sip from the new mug. It will become your mug of choice. You’ll lose that one, too. And so on. In theory, anyway, we outlast dispossession: Ceramic mugs, hearts, continents. Outside, La Llorona’s knife slices the indigo heart of silence. Nonsense, she howls. There’s always something left to lose.

“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.”

— James Baldwin, Conversations with James Baldwin

And i dream too much and i don't write enough and I'm trying to find God everywhere.

Charles Bukowski // John Lennon // Falling Star by Witold Pruskowski // Sylvia Plath // Jason Bayani // Aldous Huxley // The Beyond by Jairo Guerrero // Anne Carson // Friedrich Nietzsche // Florence and The Machine // Anis Mojgani

Fathers, sons, flight—as far as fathers go, no one would rank Daedalus as World’s #1 Dad. Why didn’t he and his son Icarus make their famous flight at night? Moonlight won’t melt wax. But I think Daedalus knew exactly what he was doing. Had they flown by moonlight, we wouldn’t have learned of the consequences of ambition unmatched by ability. And Brueghel would not have painted the shepherds and farmers not seeing Icarus splash into the sea, and Auden would not have written “how everything turns away / quite leisurely from the disaster.”

The Harvest Moon rises tonight and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

from abell 2218 by eric gamalinda, published in amigo warfare: poems

[Text ID: I use my body to find love. I eat all the wrong foods. I believe what I see with my own two eyes. Fear eats me. I have to look for a job. I can sprint faster than sound. I burn forever, I have no end. /End ID]

There are manmade joys beyond my comprehension, too. The horrors aren’t special.

Artwork: Hu Jundi

* * * *

“I’ll try to sleep now. What’s sleep? What’s this magical death spread with the names of the vine? A body, lead heavy, is thrown into a cotton cloud by sleep. A body that soaks up sleep as an uncared-for plant absorbs the scent of dew.”

— Mahmoud Darwish, from Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (tr. Ibrahim Muhawi)

[Belles-lettres]

May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude

[Text ID: Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass.

Let it go.]