Push-Pin Glory

Tumblr: Pushpinglory

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 19:11:00 +0000

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I'm on Tumblr. Same name. Same message. Let's see how this works. Let's see what I enjoy. Who reads this? A few. http://www.tumblr.com/blog/pushpinglory

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Maybe Very Happy, by Jack Gilbert

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:16:00 +0000

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“After she died he was seized
by a great curiosity about what
it was like for her. Not that he
doubted how much she loved him.
But he knew there must have been
some things she had not liked.
So he went to her closest friend
and asked what she complained of.
“It’s all right,” he had to keep
saying, “I really won’t mind.”
Until the friend finally gave in.
“She said sometimes you made a noise
drinking your tea if it was very hot.””

-- Maybe Very Happy, by Jack Gilbert

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Buy Literary Jounrals from NewPages

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:52:00 +0000

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You can buy literary magazines and journals from NewPages new online store! What a great idea. I feel like it makes it easier to peruse different options without having to hop from website to website: could open up worlds for people looking for new options.

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Mark Garry Rainbows

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:48:00 +0000

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Mark Garry installs hundreds of threads just so: when the light hits them just right, the many strands create rainbows. There’s something about the meticulous nature of the project and the beautiful result – what if we engineered rainbows in each nook of a home? All that color ....

I’m consistently impressed with artists’ logic: the initial idea and then to execute it. There’s such discipline and hard work involved.

More images and the rest of the story is available at My Modern Net.

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Obama & Omar

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:43:00 +0000

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President Obama says Omar is the best character from The Wire?

Man with a moral code (albeit unconventional)?

Man who unabashedly loves other men? "Man gotta have a code."

Defies stereotypes? Fearless Robin Hood of the hood?

Indeed.

Good job, Mr. President.

Source = Grantland

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Staircase of Notes

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:37:00 +0000

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Stroll up those stairs & click those notes.

(I just can't get over all of the color & all of those shapes & just what exists after the last step.)

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Faith47, Cape Town

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:34:00 +0000

What I like about this Cape Town graffiti is not just the slope of the horse

& the drip of paint but the words to the right:

"I'm fond of you."

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Emily Dickinson "Forever is composed of nows"

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:29:00 +0000

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“Forever is composed of nows.”

- Emily Dickinson

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Nikki Giovanni

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 08:28:00 +0000

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She knows who she is because she knows who she isn't. -- Nikki Giovanni

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I wish you were here, dear

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 05:38:00 +0000

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I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish I knew no astronomy
when stars appear,
when the moon skims the water
that sighs and shifts in its slumber.
I wish it were still a quarter
to dial your number.

Brodsky

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Self Portrait as Blizzard

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 03:52:00 +0000

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"Self Portrait as Blizzard"

by Jennifer Yeatts

"...& you’ll love
the dumb, early dark harder than ever...."

Read the rest of the poem at Linebreak

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Gyote Cover: Somebody that I Used to Know

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 01:08:00 +0000

Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover)

"You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness...."

How could you not love the voices, the strumming, and this take on the Gotye song?

Now you're just somebody that I used to know....

Boardwalk Empire: You Can't Be Half a Gangster

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:10:00 +0000

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Let’s see; let’s see! What do I do when the choke-hold of a to-do list gets to me? I start a new television show and dissolve into it.

This week’s choice: Boardwalk Empire.

I didn’t like it all that much at first: felt like it might break my heart or disappoint. Been watching too much Mad Men & The Wire: is there any hope for these anti-heroes?

& then I encounter two characters that I couldn’t quite shake.

Margaret Rohan Schroeder is unforgettable and hooked me in right away. She is played well by by Kelly MacDonald: subservient to the times and bias towards her gender and immigrant status but with an independent and fierce streak (watch an early episode when she champions the woman’s right to vote to a Senator, and you can feel the spark behind the banter).

Kelly MacDonald also played the unforgettable maid in Gosford Park (oh, Clive Owen, how you smolder). It’s no wonder she’s the voice of Pixar’s feminist spin on the princess tale (in one trailer, we see Merida literally rip her too-tight dress so she can win her own hand in marriage: let’s goooo).

& then there is Jimmy Darmody: the kid who pulled himself up by the bootstraps, made it to Princeton, and then ran away fight a war (his personal demons as well as his country’s). I wouldn't give pretty-boy Michael Pitt a second look in real life, but he burns in Boardwalk Empire.

Talk about an anti-hero: mother had him when she was 13, ruined by the war and dysfunction (“I am what time and circumstance made me”), smart but tortured. It’s a young Don Draper. The photographs won’t do him justice. You have to see him chew his jaw, hear the way he shapes stories, and watch the snap of violence that fills him.

His demons fill him, and yet there is kindness. The viewer should hate this murderer, but they can't help but root for him.

& did I mention that I was both lured into The Wire & had to take a break because Season 4 hits too close to home? Well, one of my favorite characters is Omar: the Robin Hood of the streets of Baltimore who defines three-dimensional character (he’s openly gay, has a moral code – if less than traditional – and remains fiercely independent in a world run by crews and gangs).

Well, he’s in Boardwalk Empire, and I dare you to try and look away in the scene where he talks about his father’s bookshelves (also, peep the bow-ties).

The above characters hooked me into the show, and now it fills me. Comparisons to The Sopranos are unfair. For me, it's all about the characters. I can’t help but hope Margaret Schroeder makes it out alive.

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Hurricanes:

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:11:00 +0000

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When I was young, a loved one said, “LB, you are a hurricane.” It was part-compliment and part-insult. You know the sort. My hair, my heart, my spirit, all of that approaching and retreating: the reasoning pinned behind the smile and joke. I was wild enough to laugh and undercut the tension, ignore the razored truth.

When I was not so young, I nearly lost my best friend to that wild mess in NOLA. Even later, I lived in that glorious city and felt her hum well after the fact. Violence punctures so much. It wasn’t the carcass districts or wards. It was the people. The rocking chair in the middle of a lot. It was the stain water and oil left. It was the lots that old men sat in, and the stories people clipped between classifieds-like post office updates.

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"Hymn to a Hurricane"
by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

For the grace of fingers that could not grasp edges,
corners, or anchors. For hands that were too wet
to bridge the chasm of inches or rope. For the wrist
and its bending digits, for the drowned infants
who floated like wood past the dark hulls
of their mothers' bodies.

For the days-old corpses of women and men
whose wheelchairs became graves. For children
who were too shocked to speak their identities;
for the ghosts of their voices that haunt the flag
to which they were taught to pledge allegiance.

For the rainbows that assembled in their waters
diseased with gasoline and blood. For the voices
whose rage thundered like thunder inside the stadium
because they refused the musky death of animals.

For the men who fired guns at helicopters that passed over
their own nearly submerged heads. Over and over the blades whirred
promises of water and bread and help while mothers and daughters,
brothers and fathers drowned, their lives devoured by neglect.

Lives gave up on the living and floated to dark, drier islands.
Torrents rose over broken levees. Dead cattle bobbed along
interstates. Highways unfurled into ribbons and graves. The President
remained on vacation. The Secretary of State shopped for shoes.

For Charmaine Neville who commandeered down Canal Street
while storefronts shattered and bodies were raped. Helpless fists pounded
the bus window like bullets. For the junkies who needed something
stronger than death or a dream to placate their addictions.
For the residents who refused to abandon the corpse of New Orleans.

For a husband who could not save his entire family
because he only had two hands. For their house split
in half by water. For his wife’s last words: you can’t hold on
and hold me. For the absence of God as she dropped his hands
and gave herself like a petal to the gulf.

For her son who understood, as he climbed onto the roof
by the help of two trembling hands, that his father, only
a man and not a god, could not save his mother's life
from something as inexplicable as water.

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How Am I Doing, Really -- Jane Yolen

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:15:00 +0000

How Am I Doing, Really?

You do not want me to answer that,
for it would mean peeling back my skin
splitting open my chest bones,
revealing a heart that still beats
though it is half the size it once was.
It would mean sawing off the top of my skull
and shaking out pieces of my brain
which hardly functions right, left
are memories, the latest ones first,
like daguerreotypes nestled in a velvet lining,
you dead on the bed, your head to one side,
mouth open, an image that is with me always.

How am I doing, really? Really well
on the outside, so that everyone seeing me
murmurs, "So brave, so astonishing,"
while inside I am climbing onto that last bed,
spooning my body around yours,
and dying even more slowly than you did.

--Jane Yolen

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/balladsofmirth/

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:53:00 +0000

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I'm pinning things on Pinterest: addicting. Clickity Click: http://pinterest.com/balladsofmirth/

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It just sneaks up on you, those carefully controlled experiences, &

they explode on you so that you've got a whole lot of beauty and grit on your heart and mind.

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I accidentally ate the whole thing

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 02:57:00 +0000

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My weekends in Boston are full. I saw the 13- and 14-year olds I mentor thrive in our leadership program, visited with a former staff member & snarked about his stoop kid life – Hey Arnold reference FTW – celebrated a friend’s birthday, ran around in the snow – lazy Halloween costume due to sickness: Freudian Slip – had an awkward-funny cab ride with my best friend & roommate, visited Pawtucket, played spoons & managed only to bruise my thumb (the usual tackling/table-turning did not happen) & more. I’m looking forward to Monday – maybe the only person in the world who is – because I have nothing planned aside from working from home.

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From Mental Floss’s “14 More Words without Englsh Equivalents.”

1. Shemomedjamo (Georgian)
You know when you’re really full, but your meal is just so delicious, you can’t stop eating it? The Georgians feel your pain. This word means, “I accidentally ate the whole thing.”

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There is light in darkness, you just have to find it.

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:10:00 +0000

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“There is light in darkness, you just have to find it.”

-- bell hooks

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Eve's Sestina for Adam -- Lucy Anderton

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:55:00 +0000

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Eve's Sestina for Adam

Lucy Anderton

I wanted the blood from the lip you'd bite
open for me. I wanted the soft back
of your knee that glowed like an otter's eye,
the flag of hair you'd throw out through the wild
sky, singing praises to Him through the air.
Clearly put, I was not born to be one

more pretty poppy in that garden. One
more handful of fruit just for you to bite,
a patch of dirt where you could plant your heirs.
I was a song you had to put your back
into. The first born fairy. Artless, wild
and bare. And I wanted more than my eye

Click for the Rest of the Poem

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The Pianist

Artist = Lim Heng Swee

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Love is an action -- bell hooks

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:20:00 +0000

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Love is an action.

-- bell hooks

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siken's reckless prayer

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:34:00 +0000

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"you've discovered something you

don't even have a name for."

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the soil turns with its vocabulary

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 18:42:00 +0000

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Postscript

It’s not words we need tonight, but the antidote
to what has already been said. Yes, there’s a man
sitting lakeside in an idling car. Yes, there’s
a slug crossing a road in the rain, and a drugstore
where people sway like tropical leaves—in a wind
that thinks of antibacterial soap and condoms,
a two liter of coke. Yes, my father is dying
and the soil turns with its vocabulary
of beetles, its glistening, diamond vowels. Yes,
any face is a temporary face, and God knows
enough about when the mangoes must turn red,
when the garbage man must wake in the dark.
Here. There. A bowl left out in the rain. We fill it
with so many thoughts. As if afraid to merely live
in love. As if even this fear belonged to us.

Sam Taylor

via Grammatolatry

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Poetry & Texting -- Carol Ann Duffy

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 22:06:00 +0000

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"The poem is a form of texting ... it's the original text," says Carol Ann Duffy. "It's a perfecting of a feeling in language – it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is. We've got to realise that the Facebook generation is the future – and, oddly enough, poetry is the perfect form for them. It's a kind of time capsule – it allows feelings and ideas to travel big distances in a very condensed form."

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heavenly body speaks for

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 22:02:00 +0000

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from Alabama Inmate Notes | Richard Hamilton

The job is taxing clanking on the bars we all agree we need some new work boots and yet and more over we need a new outlook Sir it is one hundred degrees in here and the air is obscene as well as our knees hurt where our heavenly body speaks to us and nothing Sir to scratch our dreams on the wall with and there Sir is another rape another fucking suicide goes underreported and guards scream bust your head if you buck and some of us live Sir in San Francisco where the smells are all kind brown and blue musk that in our dreams fuses railroad a chain of events Sir that lead here and suppose us dead and deserving we all agree we have families we hurt in real life we step out of line we talk shit eat watermelon on Independence Day as well as find our handcuffs birdcalls women or booze until the sun goes down our feet bar after bar Sir as the clanking renews itself as we take lint from the laundry room to cot with us we all agree as we ink we blot out we meld we murder we assemble for chow with each clanking bar our heavenly body speaks of.

***Click to Read the Rest of the Poem***

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We’re human beings, my son, almost birds, public heroes and secrets

noreply@blogger.com (LBeezee) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:56:00 +0000

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GODZILLA IN MEXICO

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003)

Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one even noticed.
The air carried poison through
the streets and open windows.
You’d just finished eating and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the bedroom next door
when I realized we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn’t tell you we were on death’s program
but instead that we were going on a journey,
one more, together, and that you shouldn’t be afraid.
When it left, death didn’t even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week or year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big rotten soup of chance?
We’re human beings, my son, almost birds,
public heroes and secrets.

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