Reading of “Your Heart is Too Big”
“Your heart is too big. No one will respect you that much. Your heart is too big. No one can kiss you that much. Your heart is too big, so someone will break it smaller, so you can live with less in your heart, and your expectation is less taller” - Daily Poetry by Charlyne Yi
“ Learn how to say “no”.
Cram that word inside your mouth,
the whole thing, make sure all of it
gets in there. Let it walk on your tongue.
Practice with it in the mirror, push it
out, make faces, learn to love the salt
and bitter of it. Teach it to perch on your lip,
buzz, collect pollen from your sugary gloss.
Make it swarm between your cheeks. ”
Jeanann Verlee, ‘Swarm’ (via thatkindofwoman)
(Source: loverofstories)
“ Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star-shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die. ”
Mary Elizabeth Frye
“ My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing,
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going. ”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Fox Is Black » ‘The Puti Trees’ by Nod Young
Based on the text of two poems from the Zen Buddhist tome Platform Sutra, The Puti Tree teaches “not to believe all that which exists, not even the reflection of ourselves in a mirror”. It’s a teaching that hopes to bring a state of Zen. According to the poem, one must attempt to release themselves from the perceived limitations of existence. For Young, this is also something that can help bring creative freedom. “It is difficult to achieve true creative freedom”, he said when discussing this work, “we are overly concerned with aesthetics and meaning.”
Nicole Dextras: Ice Typography and Green Words | Design Milk
Poem was a grass text planted in the Touchstone Gallery during the SALT: The Distillation of Matter exhibition. The intent was to produce a root casting of the word poem; the soil and the growth as the root of poetic inspiration throughout history.
“ Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid. ”
Langston Hughes
THE DANCE OF THE THIRTEEN SKELETONS
In a snow-enshrouded graveyard
gripped by winter’s bitter chill,
not a single soul is stirring,
all is silent, all is still
till a distant bell tolls midnight
and the spirits work their will.For emerging from their coffins
buried deep beneath the snow,
thirteen bony apparitions
now commence their spectral show,
and they gather in the moonlight
undulating as they go.They shake their flimsy shoulders
and they flex their fleshless knees
and they nod their skulls in greeting
in the penetrating breeze
as they form an eerie circle
near the gnarled and twisted trees.They link their spindly fingers
as they promenade around
casting otherworldly shadows
on the silver-mantled ground
and their footfalls in the snowdrift
make a soft, susurrous sound.The thirteen grinning skeletons
continue on their way
as to strains of soundless music
they begin to swing and sway
and they circle ever faster
in their ghastly roundelay.Faster, faster ever faster
and yet faster now they race,
winding, whirling, ever swirling
in the frenzy of their pace
and they shimmer in the moonlight
as they spin themselves through space.Then as quickly as it started
their nocturnal dance is done
for the bell that is their signal
loudly tolls the hour of one
and they bow to one another
in their bony unison.Then they vanish to their coffins
by their ghostly thoroughfare
and the emptiness of silence
once more fills the frosted air
and the snows that mask their footprints
show no sign that they were there.
—Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Arnold Lobel
