Button Poetry Quotes

Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street... Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.

A FEATHER. A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive.

My heart is small, like a love of buttons or black pepper.

She tends the fire Burning his letters. They turn black like thin mourning dresses. Yellow names, leaping; above them a blonde woman's hair on her bare shoulders. Red hollow glowing beneath. Illusion of passion. Like fragile layers of widow weeds, matted bluish, shiny, worn and buttons, yes, cheap buttons and words. Her fingers touch the smooth skin on her breasts. She tends the fire.

To Have Without Holding: Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch, to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can't do it, you say it's killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor's buttons blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced.

He nearly called you again last night. Can you imagine that, after all this time? He can. He imagines calling you or running into you by chance. Depending on the weather, he imagines you in one of those cotton dresses of yours with flowers on it or in faded blue jeans and a thick woollen button-up cardigan over a checkered shirt, drinking coffee from a mug, looking through your tortoiseshell glasses at a book of poetry while it rains. He thinks of you with your hair tied back and the characteristic sweet scent on your neck. He imagines you this way when he is on the train, in the supermarket, at his parents' house, at night, alone, and when he is with a woman. He is wrong, though. You didn't read poetry at all. He had wanted you to read poetry, but you didn't. If pressed, he confesses to an imprecise recollection of what it was you read and, anyway, it wasn't your reading that started this. It was the laughter, the carefree laughter, the three-dimensional Coca-Cola advertisement that you were, the try-anything-once friends, the imperviousness to all that came before you, the chain telephone calls, the in-jokes, the instant music, the sunlight you carried with you, the way he felt when you spoke to his parents, the introductory undergraduate courses, the inevitability of your success, the beach houses, ...

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don’t regret those. Not the nights you called god names and cursed your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,b chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness. You were meant to inhale those smoky nights over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches. You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here. Regret none of it, not one of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing, when the lights from the carnival rides were the only stars you believed in, loving them for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved. You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Poetry's Reset Button [10w] Creating poetry is pressing a reset button for your mind.

Some make bombs for domination, Some make bombs for survival. Either way someone pushes a button, Innocents wind up dead as collateral.

You cannot kill a monster until you are willing to see it in the mirror. Until you recognize its shape in your own skin.

As for the public, the PR man, like the advertising expert and others who deal with people in the lump, including a number of would-be-statesmen and redeemers-at-large, conceive of that body as composed of non-ideographic units which are to be regarded not as ourselves but as, ultimately, gadgets of electrochemical circuitry operated by a push-button system of remote control. In fact, in dealing with the public in a purely technological society, the very notion of self is bypassed by various appeals to an undifferentiated unconscious, such appeals often having little or no relation to the vendible object or idea; in this connection history gives us to contemplate the fact that the psychologist J.B. Watson, the founder of American behaviorism, wound up in the advertising business. So history may become parable.

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes" First, her tippet made of tulle, easily lifted off her shoulders and laid on the back of a wooden chair. And her bonnet, the bow undone with a light forward pull. Then the long white dress, a more complicated matter with mother-of-pearl buttons down the back, so tiny and numerous that it takes forever before my hands can part the fabric, like a swimmer’s dividing water, and slip inside. You will want to know that she was standing by an open window in an upstairs bedroom, motionless, a little wide-eyed, looking out at the orchard below, the white dress puddled at her feet on the wide-board, hardwood floor. The complexity of women’s undergarments in nineteenth-century America is not to be waved off, and I proceeded like a polar explorer through clips, clasps, and moorings, catches, straps, and whalebone stays, sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness. Later, I wrote in a notebook it was like riding a swan into the night, but, of course, I cannot tell you everything— the way she closed her eyes to the orchard, how her hair tumbled free of its pins, how there were sudden dashes whenever we spoke. What I can tell you is it was terribly quiet in Amherst that Sabbath afternoon, nothing but a carriage passing the house, a fly buzzing in a windowpane. So I could plainly hear her inhale when I undid the very top hook-and-eye fastener of her corset and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed, the way some readers sigh when they realize that Hope has feathers, that Reason is a plank, that Life is a loaded gun that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

Maybe you are a dancer moving to the sound of your own future; or a musician banging strumming bowing plucking blowing into, creating soundtracks for dream trains chugging along through thick night; or a painter spilling and splattering confessions across the face of stretched canvas; or an actor praying at the altar of your alter ego; or a photographer, finger on the button like a quick-draw cowboy, shooting not to kill anyone but to preserve forever; or maybe even a writer for some strange reason, writing expert books, pages of good intention and rah-rah and fantasy and sometimes truth, or maybe even letters to people you don't know but do know you love.

I love you, I need you, I want you, I go to sleep thinking about you and wake up with your voice winding through my head, I look at you, and I can't focus, the whole world shimmers, I'm ashamed, I'm angry, I'm in love, I'm mad, I'm happy, I'm dead, I'm alive, I'm stupid, I'm tongue-tied, I'm writing you letters, I'm tearing them up, I'm writing you letters again, I'm idealising you, I'm humiliating you, I'm undressing you, I'm looking into your eyes, I'm kissing your eyes, I'm pressing you against a wall, you're pushing back, you're pushing back, your body wants mine, you kiss my mouth, you bite my lip, you draw blood, you're on fire, you're on fire, your eyes are flame, your hair is flame, the whole world shimmers and I burn and I burn with love ... the whole world shimmers - and the night - and the sky - and your voice shimmers - I've no wit, I've no mind, I've no brake, I've no self-control, I've no shame, I've no authority over myself, I can wait hours for just one glimpse of you and then not speak to you at all, how can I speak, how can I speak to you, I can't speak, I can't stop speaking, I can't stop looking, I can't look, I make you an object, I desire you, I write to you, I write for you, I tear up everything I have ever written for you or about you, I burn myself alive for you, I worship you, I strip you, I clothe you, I do up the tiniest buttons at your sleeve, I embrace your wrist, I embrace your neck, I kiss the back of your neck, I embrace your wrist, I'm speechless, speechless, all I can say is I want - I want - I want - there is no poetry - there is no structure that can make any sense of this - only I want - I want - I want - I want you, Roxane.

What if I were turned on by seemingly innocent words such as “scumble,” “pinky,” or “extrapolate?” What if I maneuvered conversation in the hope that others would pronounce these words? Perhaps the excitement would come from the way the other person touched them lightly and carelessly with his tongue. What if “of” were such a hot button? “Scumble of bushes.” What if there were a hidden pleasure in calling one thing by another’s name?

We stood up on two legs And raised our heads above golden grass He was there We sharpened stone and steel Used tools to harvest grass, beast and brother He was there We clustered together In brick and mud swarming with rats and plague He was there We built nations and mistrust Our fingers hovered over the red button He smiled Still we build To rise above the golden grass Away from the reach of his scythe When he will harvest no more

KUNDALINI DANCE Dark and cold and wet were Her hands I felt Her chilly breath inside my throat Her claws deep inside trying to find traces of Fear within me I stayed still Accepting Opening Receiving Within a moment She was inside Two fingers below My belly button In there She found no traces of shivers no traces of resistance, no traces of weakness just clear pure Passage-Way Then She grew into Her most powerful Self She stood undisturbed, unmoved, unchanged Totally free and She screamed AAAAAUUUUUUMMM From the centre of the earth, Through the tunnels of the caves, To the surface of the volcanoes AAAAUUUUUUMMMM To open: Mountain tops untouched by clouds and rain Cherry fields in their full blossom A dog running after a train filled with the excitement A witch laughing at passers-by mirroring their paranoia Death looking us in the eyes searching for the chosen Few Capable to see the Key behind Her magic veil

Well in no particular order... I love you, I need you, I want you, I go to sleep thinking about you and wake up with your voice winding through my head, I look at you and I can't focus, the whole world shimmers, I'm ashamed, I'm angry, I'm in love, I'm mad, I'm happy, I'm dead, I'm alive, I'm stupid, I'm tongue-tied, I'm writing you letters, I'm tearing them up, I'm writing you letters again, I'm idealising you, I'm humiliating you, I'm undressing you, I'm looking into your eyes, I'm kissing your eyes, I'm pressing you against a wall, you're pushing back, your body wants mine, you kiss my mouth, you bite my lip, you draw blood, you're on fire, you're on fire, your eyes are flame, your hair is flame, the whole world shimmers and I burn and I burn with love -- the whole world shimmers - and the night - and the sky - and your voice shimmers - I've no wit, I've no mind, I've no brake, I've no self-control, I've no shame, I've no authority over myself, I can wait hours for just one glimpse of you then not speak to you at all, how can I speak, how can I speak to you, I can't speak, I can't stop speaking, I can't stop looking, I can't look, I make you an object, I desire you, I write to you, I write for you, I tear up everything I have ever written for you or about you, I burn myself alive for you, I worship you, I strip you, I clothe you, I do up the tiniest buttons at your sleeve, I embrace your wrist, I embrace your neck, I kiss the back of your neck, I embrace your wrist, I'm speechless, speechless, all I can say is I want - I want - I want - there is no poetry - there is no structure that can make any sense of this - only I want - I want - I want - I want you, Roxanne.

In our hands we hold the shadow of our hands. The night is kind―the others do not see us holding our shadow. We reinforce the night. We watch ourselves. So we think better of others. The sea still seeks our eyes and we are not there. A young girl buttons up her love in her breast and we look away smiling at the great distance. Perhaps high up, in the starlight, a skylight opens up that looks out on the sea, the olive trees and the burnt houses― We listen to the butterfly gyrating in the glass of All Soul’s Day, and the fisherman’s daughter grinding serenity in her coffee- grinder.

A book on steam engine design lay next to one of poems by the poet laureate Tennyson. Lenore traced the poetry book’s cover design. A finely made book with its gold-tooled leather and gilt-edged vellum pages. A beautiful book. An expensive one given to her by a man who’d likely spent three months’ hard-earned wages to obtain it. Lenore made a mournful sound in her throat. Nathaniel. She closed her eyes, remembering his ready smile and eyes as blue as bachelor’s button. She thought of him every day, but lately, in the weeks following her father’s death, he was constantly on her mind.

They went on in this way for nine years. And then, one autumn day, it ended. Freddy had changed, of course, from a twenty-five-year-old to a man in his midthirties: a high school teacher in blue short-sleeved button-ups and black ties, whom Less jokingly called Mr. Pelu (often raising his hand as if to be called on in class). Mr. Pelu had kept his curls, but his glasses were now red plastic. He could no longer fit his slim clothes; he had filled out from that skinny youngster into a grown man, with shoulders and a chest and a softness just beginning on in his belly. He no longer stumbled drunk up Less's stairs and recited bad poetry every weekend.

I sure do like this sculpture.” Jolene smiled at the newcomer. “Well, hello, Lou.” The Devil sent her a narrow-eyed look. “Hello, vile woman.” “You buttoned up your shirt wrong,” Jolene told him. “What?” he squeaked, peeking down at the shirt. Realizing she was kidding, he flattened his lips. “See, vile.” Jolene rolled her eyes. “Let it go, Lou.” Sensing there was more to this than the shirt comment, Harper asked, “Let what go? What did you do, Grams?” Jolene tipped her chin at Lou. “He was in a bad mood, so thought I’d take him to a nice, calming atmosphere to cheer him up. Only there is no cheering him up.” Harper wasn’t buying that innocent act for a single second. “Where did you take him?” “To a poetry recital.” Lou’s face hardened. “The words hardly ever rhymed! How is that poetry?” And it clearly drove his OCD streak crazy.

Nocturne" After a friend has gone I like the feel of it: The house at night. Everyone asleep. The way it draws in like atmosphere or evening. One-o-clock. A floral teapot and a raisin scone. A tray waits to be taken down. The landing light is off. The clock strikes. The cat comes into his own, mysterious on the stairs, a black ambivalence around the legs of button-back chairs, an insinuation to be set beside the red spoon and the salt-glazed cup, the saucer with the thick spill of tea which scalds off easily under the tap. Time is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider on the dining-room window has fallen asleep among complexities as I will once the doors are bolted and the keys tested and the switch turned up of the kitchen light which made outside in the back garden an electric room -- a domestication of closed daisies, an architecture instant and improbable.

বাড়িটা চাঁদের আলোয় ঝিলমিল করছিল বাড়িটা চাঁদের আলোয় ঝিলমিল করছিল । আর তার মধ্যে ঝিলমিল করছিল আহ্লাদ, আমার খুকি উজ্বল । আহ্লাদে ঝিলমিল বাড়ির ভেতরে ঝিলমিল চাঁদের আলোর সঙ্গে, আমার খুকিকে আশীর্বাদ করো আমার খুকিকে আশীর্বাদ করো উজ্বল, আ্‌লাদে ঝিলমিল আমার খুকিকে আশীর্বাদ করো বাড়ির মধ্যে চাঁদের আলোয় ঝিলমিল। ওর প্রিয় বর উল্লসিত হতে ভালোবাসে যখন ভাবে আর সে সব সময়েই ভাবে যখন জানতে পারে আর সে সব সময় জানে যে ওর আশীর্বাদপুত বউই এখানে যাকিছু আর ও পুরোটাই ওর বউয়ের, আর তার সঙ্গে সেঁটে থাকে আশীর্বাদপূত খুকির মতন । যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম, পিকাসোর একটা সম্পন্ন প্রতিকৃতি আমি যদি ওকে বলতুম ও কি পছন্দ করত । ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম। ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি নেপোলিয়ান হতেন নেপোলিয়ান হতেন হতেন ও পচন্দ করত। যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি ওকে বলতুম যদি বলতুম যদি নেপোলিয়ান । ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম যদি বলতুম যদি নেপোলিয়ান । ও কি পছন্দ করত যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম । যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি নেপোলিয়ান যদি ওকে বলতুম । যদি ওকে বলতুম ও কি পছন্দ করত ও কি পচন্দ করত যদি আমি ওকে বলতুম । এখন । এখন নয় । আর এখন । এখন । ঠিক যেমন যেমন রাজারা । পুরোটা অনুভব করতে পারে । রাজাদের মতন হুবহু । তাই তোমাকে খোঁজা

The truth is that I'd gain nothing by being a saint after being dead, an artist is what I am, and the only thing I want is to be alive so I can keep going along at donkey level in this six-cylinder touring car I bought from the marines' consul, with this Trinidadian chauffeur who was a baritone in the New Orleans pirates' opera, with my genuine silk shirts, my Oriental lotions, my topaz teeth, my flat straw hat, and my bicolored buttons, sleeping without an alarm clock, dancing with beauty queens, and leaving them hallucinated with my dictionary rhetoric, and with no flutter in my spleen if some Ash Wednesday my faculties wither away, because in order to go on with this life of a minister, all I need is my idiot face, and I have more than enough with the string of shops I own from here to beyond the sunset, where the same tourists who used to go around collecting from us through the admiral, now go stumbling after my autographed pictures, almanacs with my love poetry, medals with my profile, bits of my clothing, and all of that without the glorious plague of spending all day and all night sculpted in equestrian marble and shat on by swallows like the fathers of our country.

When she pushes the button, the secretary will say, "Yes?" from a thousand miles away, and Beverly will say, "Something violent happened here," she among us understanding this is one way the violent get you: not by coming for you, but by leaving you behind.

The wise will go upstairs, undo buttons and hair, fold themselves within the covenant of flesh and make love wilder than any weather. — Bob Hicok, from “Weather,” The Legend of Light (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995)

I’ve told a journal how I feel about you, Out of fear of how you’d react In the event of telling you. Through past experiences, the happiest Times I’ve had occurred when I kept them To myself. I’ve told this journal everything about you & We’ve traveled page after page In endless vacation. How we’ve experienced things we both thought We’d never experience. How the food you normally scrunch your nose up at Turned out to be some of the best things you ever tasted & how badly I wanted to be laid out on that plate. To be the reason you sit back and undo the top Button on your jeans. The reason you tell your friends to come visit, Your return trip back. I’ve told a journal how I feel about you, Out of fear of how you’d react. Once I tell you, the you that I’ve come To know and love will no longer be existent & all I’ll have is another journal entry

I live my life by the snooze button I have long smacked my fingerprints away Mornings will never be anything but a jerk to me

The Poetry of Summer Squash There's cymbling squash pattypan squash scallop squash sunburst squash granny squash custard squash white squash button squash schwoughksie squash ~ gosh, they're all the same thing ~ but it they're really teeny we call'em scallopini.

Rural Free Delivery (RFD) Home, upon that word drops the sunshine of beauty and the shadow of tender sorrows, the reflection of ten thousand voices and fond memories. This is a mighty fine old world after all if you make yourself think so. Look happy even if things are going against you— that will make others happy. Pretty soon all will be smiling and then there is no telling what can’t be done. Coca-Cola Girl Mother baked a fortune cake pale yellow icing, lemon drops round rim, hidden within treasures, a ring—you’ll be married, a button—stay a bachelor, a thimble—always a spinster, and a penny—you’re rich. Gee, but I am hungry. Wait a second, dear, until I pull my belt up another notch. There that’s better. So, you see, Hon, I am straighter than a string around a bundle. You ought to see my eye, it’s a peach. I am proud of it, looks like I’ve been kicked by a mule. You know, dear, that they can kick hard enough to knock all the soda out of a biscuit without breaking the crust Hogging Catfish This gives you a fighting chance. Noodle your right hand into their gills, hold on tight while you grunt him out of the water. This can be a real dogfight. Old river cat wants to go down deep, make you bottom feed. Like I said, boys, when you tell a whopper, say it like you believe it. Saturday Ritual My Granddad was a cobbler. We each owned two pairs of shoes, Sunday shoes and everyday shoes. When our Sunday shoes got worn they became our everyday shoes. Main Street Saturday Night We each were given a dime on Saturday opening a universe of possibilities. All the stores stayed open and people flocked into town. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds set up a popcorn stand on Reinheimer’s corner and soon after lighting a little stove, sounding like small firecrackers, popping began. Dad, laughing shooting the breeze with a group of farmers, drinking Coca Cola, finding out if any sheds needed to be built or barns repaired, discussing the price of next year’s seed, finding out who’s really working, who’s just looking busy. There is no object I wouldn’t give to relive my childhood growing up in Delavan— where everyone knew everyone— and joy came with but a dime. Market Day Jim Pittsford’s grocery smelled of bananas ripening and the coffee he ground by hand, wonderful smoked ham and bacon fresh sliced. He’d reward the child who came to pick up the purchase, with a large dill pickle Biking home, skillfully balancing Jim Pittsford’s bacon, J B’s tomatoes and peaches, while sniffing a tantalizing spice rising from fresh warm rolls, I nibbled my pickle reward.

Soon your ashes fly to the veterans’ cemetery at Arlington, where once a Confederate general would have counted you among his mules and pigs. This poet’s coat is your last poem. I want to write a poem like this coat, with buttons and pockets and green cloth, a poem useful as a coat to a coughing man.

we are the generation surviving with overloaded information, we have access to all the love songs in the world, to the stories of love, poetry on hate, articles on relationships - they are all just a button away but, we are the generation humiliating love.

« No water so still as the dead fountains of Versailles ». No swan, with swart blind look askance and gondoliering legs, so fine as the chintz china one with fawn- brown eyes and toothed gold collar on to show whose bird it was. Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth candelabrum-tree of cockscomb- tinted buttons, dahlias, sea-urchins, and everlastings, it perches on the branching foam of polished sculpture flowers - at ease and tall. The king is dead.

The truth is that I'd gain nothing by being a saint after being dead, an artist is what I am, and the only thing I want is to be alive so I can keep going along at donkey level in this six-cylinder touring car I bought from the marine's consul, with this Trinidadian chauffeur who was a baritone in the New Orleans pirates' opera, with my genuine silk shirts, my Oriental lotions, my topaz teeth, my flat straw hat, and my bicolored buttons, sleeping without an alarm clock, dancing with beauty queens, and leaving them hallucinated with my dictionary rhetoric, and with no flutter in my spleen if some Ash Wednesday my faculties wither away, because in order to go on with this life of a minister, all I need is my idiot face, and I have more than enough with the string of shops I own from here to beyond the sunset, where the same tourists who used to go around collecting from us through the admiral, now go stumbling after my autographed pictures, almanacs with my love poetry, medals with my profile, bits of my clothing, and all of that without the glorious plague of spending all day and all night sculpted in equestrian marble and shat on by swallows like the fathers of our country.

Dante, as you might know, had originally titled his book The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, A Florentine by birth but not in character. The title Divine Comedy only came later, when the book became regarded as a masterpiece. It’s a work that can be approached in a thousand different ways, and over the centuries it has been,” he said, his voice gaining strength once he was on firm and familiar ground. “But what we’re going to focus on today is the use of natural imagery in the poem. And this Florentine edition which was recently donated to the Newberry collection—and which I think most of you have now seen in the central display case—is a particularly good way to do that.” He touched a button on the lectern’s electronic panel and the first image—an etching of a deep forest, with a lone figure, head bent, entering a narrow path—appeared on the screen. “ ‘In the middle of the journey of our life,’ ” he recited from memory, “ ‘I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.’ ” Looking up, he said, “With the possible exception of ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill,’ there is probably no line of poetry more famous and easily identifiable than that. And you will notice that right here, at the very start of the epic that is to follow, we have a glimpse of the natural world that is both realistic—Dante spends a terrible night in that wood—and metaphorical.” Turning to the etching, he elaborated on several of its most salient features, including the animals that animated its border—a leopard with a spotted coat, a lion, and a skulking wolf with distended jaws. “Confronted by these creatures, Dante pretty much turns tail and runs, until he bumps into a figure—who turns out of course to be the Roman poet Virgil—who offers to guide him ‘through an eternal place where thou shalt hear the hopeless shrieks, shalt see the ancient spirits in pain so that each calls for a second death.’ ” A new image flashed on the screen, of a wide river—Acheron with mobs of the dead huddled on its shores, and a shrouded Charon in the foreground, pointing with one bony finger at a long boat. It was a particularly well-done image and David noted several heads nodding with interest and a low hum of comments. He had thought there might be. This edition of the Divine Comedy was one of the most powerful he had ever seen, and he was making it his mission to find out who the illustrator had been. The title pages of the book had sustained such significant water and smoke damage that no names could be discerned. The book had also had to be intensively treated for mold, and many of the plates bore ineradicable green and blue spots the circumference of a pencil eraser.

Tell me about your boss. Tell me about the job you've been trying to quit for the past four years. Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher. Tell me the alarm clock stole the keys to your smile, drove it into the 7 AM and the crash totaled your happiness. Tell me. Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues. When Evan lost his legs he was speechless. When my cousin was assaulted she didn't speak for 48 hours. When my uncle was murdered we had to send out a search party to find my father's voice. Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the same address. When your day is a museum of disappointments, hanging from events that were outside of your control, when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago and just decided not to tell you, when it seems like God is just a babysistter that's always on the phone, when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life. Remember, every year two million people die of dehydration. So it doesn't matter if the glass is half full or half empty. There's water in the cup. Drink it and stop complaining. Muscle is created by lifting things that are designed to weigh us down. When your shoulders are heavy stand up straight and call it exercise. Life is a gym membership with a really complicated cancellation policy. Remember, you will survive, things could be worse, and we are never given anything we can't handle. When the whole world crumbles you have to build a new one out of all the pieces that are still here. Remember, you are still here. The human heart beats approximately 4,000 times per hour and each pulse, each throub, each palpitation is a trophy, engraved with the words "You are still alive. You are still alive. So act like it.

Two Black Buttons My eyes are used to the dark mood For I have sewed two black buttons into my eye SOCKETS And you are gonna touch me In this Bleak House All over the blackness... ----------------------- A POEM BY ROSA JAMALI TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH TRANSLATED BY THE AUTHOR دکمه چشم هام به نور کم عادت کرده اند به آن ها دکمه دوختم در تاریکی لمسم کن ------- شعری از رُزا جمالی از مجموعه ی این ساعت شنی که به خواب رفته است