What I Mean When I Say I'm Tired I don't mean I want to sleep. I mean I want to disappear for a while. To be rain on a stranger's roof. To be smoke rising from someone else's fire. I don't want to die. But I do want to rest in a way the world has never allowed me. I don't want comfort. I want quiet. I want the mercy of being unseen without being unloved.

What I Mean When I Say I'm Tired ~ K.E. Sermonté

"I want quiet.
I want the mercy of being unseen
without being unloved."

a sudden small jolt
you laughed and i remembered
how light life can feel

#haikufeels #Jolt #Senryu #Haiku #Poetry #Micropoetry #JustWrite #WritingCommunity #BlueskyPoets

“Just as a person sits in the cold, and by keeping motionless enjoys some illusion of warmth, so she sat inwardly motionless, lest by some interior movement she would disturb the numbness of her mind, and feel the pain of her condition.”
-Alan Paton, “Life for a Life”

#quotes #poetry #booksky

“I don’t care: any poem, this
poem.”
-Richard Brautigan

#quotes #poetry #poems #poem #whatimreading #booksky #brautigan

A WHOLE CIVILIZATION WILL DIE TONIGHT My son needs lunch, and I have to put his backpack together, but a whole civilization will die tonight, so I'm wondering if they've closed their schools. Like, a snow day, maybe, except instead of snow it's "keep your children home so if you die, you die together" — instead of "well open back up once the plows have cleared" it's "we don't know if we'll be here tomorrow, hold your babies tight." It's just "talk" I'm told, which I've been told before. "It's how the president makes his deals." But I've never heard anyone talk about other human beings this way, and I'm not certain I can look my son in the eyes if we all agree to stomach it one more time. A civilization will die tonight, but as I zip up his backpack and kiss him off to school I think: if this is what we call leadership then I'm not entirely sure ours isn't already dead. @michaelfdubois Mukad A QuBoy @michacifdubois

Brutal.

Of The Empire We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness. - Mary Oliver

God this poem is haunting me again.

at the day’s ending
the moon, the ocean and I
waning together

#DailyHaikuPrompt (Waning, Halt)
#senryu #haiku

“Today I was unable to visit Lotte because I had an engagement I could not cancel. What could I do? I sent my servant to her house, so that I would at least have someone about me who had been near her today.”
-J.W. Goethe, “The Sorrows of Young Werther”

#quotes #poetry #booksky #whatimreading

“…you don’t want to know more
about this. And then: you don’t know anything
unless you do.”
-Mary Oliver

#quotes #poetry #poems #poem #booksky #whatimreading #maryoliver

The cover of The Complete Persepolis by Marianne Satrapi.

Now would be a good time for anyone who wants to learn about recent Iranian history to read this. It is well worth your time and money (I am sure your local library has it if you don’t want to purchase it).

“That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.”
-Lord Byron

#quotes #poetry #poems #poem #booksky #whatimreading #byron

“Put a tight seal
on the heart, that leaky bucket.

The heart saved against speaking.”
-Tess Gallagher

#quotes #poetry #poems #poem #booksky #whatimreading #tessgallagher

Egon Schiele. Self-portrait with hands on chest. 1910

Most interesting artist of fingers in art history! Maybe Klimt was close second.

“Try and vary your methods as you will your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed in your actions.”
-Agatha Christie, “The A.B.C. Murders”

My heart breaks for the children who get no justice in this world.

L. Birge Harrison (American, 1854–1929). Tunnel of Trees in Winter (oil on canvas).

“Orr was where he had been for months—alone: knowing he was insane and knowing he was not insane, simultaneously and intensely. It was enough to drive him insane.”
-Ursula K. LeGuin, “The Lathe of Heaven”

#quotes #poetry #booksky #whatimreading #scifi #leguin #ursulakleguin

-Son of Frankenstein, dir. Rowland V. Lee (1939)

#poetry #poetryinmotion #lovethisshot #film #filmsky #whatimwatching #frankenstein #sonoffrankenstein

“Sometimes I have wondered whether life wouldn’t be much more amusing if we were all devils, and no nonsense about angels and being good.”
-Bride of Frankenstein, dir. James Whale (1935)

#quotes #poetry #film #filmsky #whatimwatching #frankenstein #sonoffrankenstein #jameswhale

“We’ll see whether I’m crazy or not.”
-Frankenstein, dir. James Whale (1931)

#quotes #poetry #poetryinmotion #filmsky #whatimwatching #yeshecrazy

“What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?”
-Ursula K. LeGuin, “The Lathe of Heaven”

#quotes #poetry #booksky #whatimreading #scifi #leguin #ursulakleguin

“because you never agreed
to live in a burning home
while the people who should care
pretend the fire doesn’t exist.”
-Nikita Gill

#quotes #poetry #poems #poem #booksky #whatimreading #nikitagill @nikitagill.bsky.social

“…I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back again anymore-“
-Joseph Conrad, “Youth”

#quotes #poetry #booksky #whatimreading #youth #conrad

THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE | "All is Summer” Official Clip | Searchlight Pictures YouTube video by SearchlightPictures

“A place for everything, and everything in its place.”
-The Testament of Ann Lee (2025), dir. Mona Fastvold

#quotes #poetry #film #filmsky #whatimwatching #testamentofannlee #fastvold

“Hubble, people *are* their principles!”
-The Way We Were (1973) dir. Sydney Pollack

#quotes #poetry #film #filmsky #whatimwatching #streisand #redford #pollack #pollack #fuckMAGA #abolishICE

“I don’t know how you can’t.”
-The Way We Were (1973) dir. Sydney Pollack

#quotes #poetry #film #filmsky #whatimwatching #streisand #redford #pollack #fuckTrump #abolishICE

The rage you are feeling comes from the same place inside your heart as the love. This is why you refuse to accept a world where cruelty reigns and the fire consumes all. You have known hope and joy and kindness like you have known water. And justice is a river that demands you do not give up on it. - Nikita Gill

The grief the grief the grief.

And the rage and love.

We have it in us to be so much better than this.

“He would like to use all his tallow before the light was blown out and the lantern broken.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Lodging For The Night”

#quotes #poetry #booksky #whatimreading #robertlouisstevenson