#deadpoet stuff

And, though I was a soul in pain,

My pain I could not feel.

Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

I think poetry is a way of carrying grief, but it’s also a way of putting it somewhere so I don’t always have to heave it onto my back or in my body. The more I put grief in a poem, the more l am able to move freely through the world because I have named it, spoken it, and thrown it out into the sky.

Everyone has grief that they carry and sometimes we have anxiety and depression about anticipatory grief.

The thing that I’ve found that helps is knowing we are all in this, someone has gone or is going through the same thing.

Poetry helps us with that too. Writing. Reading. As James Baldwin said, “You think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, and then you read.”

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— Ada Limón interviewed by Lauren Leblanc

— Movie: Patterson (2016)

The stars have come by

to meet our sunshine 

enticing hightide

 with you my ally.

unspoken i see

the words in your eyes

there’s lies and smiles

beyond all ties.

ethereal i feel 

as the skies darken

 the world beyond ours

 would fancy about us 

your smile caresses

my soul

a feeling soon

would dethrone

and then alone

i’ll lie in your 

honey gold eyes

as we near the 

blue horizon’s byes

                      ~abi

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There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.

Adrienne Rich