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Miss them.
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Buckminster Fuller, Air Deliverable Theater, 140-Foot Diameter, Ford Motor Company Detroit, Michigan
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»capitalism kills love« by claire fontaine (+)
(via buridan)
“She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice -
cinnamon - burned into the crust.
But she’s wearing these dark glasses
in the kitchen at ten o’clock
in the morning - everything nice -
as she watches me break off
a piece, bring it to my mouth,
and blow on it. My daughter’s kitchen,
in winter. I fork the pie in
and tell myself to stay out of it.
She says she loves him. No way
could it be worse.”
― Raymond Carver
via fehto
all images on fehto.tumblr.com are © copyright feh
Walking along I pass a bus stop.
A woman is sitting on the edge
of the seat gazing straight
ahead. She doesn’t seem to be
looking at anything in particular
As I get nearer I can hear her
humming a single high pitched
note. A man is also waiting and
looks at her sideways, he looks
disapproving. As I pass her I
realise what she is doing. She
is humming the sound of the city
The Polar DEW has just warned that
A nuclear rocket strike of
At least one thousand megatons
Has been launched by the enemy
Directly at our major cities.
This announcement will take
Two and a quarter minutes to make,
You therefore have a further
Eight and a quarter minutes
To comply with the shelter
Requirements published in the Civil
Defence Code - section Atomic Attack.
A specially shortened Mass
Will be broadcast at the end
Of this announcement -
Protestant and Jewish services
Will begin simultaneously -
Select your wavelength immediately
According to instructions
In the Defence Code. Do not
Take well-loved pets (including birds)
Into your shelter - they will consume
Fresh air. Leave the old and bed-
ridden, you can do nothing for them.
Remember to press the sealing
Switch when everyone is in
The shelter. Set the radiation
Aerial, turn on the geiger barometer.
Turn off your Television now.
Turn off your radio immediately
The Services end. At the same time
Secure explosion plugs in the ears
Of each member of your family. Take
Down your plasma flasks. Give your children
The pills marked one and two
In the C.D green container, then put
Them to bed. Do not break
The inside airlock seals until
The radiation All Clear shows
(Watch for the cuckoo in your
perspex panel), or your District
Touring Doctor rings your bell.
If before this, your air becomes
Exhousted or if any of your family
In critically injured, administer
The capsules marked ‘Valley Forge’
(Red Pocket in No. 1 Survival Kit)
For painless death. (Catholics
Will have been instructed by their priests
What to do in this eventuality).
This announcement is ending. Our President
Has already given orders for
Massive retaliation - it will be
Decisive. Some of us may die.
Remember, statistically
It is not likely to be you.
All flags are flying fully dressed
On Government buildings - the sun is shining.
Death is the least we have to fear.
We are all in the hands of God,
Whatever happens happens by His Will.
Now go quickly to your shelters.
— Peter Porter
(recorded by Scars on the 1981 album Author!Author!)
the tate by tube - david booth
In Spanish he whispers there is no time left.
It is the sound of scythes arcing in wheat,
the ache of some field song in Salvador.
The wind along the prison, cautious
as Francesco’s hands on the inside, touching
the walls as he walks, it is his wife’s breath
slipping into the cell each night while he
imagines his hand to be hers. It is a small country.
There is nothing one man will not do to another.
Carolyn Forche (b. 1950)
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by
a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
for Rod
Gold and all this werdis win,
Is nought but Christis Rode
I wode be claad in Christis skin,
That ran so longe on blode,
And gon t’is herte and taken mine in,
Ther is a fulsum fode:
Than yef I little of kith or kin,
For there is alle gode.
Or a carefully measured injection
Coolly delivered its four words deep into my ear
Your wife is dead.
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many - they are few.
His palace is of skulls.
His crown is the last splinters
Of the vessel of life.
His throne is the scaffold of bones, the hanged thing’s
Rack and final stretcher.
His robe is the black of the last blood.
His kingdom is empty —
The empty world, from which the last cry
Flapped hugely, hopelessly away
Into the blindness and dumbness and deafness of the gulf
Returning, shrunk, silent
To reign over silence.
A Dead Mole
Strong-shouldered mole,
That so much lived below the ground,
Dug, fought and loved, hunted and fed,
For you to raise a mound
Was as for us to make a hole;
What wonder now that being dead
Your body lies here stout and square
Buried within the blue vault of the air?
Andrew Young
Crowcolour
Crow was so much blacker
Than the moon’s shadow
He had stars.
He was as much blacker
Than any negro
As a negro’s eye-pupil.
Even, like the sun,
Blacker
Than any blindness.
Ted Hughes
(picture via quotetheraven)
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun,
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from bars, but there’s no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
Ted Hughes
The Hawk in the Rain, Ted Hughes, illustration by Sue Scullard
