John Waters is a writer, a film director, an actor, and a visual artist best known for his films, including Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, and Serial Mom. He is the author of the national best sellers Role Models, Carsick, and Mr. Know-It-All. His spoken word show Going to Extremes continues to be performed around the world. Source link
We’ve stopped talking againso the earth has no color.Everywhere the chlorophyll has paused,light burning over the day’s lessonsas hunger burnsthe mouth I can’t make eat.A little rice? A little soup?I’d rather diereading the early textsyou sent about my breasts.I wouldn’t take a picture—infidelity!—and so instead had conjured themwith words,for which, with words,you gave me back a tonguewe dragged across the skinof common thought.Such is our lot,our shared disease or gift.Like Bernini’s angelspropped somewhere in Romeacross a navewe fetishize remove,which keeps the ideal possible,the possible ideal.So why is life so dull without your veins?Today on Twelfth the drugstore glassreflects a woman bracedagainst a private wind:the wind of her conscience, maybe,spinning on the mandrel of desire.Later, she opens mail.She shops for artichokes and squash,fingering their groovesfor information from the flesh.The life I love cannot include you,she wants to say,but because we are not speakingshe must say it into the poem,whose possibilities contractwith every word.Watch it narrow even as it grows.This is the terror—granite, pixels, blighted grass—this is the terrorchoices make of lives. Source link
Now, Mother, What’s the Matter? Only the monsters do not have troubled hearts.Life is for troubled hearts. Art is for troubledhearts. For my whole life, Hamlet has beena bridge between. Hamlet’s ‘Now, mother,what’s the matter?’ is life on earth. Somethingis always the matter, and not just for mothers.(As I write this, the Angelus rings.) Everycharacter in Hamlet is troubled, there areno monsters in it. I render unto Caesarthe things that are Caesar’s — everything istroubled there and, if I am lucky, Caesaris troubled. I render unto God the thingsthat are God’s and feel — want to feel? Do feel —that God is troubled. I also render unto art.But I have no idea what art is. WhatEdward Thomas’s ‘Adlestrop’ is. Whatthe luminous chaos of The Portrait of a Lady is. What The Pilgrim’s Progress is.My feet knew the way before I openedthe book: that just before the gate to heavenis yet another hole to hell. Richard W Halperin was born in Chicago to an Irish mother, and an American father with Russian ancestry. Early in his …
I am here in the evening light,my eyes now white like the museum sparrow,with a voice that no longer trembles: Remember the child. I’ll visit as a songbird, a rabbit,and lead you up the dash with the wind.I waited for your permission, faceless,and you gave it. It was a terminal we both knew:the open woods, a last request, an imposition,the letter E. The leaves narrowed the highwayand were full of water. You said so.That is life:the gray flattering the green. You slept on the town beach,I throughout the day.I wondered if you’d become lost. I gave you this land and told youthe last time is never last. We met in the afternoonand dined that night at an oval table.There was tiredness, the deep kind,and no wine—only the promise of August. Source link
The rapper reflected on being told by doctors that eight-month-old girls, Ocean Jade and Story Monroe may never be able to walk or talk Source link
