ukdamo

[ukdamo]

In The Whistling Rooms

Şükrü Erbaş

So not to leave you alone even from your grave I rush back home.

In the whistling rooms I talk I talk I talk.

I came from afar, morning dew on my lips Saying don’t be childish you draw back your lips.

Then I raise my eyes, the window’s not there Dead children like eye lashes lined up.

Can you grow ashamed of your sorrow I’m poisoned by the tears I’ve spilled.

it’s too late for us you said once, how will all these children live in this country, the womb of death.

In a village near Antakya, our hearts full of love Surrounded by such blessings who would think of death.

Come, let us go down to the sea In her arms the blue will rock our fears to sleep.

I’m a loneliness for two before your photos One, the one you take with you, the other, the one you leave.

#poetry #death #separation #grief #Şükrü Erbaş #antakya #hope #life #anziety #children #future

[ukdamo]

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: a street scene in Antakya, Turkiye.

#antakya #antioch #turkiye #architecture #vernacular

[ukdamo]

Atheist Lighting a Candle in Albi Cathedral

Frances Leviston for Tyler

It seems to matter I use a Zippo, not the taper’s monkish flame.

It seems to matter I choose the white over red before asking the difference,

that I love the fresco’s talented horse though couldn’t name his rider –

but what’s not authentic at the Virgin’s feet? She knows I am not a bad person, just troubled. She knows the wick is burning.

#albi #cathedral #candle #atheist #mary

[ukdamo]

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: taken in the Musee Toulouse Lautrec, Albi.

A still life, by Utter.

#painting #still life #Utter #Albi #Musee Toulouse Lautrec #fruit #chair #impressionist

[ukdamo]

Today's poem:

The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Tupac Shakur

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet. Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.

#Tupac Shakur #poetry #rapper #poet #rose #resilience #beauty #power #Youtube

[ukdamo]

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: this portrait of Tupac.

Street art, Rome.

#Street Art #Rome #mural #Tupac

[ukdamo]

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: this view of the Holocaust Memorial, Berlin.

#berlin #holocaust memorial

[ukdamo]

Auschwitz

Santino Spinelli

Sunken in face extinguished eyes cold lips silence a torn heart without breath without words no tears.

#sinti #roma #Santino Spinelli #poetry #auschwitz #holocaust

[ukdamo]

17 Kinds of Hungry

Adrian Matejka

Until around sundown, the surviving lilies in the yard stay wide open, like the window of a car passing on a hot day. No music from the flowers, but they smell like somebody’s fragrant soap unwrapped on a dish edged with daisies. All those smells expressing themselves haphazardly like a band trying to tune up. Escape is what I’ve wanted since I was little, cramped in summertime Section 8: flowers everywhere, my bird-legged brother a couple steps back, my sister book-nosed somewhere in the radius of us. Just a deciduous minute when the blossom of noises was from my own AM radio & not my thin stomach. No more backtalks, no more slapbacks. Just a quick inhale before I tiptoed out the front door. Unlatch, turn, run away. Escape, as Indiana bats wheeled up top, chirping sonorous somethings. I ran under them & to the bus, past those long-necked lilies, self-congratulatory in their exploded colours. Their purples leaned the way June does, their reds hot as the woman’s attitude waiting at the bus stop while the #17 scooted past without picking us up.

#poetry #Adrian Matejka #summer #childhood #remembrance #memory #hot #fragrant #escape

[ukdamo]

Today's photo with the most hits: the remains of the Franciscan hermitage at Rivotorto, near Assisi. The huts are now housed within a church.

#rivotorto #assisi #Friars Minor #franciscans #hermitage

[ukdamo]

Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi

Nathan McClain

Near the entrance, a patch of tall grass. Near the tall grass, long-stemmed plants;

each bending an ear-shaped cone to the pond’s surface. If you looked closely,

you could make out silvery koi swishing toward the clouded pond’s edge

where a boy tugs at his mother’s shirt for a quarter. To buy fish feed. And watching that boy,

as he knelt down to let the koi kiss his palms, I missed what it was to be so dumb

as those koi. I like to think they’re pure, that that’s why even after the boy’s palms were empty,

after he had nothing else to give, they still kissed his hands. Because who hasn’t done that—

loved so intently even after everything has gone? Loved something that has washed

its hands of you? I like to think I’m different now, that I’m enlightened somehow,

but who am I kidding? I know I’m like those koi, still, with their popping mouths, that would kiss

those hands again if given the chance. So dumb.

#poetry #love #realisation #Nathan McClain #foolishness #generosity #discarded

[ukdamo]

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits was taken, last Wednesday, at RHS Bridgewater, in the Chinese garden * with shadow me

#RHS Bridgewater #Chinese Garden

[ukdamo]

Lightning Bug

Colin Pope

I carried it to the edge of the cement walk. It deserved me, I thought,

for how tirelessly I’d chased, for the way I cared about its inner light. A last look through the keyhole

of my cupped palms and I set it down, then stomped flat, smearing long with my toe

so the neon green spatter and jagged streak glowed, brighter than before, as though a spirit glad to have finally escaped its body.

With a stick, I drew a crooked star. A diamond. And like a sickly dusk, its ink faded, slow at first, then all at once. I went giddy, innocent as a god. Night’s oncoming chill

collected along my collar. I had no idea yet, bounding back out across the sighing, blue lawn for another, no idea the suffering it would really take in a dark world to shine.

#poetry #Colin Pope #casual violence #innocence #power #insight #indifference #realisation #childhood #boy

[ukdamo]

Today's Flickr photo(s) with the most hits were taken in the Musee Carnavalet, in Paris. Here's the apogee of Art Nouveau - Fouquet's shop.

#fouquet #Art Nouveau #architecture #Fine Arts #shop #design #interior #sculpture #stained glass #tiles #mural

[ukdamo]

From “Dark Joys”

Stephen Kuusisto

14.

Old baseball glove, toy of the blind kid. Who sniffed its oiled leather, who could not use it. Sometimes he’d cry into it.

Do you understand that dark joy?

15.

In the monastery at Velamo I took a sauna with a monk Who was one hundred years old In the steam his skin smelled like strawberries. “What do you like to eat?” I asked. “Strawberries,” he said.

16.

He spends his life Believing there’s another Standing on his own shoulders Looking out to sea.

17.

I love the horse at Lascaux So unsecured and fast Legs vanishing Even as we look No one to tame her Only the river’s light

18.

Write poems in the mornings Pour out yesterday’s tea Think of Helen Keller Who dove into life as A cormorant hits the sea The speed of that dive Me? I entered this world Already lost, having come From Mithraic light Whose sun falls across these pages

#poetry #Stephen Kuusisto #joy #limitation #insight #courage #fearlessness #poet #glimpse #loss #blindness #vision

[ukdamo]

Today's photo with the most hits: a courtyard in Buda castle.

#budapest #castle #buda #architecture

[ukdamo]

The Baths of Caracalla

John Dyer

Eastward hence,

Nigh where the Cestian pyramid divides

The mouldering wall, behold yon fabric huge,

Whose dust the solemn antiquarian turns,

And thence, in broken sculptures cast abroad

Like sibyl’s leaves, collects the builder’s name

Rejoiced, and the green medals frequent found

Doom Caracalla to perpetual fame:

The stately pines, that spread their branches wide

In the dun ruins of its ample halls,

Appear but tufts; as may whate’er is high

Sink in comparison, minute and vile.

#caracalla #emperor #baths #rome #legacy