Songs
by Gottfried Benn
Issue no. 199 (Winter 2011)

I

O that we might be our ancestors’ ancestors.
A clump of slime in a warm bog.
Life and death, fertilizing and parturition
Would all be functions of our silent juices.

An algal leaf or a sand dune,
Shaped by the wind and basal and heavyset.
Even a dragonfly’s head or a gull’s wing
Would be too evolved and suffer too much. 


II

Contemptible are the lovers, the mockers,
All despair, yearning, and hope.
We are such painfully plague-ridden gods,
And yet we think of God a lot.

The soft bay. The dark forest dreams.
The stars, snowball blossom big and heavy.
Panthers lope silently among the trees.
Everything is strand. Forever calls the sea—     

Starmutation

Stepping, swinging, listening to a subtler way
soft and somber like white flowers in September
coming together and all at once
sweet autumn clematis, boneset seeds
shifting stems in salient breeze

Three solemn strangers cross the stream
to speak the same split-tongue as my father
the s’s stop here, the snake dies at his name
changes skin, moves to another dusty stage

A new light on an orange ladder
I dreamt of riding a blue whale
and then again, all at once
a sudden, sharp exhale 

Links I Love

Peaky Blinders!!! This clip and this clip and this one just do something to me. Perhaps it is Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) absolutely skewering the competition with his dark-twisted-but-redeemable-anti-hero thing and the cold heat of his stare, or that Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds theme song.

These prints. I want all of them! For my apartment. Allllll of them. Also this article about Japanese fairy-tales.

This meditation on accessing your stillness by the phenomenal, artistically profound and lovely Sarah Blondin. Other favorites on there are by (HERO!) Tara Brach. Download insight timer! Do it! It's free!

The fact that Melissa McCarthy considers herself Billie Eilish’s personal “hype man.” “I think every super cool 17-year-old musician needs a 48-year-old midwestern mother of two as kinda like her hype man.” Also her newest video. Consider me buried.

Chance’s Hot Shower but every word is a picture and Taylor Swift covering Phil Collins.

 

Dearest Father God,

In humility, I come to you, to ask you to help me accept myself as I am. I often criticize myself so badly, compare myself to others, that I often feel like I hate myself. I also don't like what I see in the mirror. These bad thoughts about myself make me feel small, resentful and unworthy of your love which makes me unable to love you and others as I should.

Please help me love myself as I am, to see myself as you see me. Please help me to accept my body with all its beauty and perfection just the way you made it. Give me the knowledge and the wisdom to know how to protect and keep it safe and healthy. Help me to never compromise my integrity, to be authentic, truthful and honest in everything, that I never again need to reject myself or sabotage my own happiness.

From now on, let every action, every word, every reaction, every thought, and every emotion of mine, be based on love. Help me, my dearest Father, to trust you fully. Let the power of your love break all the lies I was programmed to believe, all the lies that tell me I am not good enough, strong enough, that I cannot make it. Let the power of your love be present in my whole being that I see myself and everyone through the eyes of your love. Help me that I no longer need to live my life according to other people’s expectations, but by your will.

Dearest Father, help me to know that you are always with me, so that I don't have any fear to make the choices I must make or take actions I must take. Help me to never again be afraid of facing the responsibilities in my life or afraid of facing any problems, to remember that we will resolve them together as they arise. And when I don't do things right, help me to be patient with myself, to have the courage and humility to make the necessary changes and to ask for your forgiveness.

Starting today, dearest Father, help me to live my life being myself and not pretending to be someone else. Help me to love and accept everyone else the way you created them. Please give me wisdom enough, love enough and courage enough to seek your way, your truth and follow it in all I do. Help me to remember that when I reject others, I reject myself and when I reject myself, I reject You. Clean my mind of any emotional poison it has known through abusive words, actions of others and of myself. Please help me to be happy to share my time with my loved ones and to forgive them for any injustice and hurt I feel in my mind. Give me to love my family and friends unconditionally, to find better, loving ways to communicate with everyone, that there is no winner or loser.

Today is a new beginning. Help me to start my life over, help me to love you above all, to love others and treat them with dignity, to be happy to be alive and to no longer live in fear of love. Help me to become great in Kindness, Love, Faith, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Generosity, and Compassion so that I can be at peace with all of your creations forever and ever. Amen.”

Rooting for you,
Immaculee