Everything I Have To Tell You About Love by Neil Gaiman
I wrote this to read at my friends Sxip and Coco’s wedding, a little over a year ago. I love that it’s now flown out into the world. And Chris drawing things is such a delight.
guys i can’t believe i have to say this again
DO 👏 NOT 👏 GO 👏 GENTLE 👏 INTO 👏 THAT 👏 GOOD 👏 NIGHT 👏
RAGE 👏 RAGE 👏 AGAINST 👏 THE 👏 DYING 👏 OF 👏 THE 👏 LIGHT 👏
Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks
The Raven
There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says “Nevermore.”Footprints in the Sand
There was a man who, at low tide
Would walk with the Lord by his side
Jesus said “Now look back;
You’ll see one set of tracks.
That’s when you got a piggy-back ride.”Response to ‘This Is Just To Say’
This note on the fridge is to say
That those ripe plums that you put away
Well, I ate them last night
They tasted all right
Plus I slept with your sister. M’kay?Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
There once was a horse-riding chap
Who took a trip in a cold snap
He stopped in the snow
But he soon had to go:
He was miles away from a nap.Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
There was an old father of Dylan
Who was seriously, mortally illin’
“I want,” Dylan said
“You to bitch till you’re dead.
“I’ll be pissed if you kick it while chillin’.”I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
There once was a poet named Will
Who tramped his way over a hill
And was speechless for hours
Over some stupid flowers
This was years before TV, but still.THE ONE FOR DO NOT GO GENTLE
IM CRYING
A chap from a faraway land
Said two big stone legs (topless) stand
An inscription fine
Reads “this shit’s all mine”
But all there’s to see is the sand.OMFG,
The Second Coming
The falcon flies wider in scorn
All things fall apart, or are torn
And now, what rough beast
Will arise in the East
And slouch Bethlehemward to be born?Edgar Allen Poe, “The Raven”:
Enthroned on the bust by the door,
The raven exclaims “Nevermore!”
It’s rather annoying,
For I was enjoying
My mourning for dear lost Lenore.Edgar Allen Poe, “The Bells”:
Bells are quite noisy, it’s true,
And each has a quite distinct hue,
From silver and gold
Different stories are told,
Foretelling both glory and rue.W. H. Auden, “Funeral Blues”:
Shut off the clocks and the phone,
And let no dog bark with his bone:
Let the planes overhead
Only say “he is dead”…
Now I’m sorry, there’s nobody home.T. S. Eliot, “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”:
A man can walk down on the beach
Roll his pants up and munch on a peach;
He isn’t deluded
And won’t be included
By mermaids that sing each to each.T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland”:
You called me the hyacinth girl
When you gave sweet Shakespeare a whirl;
The city’s unreal,
And the dead men don’t feel,
So let’s let the storm warnings twirl.Lewis Carroll, “The Jabberwock”:
‘Twas mimsy out there by the wabe
And all of the momewraths out grabe.
The Jabberwock’s dead
(Some kid took off its head,
And his father said “You’re my best babe!”).Beowulf:
Terribly troubled, the Thane
Demanded defense from a Dane
For fierce in the fen
Mighty monsters maimed men
Great Grendal gave plenty of pain.William Butler Yeats, “Stolen Child”:
Come on, human kid, and let’s go,
There’s so much to see and to show.
Run off with the fae,
Hurry fast, skip away,
And you’ll never a mortal life know!John Keats, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci":
The sedge is all dry; spring has sped,
And the birds that once sang have all fled.
The merciless dame
Goes on making her claim
To young hunks who keep winding up dead.Lord Tennyson, “The Princess”:
The echoes keep fading away
With the splendor that ebbs with the day,
But the castle is grand
In this bright fairyland,
And there’s not that much else I can say.Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”:
At goblin men we mustn’t stare,
And we shouldn’t go to their Fair.
Their fruit may seem tasty,
But we can’t be hasty,
And don’t let them play with your hair!Oh my god, the Beowulf one. Oh.
holy shit, the merciless dame is perfect
I love the jabberwock!
Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
Have I called you a summer’s day yet?
Like the sun, and ur makin me sweat
Even Death is dismayed
Cuz you castin’ no shade
An I wrote this so peeps won’t forget
I’m in awe.
The Tygre
William BlakeA tygre with dread symmetry
did burn so brilliantly
that I asked with a fright
in the forest of night,
“Did God make the lamb and thee?”
Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms
Thomas MooreMy love whom I gaze on today,
if all your looks faded away
I would love you still more
than ever before
and in love with you always I’d stay.The Lady of Shalott
Alfred, Lord TennysonA tender young lass from Shalott,
was forbidden to spy Camelot.
But within her mirror,
Lancelot did appear,
now the lass from Shalott is not.Catullus 16
CatullusTo the old queens, Aurelius and Furius:
your criticism leaves me quite curious.
Do you think I am weak
because soft words I speak?
‘cause I’ll fuck both your faces, I’m serious.This just keeps getting better and better.
In one timeline we kiss but the stars don’t come down. In another you set a world on fire for me but I perish in the flames. Another and we’re strangers on a busy street, brushing by close enough to send each other reeling off balance but not stopping. Somewhere there’s a final space where your hand on my face is the punchy climax to an epic saga, where the way our mouths meet takes the breath right out of people’s throats. One universe has us right, of all the millions stacked on millions. So it’s not this one. I can live with that. The world is full of wonders and a hundred years ago the moon was too much to dream of touching. Look how far we’ve come. Turn over your shoulder and just look. Maybe we’ll come across each other at the turning of the century, racing across the breaches between worlds. I’ll build my life on that maybe.
I swear to every heaven ever imagined,
if I hear one more dead-eyed hipster
tell me that art is dead, I will personally summon Shakespeare
from the grave so he can tell them every reason
why he wishes he were born in a time where
he could have a damn Gmail account.
The day after I taught my mother
how to send pictures over Iphone she texted
me a blurry image of our cocker spaniel ten times in a row.
Don’t you dare try to tell me that that is not beautiful.
But whatever, go ahead and choose to stay in
your backwards-hoping-all-inclusive club
while the rest of us fall in love over Skype.
Send angry letters to state representatives,
as we record the years first sunrise so
we can remember what beginning feels like when
we are inches away from the trigger.
Lock yourself away in your Antoinette castle
while we eat cake and tweet to the whole universe that we did.
Hashtag you’re a pretentious ass hole.
Van Gogh would have taken 20 selflies a day.
Sylvia Plath would have texted her lovers
nothing but heart eyed emojis when she ran out of words.
Andy Warhol would have had the worlds weirdest Vine account,
and we all would have checked it every morning while we
Snap Chat our coffee orders to the people
we wish were pressed against our lips instead of lattes.
This life is spilling over with 85 year olds
rewatching JFK’s assassination and
7 year olds teaching themselves guitar over Youtube videos.
Never again do I have to be afraid of forgetting
what my fathers voice sounds like.
No longer must we sneak into our families phonebook
to look up an eating disorder hotline for our best friend.
No more must I wonder what people in Australia sound like
or how grasshoppers procreate.
I will gleefully continue to take pictures of tulips
in public parks on my cellphone
and you will continue to scoff and that is okay.
But I hope, I pray, that one day you will realize how blessed
you are to be alive in a moment where you can google search
how to say I love you in 164 different languages.
b.e.fitzgerald (Art is a Facebook status about your winter break.)
Oh, if only it were permitted for me to hold your clasped little arms
against my neck and to bring kisses to your tender little lips.
Now, go entrust your desires to the winds, girl.
Believe me, men’s nature is fickle.
Often I lay awake in the middle of the night, love-crushed,
thinking these thoughts to myself: many are the men who Fortune raised up high
and these same men, suddenly cast down, she now presses hard.
Thus just as Venus suddenly joined the bodies of lovers
the daylight has divided them again, and if …
–
–
–
O utinam liceat collo complexa tenere
braciola et teneris oscula ferre labellis
i nunc, ventis tua gaudia, pupula, crede.
Crede mihi, levis est natura virorum.
Saepe ego cu(m) media vigilare(m) perdita nocte,
haec mecum medita(n)s: multos fortuna quos supstulit alte
nos modo proiectos subito praecipitesque premit.
Sic Venus ut subito coiunxit corpora amantum
dividit lux et se …
corpus inscriptionem latinarum iv. 5296
archaeologists found this poem inscribed into a wall in the entranceway to a house in pompeii (ix. 9 f., now blocked to the public due to extensive damage to the block). pompeii has an extensive and well preserved tradition of graffiti that serves as an excellent source for how poetry, literature, and song functioned in the everyday roman’s life. for this reason alone CIL iv. 5296 is worth considering. general consensus among classicists is that this poem is a mish-mash of misquotations from “high literature” like propertius, contemporary folk songs, and possibly some original composition. however, what i find much more exciting about this poem is what it might reveal about the lives of women in rome, especially women who loved other women.
my translation doesn’t explicitly carry this through, but the genders of various adjectives in the original latin reveal that both the speaker of this poem and the love interest to whom the poem is addressed are women. feminine grammar and vocabulary is used to describe both of them (perdita for the speaker, pupula for the love interest). in all likelihood this could be the only extant piece of love poetry in the roman world written by a woman for a woman! it’s amazing!! of course, scholars have tried to weasel around the possibility of a “lesbian” reading of the poem. some think it’s a piece of friendly advice from one gal pal to another, some think it’s a man speaking to a woman. some even propose that the speaker is an artificial character created by a male author/poet/graffitist.
while it’s certainly not unprecedented in roman poetry for men to write from the perspective of women, they usually do so in the context of a larger narrative. at least, they signal the fact that they the author are separate from the female persona they assume for the purpose of writing. besides, assuming that the author is a woman opens some really interesting avenues for interpretation of the piece.
the use of diminutive language (braciola, labellis, pupula; “little arms,” “little lips,” “little girl”) is specifically concentrated into the first portion of the poem. this leads one to believe that such vocabulary is not the poet’s natural tendency, but an intentional move. women are often depicted in roman literature as typically using these blanditiae (essentially flattering baby talk distinguished by diminutives) in romantic contexts. the artificially constructed language of the opening leads me to believe that a female author might be taking a jab at this assumption, parodying male assumptions of women’s speech (and thus writing) before moving on to the rest of her poem.
another roman cliche about women and love is that they are flighty. in fact, the imagery of winds blowing away promises or desires is commonly evoked by male love poets when they lament the unfaithfulness of their women. the author of this poem takes up that imagery and gives it a spin, asserting that it is men (virorum) who cannot be trusted. the fickleness of men is then immediately contrasted with the sleepless nights of the ever-faithful female speaker, who, crushed by love, wishes that she could have the opportunity to give the unconditional love a man could not. this instability is further underscored when the author invokes the goddess fortune, who flings her (masculinely gendered) victims from the heights of success to the depths of despair.
kristina milnor argues in graffiti and the literary landscape in roman pompeii (from which i paraphrased heavily) that this hyper-awareness of gender roles in roman poetry and erotic discourse may point toward a female author. “an additional proof, and perhaps a more interesting one, is the ways in which throughout the poem she marshals and redeploys negative stereotypes about women to frame her suit: from the lisping diminutives in the opening lines … to the winds which will carry away not a woman’s faithless promises but her hopes for an enduring love affair, to the ‘natural’ instability which, it turns out, marks the lives of men rather than women … a female poet may (indeed, must) have a different relationship to poetry and poetic discourse from her male counterparts.”
(via tinycatfeet)
if i could shield you with my body,
i would.you are made of starlight,
you are made of sea glass
and wind chimes
and other holy objects
that sparkle when held up to the light.ah, but i am sharp,
i am razor blades and windshield glass,
i find no comfort in the sun.
i have walked a thousand miles
and have yet to wear skin that does not fit badly.
here are my hands, darling,
here are my marksman hands:read the years that i have wept for you
in the lines of my palms,
feel the delicate skin at my wrists.
too many times
have i felt myself grow weak before you.and still –
if i could die for you,
if i could shield you with my body,
i would.
shatter me to shrapnel and i will thank you for the touch | n.k. (via barneswilson)
three rules for loving an angel:
i. understand that an angels love is absolute. you may love him with all of your heart but you will never love him as he loves you. you are human and small and your heart has not lived as his has, child. you will not understand his sort of love.
you will fight, but do not doubt that he loves you. he will never suggest taking a break, or seeing other people. the glass in the kitchen will shatter along side his shouting, but do not doubt that he cares. the neighbours will talk about the storm that raged for a week while he fumed, but do not doubt that he loves you. you will not understand how, but he loves you.
he will lay with you on the sofa downstairs for hours into the night, running a hand through your hair and tell you stories that never made sense when you heard them in church, and he will tell you that he loves you with all of him, that every cell he possesses cares for you. do not attempt to envision it. he has more in him than you can imagine, do not attempt to understand. just tell him that you love him too.ii. understand that angels are first warriors. if your angel is old, he will have been armed with a sword and a shield, and he will have struck down his siblings and watched his older sister be carried down to the depths of hell. if he is older, he will have known a time before war, and that is almost worse.
sometimes, his hands will shake and you will not be able to stop them. you will mention something unwittingly and he will pull away sharply and fall silent. it may not take him long to recover, but he will think about it for three weeks, and hide behind his smile for your sake. sometimes, he will make a reference to events long since passed, and you will remember that he was there. you will need time to recover from this thought, and he will not understand. he finds it hard to remember how young you are.
he is a protector by trade and you are what he has chosen to protect. there is no war, you want to tell him. don’t. allow him the small triumph of keeping you safe. let him lock the doors and windows for you. let him look over his shoulder when you walk together. it will help him to have something to protect, even if there is no war.iii. understand that angels are. angels are. angels are undescribable. there are not words for how he will look at you. he will look at you like you are the sun on the hottest day of the year in the middle of cloudless sky. he will look at you like you are the first creation he’s ever truly seen. both are true, but neither are correct.
he will describe every inch of you at some point or another, in this lanaguge or that, but no matter how many words you discover, how many languages you master, there will never be words enough for him. you cannot describe the galaxies behind his eyes, the electricy in his fingertips, nor the the softness of his heartbeat underneath his shirt. you will run your hands down his wings a thousand times, but you will never describe it, or how it makes you feel.
your voice will crack and your pen will fall still and you will flush under his eyes. words will stick to your throat and all you can think to do is touch him. touch his skin and his hair and his clothes. touch him everywhere. it’s the closest to describing him you’ll get. the words for describing this will never find their way to you.tell him that you love him. it will be enough.
it’s been three weeks and i can’t get the thought of you out of my head. // lj (via lionofstone)