muriel rukeyser

Effort at Speech Between Two People. 


 :    Speak to me.     Take my hand.     What are you now?
      I will tell you all.     I will conceal nothing.
      When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
      who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair     :
      a pink rabbit     :     it was my birthday, and a candle
      burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.

:     Oh, grow to know me.     I am not happy.     I will be open:
      Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music,
      like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me.
      There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.

:     Speak to me.     Take my hand.     What are you now?
      When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental,
      fluid     :     and my widowed aunt played Chopin,
      and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept.
      I want now to be close to you.     I would
      link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days.

:     I am not happy.     I will be open.
      I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
      There has been fear in my life.     Sometimes I speculate
      On what a tragedy his life was, really.

:     Take my hand.     Fist my mind in your hand.     What are you now?
      When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide,
      and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death     :
      if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty,
      if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt.
      I am unhappy.     I am lonely.     Speak to me.

:     I will be open.     I think he never loved me:
      he loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam
      that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls:
      he said with a gay mouth: I love you.     Grow to know me.

:     What are you now?     If we could touch one another,
      if these our separate entities could come to grips,
      clenched like a Chinese puzzle … yesterday
      I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
      and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
      Everyone silent, moving … Take my hand.     Speak to me.

53 days without you

& still the laughter
doesn't bounce, though
it lives again—hidden
behind my top two teeth.

tuesday

& I forget the curve
of your left nostril

friday

& I remember again
the pinch
of your bottom lip

somenight

I won't wake
expecting

© natalie raymond 2012
inspired by Muriel Rukeyser

Blogger Night Out / Fashion Night Out afterparty

Sometimes I really love living in NYC. Like when friends of mine (Lydia Hudgens) get me in to fashion night out afterparties at cool soho lounges! Spent last night at RSVP on Watts street for the Blogger Night Out after party, wearing a $3 H&M slip as a dress, & $200 TBA hikers. (The height of class). I was channeling, via the 90's, Courtney Love & Winona Ryder....

@RhapsoDani on twitter

 @lydiahudgens on instagram.

I think I look a little too happy to be Courtney Love though....

n

p.s.
follow request me on twitter! @natalieraymond

"the work that a poem does is transfer of human energy, and I think human energy may be defined as consciousness, the capacity to make change in existing conditions."

-muriel rukeyser

via tumblr. 

west indian american day carnival

images via @natalie_raymond on instagram

Went to the West Indian American Day parade today with a friend. I've gone most of the years I've lived in Brooklyn. It's such a cool celebration, & the costumes are AMAZING. Plus, there's no where better to grab some delicious strawberry daiquiri's or pina colada's! 

n

love quotes

But I love you, sir:
And when a woman says she loves a man,
The man must hear her, though he love her not.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new.
-Ursula Le Guin.