Sturdy as Home Grown Tomatoes

The Candy Palace

She came to the throne because she thought
it was time. The exact hour before the alarm.
Born to the Kingdom, she had all the trimmings,
certificates bounded in lace, exact replicas
of how it was done. Of course he held
his scepter of having passed through, and knowing
he should (or could) he promised to make her his
Queen-for-a, well, forever. She, as the manuals suggest,
fell in love with his promise. No one could anything
but not see how there was no end
to the rings he began to leave in the tub.
The thing was he had to hurry to get back to
the pumpkin that was waiting to turn and never
did. Still, she attended his table and served
appreciative rolls. She kept the throne
sturdy as home grown tomatoes. This was good.
The base of the throne, however, had a predisposition
to lean. He could not sit squarely and she had lost
her fixings. Night sickness, she began to think,
could account for her yearning for nutmeg
and flour not out of the mill, this longing
for something more common, a touch perhaps.
She remembered in Primary playing Persephone
not wanting to hold the wet hand of Pluto, even to march
for the crowd. In the end of course, it was a renunciation
for air, air.

- Emma Lou Thayne
(found here)

10 Honest Thoughts on Being Loved by a Skinny Boy

(warning - language)

You are Cloven Apart

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart,

Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart;

- from The Triumph of Time

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

An Ancient Gesture

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where, for years,
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture - a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope…
Penelope, who really cried.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

"...It's takes strength..."

"It's so easy to laugh
It's so easy to hate
It takes strength to be gentle and kind
Over, over, over, over
It's so easy to laugh
It's so easy to hate
It takes guts to be gentle and kind"

- The Smiths, I Know It's Over

"The Most Beautiful Lie We Have"

(on Twilight: New Moon)  "To be honest, I thought it was kind of stupid.  But it reminded me of what I really do like about Twilight.  It's fun, it distracts me from the pain and brokenness of the world, and it argues that true love will triumph in the end; which may or may not be true, but if it's a lie, it's the most beautiful lie we have."

- John Green
(link)

"Every love story..."

"Every love story is, first and foremost, a mystery."

- Jacob at Television Without Pity
(link)

"Stop All the Clocks" (W.H. Auden)

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

- W. H. Auden

"Love is Not All..."

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay
(complete poem here)