dear power metal bands
it’s important to use real pianos

I really can’t stress this enough
we play a low-stakes game

a trillion years ago power metal might have meant
a paycheck

now it’s craft for the love of craft
which means that if you’re going to do it

you have to be willing to bleed for it
or else why bother

those of us who respond to what you do
with hearts still keen to feel wonder in this world

are offended by these digital pianos
seriously

get a studio with a big honkin’ grand
and unleash your inner Liszts

put a candle on the damn thing
and let the wax drip

do the damn thing
do the damn thing all night

but of this patchy depthless grand-piano-setting style
let us hear no more

and meanwhile
tell your vocalists who think we don’t notice little autotune fixes

that I will have words for them
in Hell

-John Darnielle

(Source: kristeljax)

I No Longer Steal from Nature

You are diseased in understanding and religion.
Come to me, that you may hear something of sound truth.
Do not unjustly eat fish the water has given up,
And do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals,
Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught
for their young, not noble ladies.
And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking eggs;
for injustice is the worst of crimes.
And spare the honey which the bees get industriously
from the flowers of fragrant plants;
For they did not store it that it might belong to others,
Nor did they gather it for bounty and gifts.
I washed my hands of all this; and wish that I
Perceived my way before my hair went gray!

** Al-Ma’arri, blind medieval Arab poet
b. 973, d. 1057

yellowbricks:

fuckyeahexistentialism:

Bob Dylan - Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

A few things:

• “the first time i heard this my jaw dropped with such enormous fucking ferocity it shattered the tiles on the floor.  i mean, jesus. words words words words words words”  - patobrien

• “Sometimes there’s a man… I won’t say a hero, ‘cause, what’s a hero? But sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place.”

• I hope you’ll understand what I mean when I say this affects me the way Oh, the Places You’ll Go always does.  And I hope you’ll understand that that means I’m in love with it and with the very particular way it captures the way life feels with its words, words, words, words, words, words.

• And there’s something on yer mind you wanna be saying
  That somebody someplace oughta be hearin’
  But it’s trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
  And it bothers you badly when your layin’ in bed
  And no matter how you try you just can’t say it
  And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it
  And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head
  And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead

• This piece, in my opinion, is better read than heard.  Reading it gives you a chance to savor it and think every line through and nod in knowing agreement and think, “Thank God for art, through which I can learn that I am not the only one who’s ever felt this way.”

(Source: symbiopsychotaxiplasm)

No one tells much about it,
but there were vultures in the Garden of Eden,
Turkey vultures, to be exact.
Dark eagles, they would soar like gods
voiceless, their wings held out in blessing,
their unfeathered heads the red jewels
of the sky of the garden.

They were vegetarian then.
There were no roadside kills,
no bones to pick, no dead flesh to bloom, ripen.

And they were happy.
They could not imagine
what they would become.

poetry365

They wanted me to tell the truth,
so I said I’d lived among them,
for years, a spy,
but all that I wanted was love.
They said they couldn’t love a spy.
Couldn’t I tell them other truths?
I said I was emotionally bankrupt,
would turn any of them in for a kiss.
I told them how a kiss feels
when it’s especially undeserved;
I thought they’d understand.
They wanted me to say I was sorry,
so I told them I was sorry.
They didn’t like it that I laughed.
They asked what I’d seen them do,
and what I do with what I know.
I told them: find out who you are
before you die.
Tell us, they insisted, what you saw.
I saw the hawk kill a smaller bird.
I said like is one long leavetaking.
They wanted me to speak
like a journalism. I’ll try, I said.
I told them I could depict the end
of the world, and my hand wouldn’t tremble.
I said nothing’s serious except destruction.
They wanted to help me then.
They wanted me to share with them,
that was the word they used, share.
I said it’s bad taste
to want to agree with many people.
I told them I’ve tried to give
as often as I’ve betrayed.
They wanted to know my superiors,
to whom did I report?
I told them I accounted to no one,
that each of us is his own punishment.
If I love you, one of them cried out,
what would you give up?
There were others before you,
I wanted to say, and you’d be the one
before someone else. Everything, I said.

(via poetry365)

nevver:

MOON RIVER: in to the river

lioncub:

(via typewriterblues)

Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.
Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb

Where the yew trees blow like hydras,
The tree of life and the tree of life

Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose.
The blood flood is the flood of love,

The absolute sacrifice.
It means: no more idols but me,

Me and you.
So, in their sulfur loveliness, in their smiles

These mannequins lean tonight
In Munich, morgue between Paris and Rome,

Naked and bald in their furs,
Orange lollies on silver sticks,

Intolerable, without minds.
The snow drops its pieces of darkness,

Nobody’s about. In the hotels
Hands will be opening doors and setting

Down shoes for a polish of carbon
Into which broad toes will go tomorrow.

O the domesticity of these windows,
The baby lace, the green-leaved confectionery,

The thick Germans slumbering in their bottomless Stolz.
And the black phones on hooks

Glittering
Glittering and digesting

Voicelessness. The snow has no voice

loveyourchaos: fuckyeahsylviaplath

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

(via poetry365)