A page dedicated to those who love literature, poetry, & the world of words.
POETRY
Belles-lettres no.1
The Pines of Rome beckoning
Clamoring by a noiseless coast
Where is the proverbial queen of the night,
Has she—fallen into Pandora’s box?
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POETRY
Belles-lettres no.2
What is it you want me to be?
A mountain or a leaf, a Queen or a pomegranate? Which would make you happy, would any make you sad?
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POETRY
Belles-lettres no.3
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You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go.
You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch.
Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you’ll be just fine.
You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else. something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like.
If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.
Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. The old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference.
Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire–overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary.
-Quote from Julien Smith
POETRY
Belles-lettres no.4
Snowflakes stamped beneath muddy feet, eyes that misconstrue boundaries, and flowers that you call animal, when really, they’re spiritual–
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ESSAYS
sometimes it is courage you need to find the door
a short essay
A Student’s life.
(not a student’s life, but a stereotype)
I think about it sometimes, a certain hungering deep in my bones. Books, old libraries, headphones and hoodies, pouring over sheet music, and sitting on campus lawns. Scotland, England, Austria. Academia. Cerebral films. A tote bag full of books, and an ugly tweed blazer. Coffee shops. The stranger sitting in the corner, and all the questions your mind asks. This hungering deep in your bones. To be dedicated to something, to be alive for something, to be taken by something, to burn for something—to be consumed. Vanity loses its appeal. Meaning takes a tangible form, you have stopped asking to be loved. Instead, you love. You love the Art, you love Music. When people ask, how do you explain inspiration, you now know: it is the hungering in your bones, the gnawing that can not be assuaged. Your teacher held her arm outstretched before you in a warriors pose—she asked you to do the same—and she spoke about intention, single-sightedness, holding your gaze on a single object and not breaking that gaze. Her words resonated with you, pierced you through. Find your center. Concentrate. Dedicate. Feed the hungering of your soul.
It all matters.
That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing.
What is most beautiful is least acknowledged. What is worth dying for is barely noticed.
– Laura McBride, We Are Called to Rise
Belles-lettres no.6:
Notes On Faith
Belles-lettres no.5
“That Which We Call a Rose”
a short poem
A T O N E M E N T
SOME KIND OF A, FILM REVIEW
BY O. MONTORA
I wanted to write about my courageousness. I wanted to walk into September with a plan, with something that made my pain worth it. I didn’t want to admit that I was still empty handed. That I had lain twisted in my own agony and had given birth to nothing except for a strength I didn’t have before. And maybe a little more determination. But I was still here. Still a chink in the machinery of someone else’s heart. Hollowed out because I had buried my heart beneath so much dry dirt. But is it speed that matters, or direction?
**the cursor blinks and blinks and blinks**
It is the human heart that is increasingly raw. You can’t hide it because it lives in your eyes even when you close them. Even when you look away. Watching Atonement was like being scraped across the heart. I felt the “I love you” like I’d never been loved before. And I realized love wasn’t pretty like everyone had said. Love was a raging force. Impossible to bottle, impossible to deny. Some names turn your veins into fire, some names make you sober—
The reason why the pen falls to the floor in the film, now it makes sense.
Literature. A voice softer than honey. A girl.
A boy, fist clenched around the broken handle of a vase.
No words. The face says more than any tongue, in any language. At first you think it is pain, but you realize, it is love. Pain because of love, as if they are synonymous.
She’s otherworldly, because she’s a girl in a book. And him, he’s a boy in trousers, standing by a fountain holding the broken handle of a vase in his clenched fist.