Gaudeamus Igitur 

Gaudeamus igitur,
Iuvenes dum sumus;
Post iucundam iuventutem,
Post molestam senectutem,
Nos habebit humus,
Nos habebit humus.

Ubi sunt, qui ante nos
In mundo fuere?
Vadite ad superos,
Transite ad inferos,
Ubi iam fuere,
Ubi iam fuere.

Vita nostra brevis est,
Brevi finietur;
Venit mors velociter,
Rapit nos atrociter;
Nemini parcetur,
Nemini parcetur.

Vivat academia,
Vivant professores,
Vivat membrum quodlibet,
Vivant membra quae libet;
Semper sint in flore,
Semper sint in flore.

Vivat et respublica,
Et qui illam regit,
Vivat nostra civitas,
Maecenatum caritas,
Quae nos hic protegit,
Quae nos hic protegit.

Vivant omnes virgines,
Faciles, formosae,
Vivant et mulieres,
Tenerae, amabiles,
Bonae, laboriosae,
Bonae, laboriosae.

Pereat tristitia,
Pereant osores,
Pereat diabolus,
Quivis antiburschius,
Atque irrisores,
Atque irrisores.

Otto Dix, Reclining Woman on a Leopard Skin, 1927

True Love by Barry Gifford

Your sickness made me
a little sick, it's
true—I still
feel it
     Mayakovsky got down
          on his knees
     and declared
               his love
to his last 
          mistress
        a few hours after
           he'd met her
Remember me 
at the hotel
            in Paris,
         on my knees
            in the lift?
We're all the same
men of too much passion
and a little talent—
    some a little more
                  than others
    We fool ourselves
       into thinking
                  we're strong
           then complain
      the rest of our lives
          crippled by
            the consequences

Last Night's Dream by Barry Gifford

    In last night's dream I went back to see 
you
    I found you on a bad street in Mexico 
City
    working as a prostitute
    You didn't want me to look at you
    You'd lost your job, had no money
    Come with me, I said, I'll take care of you
    You wouldn't let me touch you
    No, you said, it won't be any use,
    and anyway, you know I'm dead
    I hung around out of sight and watched 
you
    solicit strangers on the street,
    men walking, men in cars
    You came around a corner and spotted 
me
    Leave me alone you said, it's too late
    You still looked good, your hair was 
clean
    and black but a couple of your teeth were 
missing
    and your clothes were soiled
    You walked quickly toward another 
street
    Don't follow me, you shouted
    I remembered that you had a photo
graph
     of me on a wall in your house,
     one I'd never seen before
     I asked you where it was from,
     who'd taken it, where you'd gotten it
     I made it, you said, out of photographs
     of other people, it was difficult
     and it took me a very long time

Love Is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 
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.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Simple by Raymond Carver

A break in the clouds. The blue
outline of the mountains.
Dark yellow of the fields.
Black river. What am I doing here,
lonely and filled with remorse?

I go on casually eating from the bowl
of raspberries. If I were dead,
I remind myself, I wouldn’t
be eating them. It’s not so simple.
It is that simple.

NO SUCH THING AS THE INNOCENT BYSTANDER by Andrea Gibson

Silence rides shotgun
wherever hate goes.

🖤 🖤

Neumann vs Przepiorka (1904)

The Kitten by Mary Oliver

More amazed than anything 
I took the perfectly black 
stillborn kitten
with the one large eye
in the center of its small forehead 
from the house cat's bed
and buried it in a field 
behind the house.

I suppose I could have given it
to a museum,
I could have called the local 
newspaper.

But instead I took it out into the field 
and opened the earth
and put it back
saying, it was real,
saying, life is infinitely inventive,
saying, what other amazements
lie in the dark seed of the earth, yes,
I think I did right to go out alone
and give it back peacefully, and cover the place 
with the reckless blossoms of weeds.

William Mortensen, Beelzebub, 1926

Kuroda Seiki, Impression, 1899

Kuroda Seiki, Sentiment, 1899

Tullio Crali, Sudden uplift, 1932

Tullio Crali, Battle over the Airport (Machine Gunner in Action), 1936

Adrianos Sotiris, Nocturne , 2015

Henri Matisse , The Joy of Life , 1906

Gustave Doré , The Holy Bible - The Deluge , 1866