Joe Beadle

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.

We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“First Kiss' (for Lips)

Her mouth
fell into my mouth
like a summer snow, like a
5th season, like a fresh Eden,
like Eden when Eve made God
whimper with the liquid
tilt of her hips—
her kiss hurt like that—
I mean, it was as if she’d mixed
the sweat of an angel
with the taste of a tangerine,
I swear. My mouth
had been a helmet forever
greased with secrets, my mouth
a dead-end street a little bit
lit by teeth—my heart, a clam
slammed shut at the bottom of a dark,
but her mouth pulled up
like a baby-blue Cadillac
packed with canaries driven
by a toucan—I swear
those lips said bright
wings when we kissed, wild
and precise—as if she were
teaching a seahorse to speak—
her mouth so careful, chumming
the first vowel from my throat
until my brain was a piano
banged loud, hammered like that—
it was like, I swear her tongue
was Saturn’s 7th moon—
hot like that, hot
and cold and circling,
circling, turning me
into a glad planet—
sun on one side, night pouring
her slow hand over the other: one fire
flying the kite of another.
Her kiss, I swear—if the Great
Mother rushed open the moon
like a gift and you were there
to feel your shadow finally
unhooked from your wrist.
That’d be it, but even sweeter—
like a riot of peg-legged priests
on pogo-sticks, up and up,
this way and this, not
falling but on and on
like that, badly behaved
but holy—I swear! That
kiss: both lips utterly committed
to the world like a Peace Corps,
like a free store, forever and always
a new city—no locks, no walls, just
doors—like that, I swear,
like that.”
― Tim Seibles, Buffalo Head Solos

“every anthropological project should contain within it something alien and other, something that not only challenges and unsettles scholarly terms of analysis but redefines what they mean and the thought-work they can do. With this approach, anthropology should always be open to the possibility of wonder.”
― Matthew Engelke, Think Like an Anthropologist

“The truest love that ever heart
Felt at its kindled core,
Did through each vein, in quickened start,
The tide of being pour.

Her coming was my hope each day,
Her parting was my pain;
The chance that did her steps delay
Was ice in every vein.

I dreamed it would be nameless bliss,
As I loved, loved to be;
And to this object did I press
As blind as eagerly.

But wide as pathless was the space
That lay our lives between,
And dangerous as the foamy race
Of ocean-surges green.

And haunted as a robber-path
Through wilderness or wood;
For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath,
Between our spirits stood.

I dangers dared; I hindrance scorned;
I omens did defy:
Whatever menaced, harassed, warned,
I passed impetuous by.

On sped my rainbow, fast as light;
I flew as in a dream;
For glorious rose upon my sight
That child of Shower and Gleam.

Still bright on clouds of suffering dim
Shines that soft, solemn joy;
Nor care I now, how dense and grim
Disasters gather nigh.

I care not in this moment sweet,
Though all I have rushed o'er
Should come on pinion, strong and fleet,
Proclaiming vengeance sore:

Though haughty Hate should strike me down,
Right, bar approach to me,
And grinding Might, with furious frown,
Swear endless enmity.

My love has placed her little hand
With noble faith in mine,
And vowed that wedlock's sacred band
Our nature shall entwine.

My love has sworn, with sealing kiss,
With me to live--to die;
I have at last my nameless bliss.
As I love--loved am I!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre