roger

ten years later, i still don't know if time can heal them all.

"he left last night and i cannot breath - i cannot taste - i cannot see - i cannot stand.... i had no idea it would be so bad -  we cried the whole day - we smoked drugs to try and laugh - and when we stood at the bus - he held me and sobbed - … — "he left last night and i cannot breath - i cannot taste - i cannot see - i cannot stand.
... i had no idea it would be so bad - we cried the whole day - we smoked drugs to try and laugh - and when we stood at the bus - he held me and sobbed - reached in his pocket and handed me the necklace he wears every single day - from his nonna - he pushes it into my palm and screams into my ear - "i swear to god i will come for this" - he leaves me without once looking into my eyes and it is so much worse than i thought it would be. Pablo puts his arms around me to try to stop my shaking - and i do not stop for an hour standing there in the fucking Gala lobby.
... time can heal all wounds?"
-- n.nigro (2004)

how lucky we are to have love

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

Outi-Illuusia Lilja

Unique, talented and spirited, Outi-Illuusia Lilja is a poet and performance artist based in Helsinki, Finland. I had the absolute privilege of meeting her at Ponderosa last month and she wrote a beautiful poem about me. Major gratitude. Check out all of her goodness.

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

amore mio ❤

and the world opens up right before your eyes. and you can no longer look at anything the same way again.

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

it's Germany with love.

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

my friend is a humble, strange, romantic genius. a lyricist of the heart.

Across my eyes it swept away

forever. A hard sand bottom

asleep amongst rainbows and dimpled pearls

every year

around this time.

Moon sliver grey sky silver blue

with open eyes and friends, growing and collapsing

the deeps.

I’m tired of blue this year

this time.

—-

Across from her and he and me and you of we.

I know you red Maguire, jasmine ancestor

strange romantic me.

Coincidence such

afoot behind my door,

heaven in spaces,

mist, to stars. In lungs

soaking in bests and worst

dispersed to even proportions

attached with perfection

as it is just then

instead of all at once whole.

Some young dog will get my eye, my being,

being what it’s all about. Heaven in dust.

—-

Crossed my mind - that door, that line, it’s ease.

Porcelain doll with open legs and an accent, in you

I could not come. And him and he, he kept on

and on with no familiarity, no taste

we’re trying to dance, my god, my cock

my altitude in leaving, you crass romantics

miserable fucks. Depravity at it’s poles

as you fucked his girlfriend…

—-

Do you think she remembers the music? Some summer months

and years away.

Little Paris she told me

on the slant down, both ways,

we were on the peak

balancing on soft cushions while I dragged my tongue up her thigh

and we fell

to burn our limbs on the floor

lick our wounds in tangled sleeps

till dark the next day.

—-

This isn’t it. This time.

- j.mcdonough (2013)

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

AUGUR in process

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

“You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night...You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.”

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, El Principito

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

mountains, cities, country n' love

cradled in the nooks and crannies of our standing mothers. lake louise, AB.

i want a woman.

a woman who's fair.

who lives in the woodlands with braids in her hair.

- gabriel kelley

for her i changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, i changed glass into water, i gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found the feathers. i asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin i flipped for her love.

- nicole krauss

come to my window
crawl inside, wait by the light
of the moon
come to my window
i'll be home soon

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

so beautiful

NOWHERE. DIMITRIS PAPAIOANNOU.

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

philip promoting empathy for all of humanity

"If I don't allow people to somehow identify with the worst inside themselves they never had a chance at actually walking out with that person in their heart."

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

o.l.l.a

let us have this dream

this great wash

this tide of you to leave me winded

familiar skin

braised in trepidation

lost in you

my dove, my lamb

cradled by your moonlight

your

careful, precise, thoughtful love

your

squalid, miserable, vulgar love

your

wild, unbridled, consuming love

your

charming, tender, beautiful love

lost in you

my dove, my lamb

cradled by your viciousness

i’ll cry when you leave today

and not because i no longer have you,

but because i once did

- n.nigro (2014)

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

k.s.k.

"...worn, faded, derelict, nakedly vicious, mercenary, vulgar.  It is, if anything repellent rather than attractive, but insidiously repellent, like vice itself.  There are little bars filled almost exclusively with whores, pimps, thugs an… — "...worn, faded, derelict, nakedly vicious, mercenary, vulgar. It is, if anything repellent rather than attractive, but insidiously repellent, like vice itself. There are little bars filled almost exclusively with whores, pimps, thugs and gamblers, which, no matter if you pass them up a thousand times, finally suck you in and claim you as a victim. There are hotels in the side streets leading off the boulevard whose ugliness is so sinister that you shudder at the thought of entering them, and yet it is inevitable that you will one day pass a night, perhaps a week or a month, in one of them. You may even become so attached to the place as to find one day that your whole life has been transformed and that what you once regarded as sordid, squalid, miserable, has now become charming, tender, BEAUTIFUL."
- *Quiet Days in Clichy (1956)*

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

i did not need a humanthat tucked my darkness into a distant corner.i needed one that woulddance with it, nurture it,tell me that in such a vigorous world, it was the most stunning thing they had ever seen. a human that would find the… — i did not need a human
that tucked my darkness into
a distant corner.
i needed one that would
dance with it, nurture it,
tell me that in such a
vigorous world, it was the most stunning thing
they had ever seen.

a human that would find the terrible traits in me,
to be moonly.
-- c. poindexter

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

thank you

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

- Maya Angelou

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

““The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” ”

— John Milton

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

harvey milk

"Go after her. Fuck, don’t sit there and wait for her to call, go after her because that’s what you should do if you love someone, don’t wait for them to give you a sign cause it might never come, don’t let people happen to you, don’t let me happen to you, or her, she’s not a fucking television show or tornado. There are people I might have loved had they gotten on the airplane or run down the street after me or called me up drunk at four in the morning because they need to tell me right now and because they cannot regret this and I always thought I’d be the only one doing crazy things for people who would never give enough of a fuck to do it back or to act like idiots or be entirely vulnerable and honest and making someone fall in love with you is easy and flying 3000 miles on four days notice because you can’t just sit there and do nothing and breathe into telephones is not everyone’s idea of love but it is the way I can recognize it because that is what I do. Go scream it and be with her in meaningful ways because that is beautiful and that is generous and that is what loving someone is, that is raw and that is unguarded, and that is all that is worth anything, really."

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

gabriel garcia marquez, rip ♥

“He recognized her despite the uproar, through his tears of unrepeatable sorrow at dying without her, and he looked at her for the last and final time with eyes more luminous, more grief-stricken, more grateful than she had ever seen them in half a century of a shared life, and he managed to say to her with his last breath: “Only God knows how much I loved you””

— Love in the Time of Cholera

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

what if we leaned towards sincerity? and hope? and vulnerability? what if we risked being labelled naïve or even sentimental in our search for integrity and connection? what would that look like?

David Foster Wallace was right: Irony is ruining our culture.

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

this is how we tell it

perhaps the thin wire of words is enoughbut she is made mostly of noisedry electrical hisses and bottled sunlightif you come up for air she’ll be someone you haven’t even met yet'acid and tender'interested in certainty and stiff limbs- n. nigro (201… — perhaps the thin wire of words is enough
but she is made mostly of noise
dry electrical hisses and bottled sunlight
if you come up for air she’ll be someone you haven’t even met yet
'acid and tender'
interested in certainty and stiff limbs
- n. nigro (2014)

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.

smile at me

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

— William Martin

Posted on March 9, 2014 by Nicole Nigro.