( via / via )

The 10th Victim.

    “Nicole” (my entry for the Leonard Cohen Prize)

The world had only lately changed
  And I was but halfway grown
Europe was a place I played
  And pledged not to play alone
In Denmark lay an old-school circus
  This girl and I made our goal
How little I dreamed of the night we’d find
  When the acrobat talked of the soul

Clowns and horses and acrobats
  Just like in the movies
Summer of my first dark beer
  And carefully crafted doobies
We didn’t know each other well
  Which was just as well for a roll
With someone neither would see again
  When the acrobat talked of the soul

He signalled her from down on the floor
  At first she couldn’t tell
Whether it was her he meant
  With gestures to implore
A meeting when the show had done
  As I in the cuckold’s role
Could not expect so soon to bear
  When the acrobat talked of the soul

She left with him and later said
  No funny stuff ensued
Which I believed and later lost touch
  But long remained to brood
On what she’d said they’d done instead
  That night so bright and droll
For all night long while they drank milk
  The acrobat talked of the soul

That was a few girls back and some
  Have scored far grislier scars
Crazy girls and cruel girls
  Who left me seeing stars
But never quite the wonderment
  Inciting to be whole
A spiel to fuel my further loves
  Like that acrobat’s talk of the soul

" 'How is the world ruled and led to war?' Kraus asked, arguing that the origin of the 20th century’s seminal war lay in a continent-wide collapse, triggered by the press, of cognitive and imaginative faculties, which allowed European nations to blunder into a war they could neither anticipate nor stop." (via Mefi)

“Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”

Diary of Anne Frank
January 13, 1943 via @strandjunker.com

Cfern.