“Aphrodite put off her famous belt, in which all the charms of love are woven, potency, desire, lovely whispers, and the force of seduction, which takes away foresight and judgment even from the most reasonable people.”
Jeffrey Eugenides – Middlesex
Author Archives: ravenousbutterflies
Art is a mystery
“Art is a mystery.
A mystery is something immeasurable.
In so far as every child and woman and man may be immeasurable, art is the mystery of every man and woman and child. In so far as a human being is an artist, skies and mountains and oceans and thunderbolts and butterflies are immeasurable; and art is every mystery of nature. Nothing measurable can be alive; nothing which is not alive can be art; nothing which cannot be art is true: and everything untrue doesn’t matter a very good God damn…”
ee cummings
Vladimir Nabokov
“Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture.”
Vladimir Nabokov
Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary
“You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.”
Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary
Sonnet XVII – Pablo Neruda
Sonnet XVII
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
Pablo Neruda
i like my body when it is with your
i like my body when it is with your
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh … And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
e. e. cummings
Lisa Azarmi will be the new Editor!
We are delirious to announce that Lisa Azarmi will be the new Editor of Ravenous Butterflies! New changes and new staff are coming on board and the website is being redone! Please support Lisa as she moves Rav forward!
In the words of Lisa, “I am delighted to announce that I am now editor of Ravenous Butterflies, an emerging, exciting arts journal. I trust that you will give it, and us the thumbs up, by
going to the ‘Like’ page. Ravenous Butterflies is always hungry for exciting and interesting subject matter, I’ll post links for those of you who may wish to submit work for consideration. As editor, I will explore and endeavor to select and publish work of integrity, intellect and sublime creativity. The quest has begun, I
hope you enjoy being a part of my unfolding wings.”
Sam Frome – Emerging from the edge.
Sam is a young Poetess who recently relocated to the wilds of Colorado. She describes her political affiliation as “silly hippie communism”.
“Waiting”
Waiting
for your company
is like
getting through
the last 45 minutes
of a shift
at McDonald’s…
Only,
when you get here,
I don’t smell
like french fry grease.
Sam Frome ©2013
“Suitcase”
Sometimes
while I sit on the porch
here
and smoke cigarettes,
I close my eyes
and pretend
I am home.
But this seat
is too comfortable
and when children laugh
and birds sing
the echoes
are not the same.
There is no piece
of what I know
here
that I did not unpack
from a suitcase.
Sam Frome ©2013
“One Hell”
On any day
she
is a stranger
to me
and to forget her
is impossible
only because I already have
until
on dark nights
and bright mornings
and cloudy afternoons she
drips
down my throat
tastes
like an angel
ethereal
and whatnot
grabs my brain
by the stem
picks it
like a lily
she rips
my roots
out
cuts me
at an angle because
clearly
I belong
in the vase on her
nightstand where
my withering can be appreciated.
Sam Frome ©2013
Kelli Allen – Otherwise, Soft White Ash Offical Book Trailor
“Kelli Allen’s debut book includes the short story “Orphaned Near the Cave” and the poem “The Twelfth Swan,” among other works that according to Glenn Irwin, Assistant Director,
University of Missouri in St. Louis MFA, “embody the kind of magic which good poetry has always striven towards and is full of the dark and wonderful complexities of life.” Gary Geddes, poet and editor of 20th-Century Poetry & Poetics said “Kelli Allen’s work…illustrates all three stages in the making of an artist.”
Equal Rights
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
Ravenous Butterflies 