Anshu P

“I killed a plant once because I gave
it too much water. Lord, I worry
that love is violence.”
― José Olivarez, Citizen Illegal

“A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“The Mania Speaks


You clumsy bootlegger. Little daffodil.
I watered you with an ocean and you plucked one little vein?
Downed a couple bottles of pills and got yourself carted off to the ER?
I gifted you the will of gunpowder, a matchstick tongue, and all you managed
was a shredded sweater and a police warning?
You should be legend by now.
Girl in an orange jumpsuit, a headline.
I built you from the purest napalm, fed you wine and bourbon.
Preened you in the dark, hammered lullabies into your thin skull.
I painted over the walls, wrote the poems. I shook your goddamn boots.
Now you want out? Think you’ll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions?
A good man’s good love and some breathing exercises?
You think I can’t tame that? I always come home. Always.
Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody:
I’m bigger than God.”
― Jeanann Verlee, Said The Manic To The Muse

“I respect only those who resist me, but cannot tolerate them”
― Charles de Gaulle