|
“I ask the impossible: love me forever.
Love me when all desire is gone. Love me with the single mindedness of a monk. When the world in its entirety, and all that you hold sacred advise you against it: love me still more. When rage fills you and has no name: love me. When each step from your door to our job tires you-- love me; and from job to home again, love me, love me. Love me when you're bored-- when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last, or more pathetic, love me as you always have: not as admirer or judge, but with the compassion you save for yourself in your solitude. Love me as you relish your loneliness, the anticipation of your death, mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends. Love me as your most treasured childhood memory-- and if there is none to recall-- imagine one, place me there with you. Love me withered as you loved me new. Love me as if I were forever-- and I, will make the impossible a simple act, by loving you, loving you as I do” ― Ana Castillo, I Ask the Impossible: Poems |
http://kamoterunner.files.wordpress....ame2.jpg?w=540 No Difference by Shel Silverstein Small as a peanut, Big as a giant, We're all the same size When we turn off the light. Rich as a sultan, Poor as a mite, We're all worth the same When we turn off the light. Red, black or orange, Yellow or white, We all look the same When we turn off the light. So maybe the way To make everything right Is for God to just reach out And turn off the light! |
http://love.catchsmile.com/wp-conten...Couples-20.jpg
Let These Be Your Desires by Khalil Gibran Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips. |
By William Wordsworth
536. Ode
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5 It is not now as it hath been of yore;— Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The rainbow comes and goes, 10 And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; 15 The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound 20 As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25 No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea 30 Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday;— Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 35 Shepherd-boy! Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, 40 My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all. O evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, 45 And the children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— 50 I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! —But there's a tree, of many, one, A single field which I have look'd upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet 55 Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 60 Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come 65 From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70 He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; 75 At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a mother's mind, 80 And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came. 85 Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! 90 See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; 95 And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long 100 Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage' With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 105 That Life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul's immensity; 110 Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— Mighty prophet! Seer blest! 115 On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, 120 A presence which is not to be put by; To whom the grave Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight Of day or the warm light, A place of thought where we in waiting lie; 125 Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 130 Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, 135 That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140 Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:— Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; 145 But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, 150 High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, 155 Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160 To perish never: Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165 Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, 170 And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound! 175 We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright 180 Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; 185 In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, 190 In years that bring the philosophic mind. And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquish'd one delight 195 To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet; 200 The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 205 Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. |
Bounty by Robyn Sarah Make much of something small. The pouring-out of tea, a drying flower's shadow on the wall from last week's sad bouquet. A fact: it isn't summer any more. Say that December sun is pitiless, but crystalline and strikes like a bell. Say it plays colours like a glockenspiel. It shows the dust as well, the elemental sediment your broom has missed, and lights each grain of sugar spilled upon the tabletop, beside pistachio shells, peel of a clementine. Slippers and morning papers on the floor, and wafts of iron heat from rumbling radiators, can this be all? No, look — here comes the cat, with one ear inside out. Make much of something small. |
Leaning In by Sue Ellen Thompson Sometimes, in the middle of a crowded store on a Saturday afternoon, my husband will rest his hand on my neck, or on the soft flesh belted at my waist, and pull me to him. I understand his question: Why are we so fortunate when all around us, friends are falling prey to divorce and illness? It seems intemperate to celebrate in a more conspicuous way so we just stand there, leaning in to one another, until that moment of sheer blessedness dissolves and our skin, which has been touching, cools and relents, settling back into our separate skeletons as we head toward Housewares to resume our errands. |
Walt Whitman
Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone Roots and leaves themselves alone are these, Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and pond-side, Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than vines, Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the sun is risen, Breezes of land and love set from living shores to you on the living sea, to you O sailors! Frost-mellow'd berries and Third-month twigs offer'd fresh to young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up, Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are, Buds to be unfolded on the old terms, If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and bring form, color, perfume, to you, If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers, fruits, tall branches and trees. Walt Whitman |
Walt Whitman
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you, As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me. Walt Whitman |
http://www.wallpaperhi.com/thumbnail...rhi.com_31.jpg Snow by Kenneth Rexroth Low clouds hang on the mountain. The forest is filled with fog. A short distance away the Giant trees recede and grow Dim. Two hundred paces and They are invisible. All Day the fog curdles and drifts. The cries of the birds are loud. They sound frightened and cold. Hour By hour it grows colder. Just before sunset the clouds Drop down the mountainside. Long Shreds and tatters of fog flow Swiftly away between the Trees. Now the valley below Is filled with clouds like clotted Cream and over them the sun Sets, yellow in a sky full Of purple feathers. After dark A wind rises and breaks branches From the trees and howls in the Treetops and then suddenly Is still. Late at night I wake And look out of the tent. The Clouds are rushing across the Sky and through them is tumbling The thin waning moon. Later All is quiet except for A faint whispering. I look Out. Great flakes of wet snow are Falling. Snowflakes are falling Into the dark flames of the Dying fire. In the morning the Pine boughs are sagging with snow, And the dogwood blossoms are Frozen, and the tender young Purple and citron oak leaves. |
Dark Charms by Dorianne Laux Eventually the future shows up everywhere: those burly summers and unslept nights in deep lines and dark splotches, thinning skin. Here's the corner store grown to a condo, the bike reduced to one spinning wheel, the ghost of a dog that used to be, her trail no longer trodden, just a dip in the weeds. The clear water we drank as thirsty children still runs through our veins. Stars we saw then we still see now, only fewer, dimmer, less often. The old tunes play and continue to move us in spite of our learning, the wraith of romance, lost innocence, literature, the death of the poets. We continue to speak, if only in whispers, to something inside us that longs to be named. We name it the past and drag it behind us, bag like a lung filled with shadow and song, dreams of running, the keys to lost names. |
Holly
Quote:
|
Their Lonely Betters
by W. H. Auden As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade To all the noises that my garden made, It seemed to me only proper that words Should be withheld from vegetables and birds A robin with no Christian name ran through The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew, And rustling flowers for some third party waited To say which pairs, if any, should get mated. Not one of them was capable of lying, There was not one which knew that it was dying Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme Assumed responsibility for time. Let them leave language to their lonely betters Who count some days and long for certain letters; We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep: Words are for those with promises to keep. |
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust.
A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky. ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet |
So by Philip Booth So, there's no way to be sure. Not about much of anything. No more about anyone else than ourselves. Perhaps not even of death, except that it's bound to happen. To you, yes; to me, us: the lot of humankind, given how humankind sees it from this near side. So what. So nothing that we here and now can perfectly know. Save, though the lens our eyes raise, the old here and now. The this, the already-going that moves us. The red-shift we're constantly part of. And why not? Between what we were, and are going to be, is who and how we best love. |
You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop
You ask why sometimes I say stop why sometimes I cry no while I shake with pleasure. What do I fear, you ask, why don't I always want to come and come again to that molten deep sea center where the nerves fuse open and the brain and body shine with a black wordless light fluorescent and heaving like plankton. If you turn over the old refuse of sexual slang, the worn buttons of language, you find men talk of spending and women of dying. You come in a torrent and ease into limpness. Pleasure takes me farther and farther from the shore in a series of breakers, each towering higher before it crashes and spills flat. I am open then as a palm held out, open as a sunflower, without crust, without shelter, without skin, hideless and unhidden. How can I let you ride so far into me and not fear? Helpless as a burning city, how can I ignore that the extremes of pleasure are fire storms that leave a vacuum into which dangerous feelings (tenderness, affection, l o v e) may rush like gale force winds. by Marge Piercy |
Quote:
|
The Cat's Song
by Marge Piercy Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing milk from his mother's forgotten breasts. Let us walk in the woods, says the cat. I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents, to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt. Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat. You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, says the cat, although I am more equal than you. Can you leap twenty times the height of your body? Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs? Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch. My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard. My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings walking round and round your bed and into your face. Come I will teach you to dance as naturally as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long. I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers. Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass. |
Quote:
To Have Without Holding Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch; to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can't do it, you say it's killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced. Marge Piercy |
Snow Fall by May Sarton With no wind blowing It sifts gently down, Enclosing my world in A cool white down, A tenderness of snowing. It falls and falls like sleep Till wakeful eyes can close On all the waste and loss As peace comes in and flows, Snow-dreaming what I keep. Silence assumes the air And the five senses all Are wafted on the fall To somewhere magical Beyond hope and despair. There is nothing to do But drift now, more or less On some great lovingness, On something that does bless, The silent, tender snow. |
What Are Big Girls Made Of?
Marge Piercy The construction of a woman: a woman is not made of flesh of bone and sinew belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe. She is manufactured like a sports sedan. She is retooled, refitted and redesigned every decade. Cecile had been seduction itself in college. She wriggled through bars like a satin eel, her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed in the dark red lipstick of desire. She visited in '68 still wearing skirts tight to the knees, dark red lipstick, while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt, lipstick pale as apricot milk, hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear, I thought in my superiority of the moment, whatever has happened to poor Cecile? She was out of fashion, out of the game, disqualified, disdained, dis- membered from the club of desire. Look at pictures in French fashion magazines of the 18th century: century of the ultimate lady fantasy wrought of silk and corseting. Paniers bring her hips out three feet each way, while the waist is pinched and the belly flattened under wood. The breasts are stuffed up and out offered like apples in a bowl. The tiny foot is encased in a slipper never meant for walking. On top is a grandiose headache: hair like a museum piece, daily ornamented with ribbons, vases, grottoes, mountains, frigates in full sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy of a hairdresser turned loose. The hats were rococo wedding cakes that would dim the Las Vegas strip. Here is a woman forced into shape rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh: a woman made of pain. How superior we are now: see the modern woman thin as a blade of scissors. She runs on a treadmill every morning, fits herself into machines of weights and pulleys to heave and grunt, an image in her mind she can never approximate, a body of rosy glass that never wrinkles, never grows, never fades. She sits at the table closing her eyes to food hungry, always hungry: a woman made of pain. A cat or dog approaches another, they sniff noses. They sniff asses. They bristle or lick. They fall in love as often as we do, as passionately. But they fall in love or lust with furry flesh, not hoop skirts or push up bras rib removal or liposuction. It is not for male or female dogs that poodles are clipped to topiary hedges. If only we could like each other raw. If only we could love ourselves like healthy babies burbling in our arms. If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed to need what is sold us. Why should we want to live inside ads? Why should we want to scourge our softness to straight lines like a Mondrian painting? Why should we punish each other with scorn as if to have a large ass were worse than being greedy or mean? When will women not be compelled to view their bodies as science projects, gardens to be weeded, dogs to be trained? When will a woman cease to be made of pain? |
But Listen, I Am Warning You
But listen, I am warning you I'm living for the very last time. Not as a swallow, nor a maple, Not as a reed, nor as a star, Not as spring water, Nor as the toll of bells… Will I return to trouble men Nor will I vex their dreams again With my insatiable moans. Anna Akhmatova |
Sex Without Love
How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health--just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time. by Sharon Olds |
Beneath My Hands
Beneath my hands your small breasts are the upturned bellies of breathing fallen sparrows. Wherever you move I hear the sounds of closing wings of falling wings. I am speechless because you have fallen beside me because your eyelashes are the spines of tiny fragile animals. I dread the time when your mouth begins to call me hunter. When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want to summon the eyes and hidden mouths of stone and light and water to testify against you. I want them to surrender before you the trembling rhyme of your face from their deep caskets. When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want my body and my hands to be pools for your looking and laughing. --Leonard Cohen |
An Invisible Connection What is this magical bond we share? Amidst the constant circus like avalanche of words, How did you know? Once like you stable and secure, He is older, yet betrothed to your dream, Faithful to uncertainty, A spirit yearning to be free. His subtle words lodge in your thought. Why did you pick this stranger With a hunger that you can not see? A young woman's hair kisses the breeze, Her dignity conceals the distance in her gaze. Is it possible that a simple innocent radiant smile, Or a crazy serendipitous verse, Could bring two people so diverse To where we find ourselves today? Strangers once to our own lives, At ease with the depth of our own emptiness, How unlikely it is that we are here It's quiet tonight, light raindrops filter through the leaves Washing away the dust, releasing fragrances On which the gentle breeze sweetens The kind of night you wish you were with the one you love Nestled close to the open fire Watching the moon duck in and out of the white cotton clouds Caressing and holding each other gently Breath silently quivering collect; Once locked away behind iron clad doors, Feelings and emotions stir, Disguised by layers of pain and ruin Two hearts awaken. A gentle, loving, knowing kiss; Bound together forever. Jeff Demos |
Best Read Outloud :)
Sick by Shel Silverstein
Sick "I cannot go to school today," Said little Peggy Ann McKay. "I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps. My mouth is wet, my throat is dry, I'm going blind in my right eye. My tonsils are as big as rocks, I've counted sixteen chicken pox And there's one more - that's seventeen, And don't you think my face looks green? My leg is cut, my eyes are blue - It might be instamatic flu. I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke, I'm sure that my left leg is broke - My hip hurts when I move my chin, My belly button's caving in, My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained, My 'pendix pains each time it rains. My nose is cold, my toes are numb, I have a sliver in my thumb. My neck is stiff, my spine is weak, I hardly whisper when I speak. My tongue is filling up my mouth, I think my hair is falling out. My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight, My temperature is one-o-eight. My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear, There is a hole inside my ear. I have a hangnail, and my heart is - what? What's that? What's that you say? You say today is ... Saturday? G'bye, I'm going out to play!" |
http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/hummingbird-sex-1.jpg The Underworld by Sharon Bryan When I lived in the foothills birds flocked to the feeder: house finches, goldfinches, skyblue lazuli buntings, impeccably dressed chickadees, sparrows in work clothes, even hummingbirds fastforwarding through the trees. Some of them disappeared after a week, headed north, I thought, with the sun. But the first cool day they were back, then gone, then back, more reliable than weathermen, and I realized they hadn't gone north at all, but up the mountain, as invisible to me as if they had flown a thousand miles, yet in reality just out of sight, out of reach— maybe at the end of our lives the world lifts that slightly away from us, and returns once or twice to see if we've refilled the feeder, if we still remember it, or if we've taken leave of our senses altogether. |
|
Sadness causes the most wonderful growth:
There is a curious paradox that no one can explain: who understands the secrets of the reaping of the grain? Who understands why spring is born out of winter's laboring pain, or why we all must die a bit before we grow again? El Gallo from the play The Fantasticks |
“In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you.” ― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker |
She being brand new
Another e.e. cummings into the mix: One of my all time fave's:
she being Brand -new;and you know consequently a little stiff i was careful of her and(having thoroughly oiled the universal joint tested my gas felt of her radiator made sure her springs were O. K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her up,slipped the clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she kicked what the hell)next minute i was back in neutral tried and again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my lev-er Right- oh and her gears being in A 1 shape passed from low through second-in-to-high like greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity avenue i touched the accelerator and give her the juice,good (it was the first ride and believe i we was happy to see how nice she acted right up to the last minute coming back down by the Public Gardens i slammed on the internalexpanding & externalcontracting brakes Bothatonce and brought allofher tremB -ling to a:dead. stand- ;Still) -e.e. cummings |
The Woodstove by Jennifer Grotz The woodstove is banked to last the night, its slim legs, like an elegant dog's, stand obediently on the tile floor while in its belly a muffled tumult cries like wind keening through the hemlocks. Human nature to sleep by fire, and human nature to be sleepless by it too. I get up to watch the blue flames finger soft chambers in the wood while the coals swell with scintillating breaths. What made Rousseau once observe that dogs will not build fires? (And further, that in the pleasing warmth of a fire already started, they will not add wood?) What is it to be human? To forge connection, to make interpretations of fire and contain them in a little iron stove? And what is it to be fire? To burn with indifference, to consume the skin of the arm as easily as the bark of a log. Sleepy warmth begins to fill the room in which life wants to live and fire wants to burn, the room which in the morning will hold a fire changed to cooling ash. Outside, smoke escapes and for an instant mirrors nature too, the way falling snow reveals the wind's mind, and change of mind, before world and mind grow inscrutable again. |
Odessa by Patricia Kirkpatrick I drove through Sacred Heart and Montevideo, over the Chippewa River, all the way to Madison. When I stopped, walked into grass— bluestem, wild rose, a monarch— I was afraid at first. Birds I couldn't identify might have been bobolinks, non-breeding plumage. I am always afraid of what might show up, suddenly. What might hide. At dusk I saw the start of low plateaus, plains really, even when planted. Almost to the Dakota border I was struck by the isolation and abiding loneliness yet somehow thrilled. Alone. Hardly another car on the road and in town, just a few teenagers wearing high school sweatshirts, walking and laughing, on the edge of a world they don't know. Darkness started as heaviness in the colors of fields, a tractor, cornstalks, stone. I turned back just before the Prairie Wildlife Refuge at Odessa, the place I came to see. Closed. Empty. The moon rose. Full. I was driving Highway 7, the "Sioux Trail:" I could feel the past the way I could in Mexico, Mayan tombs in the jungle at Palenque, men tearing papers from our hands. Three hours still to drive home. |
Snippets of T.S. (Eliot)
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. (The Waste Land) |
Simple and sweet:
Remember me with smiles and laughter, For that's the way I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, Then don't remember me at all. (Michael Landon, in an episode from Little House On The Prairie) |
Quote:
|
Breakfast by Joyce Sutphen My father taught me how to eat breakfast those mornings when it was my turn to help him milk the cows. I loved rising up from the darkness and coming quietly down the stairs while the others were still sleeping. I'd take a bowl from the cupboard, a spoon from the drawer, and slip into the pantry where he was already eating spoonfuls of cornflakes covered with mashed strawberries from our own strawberry fields forever. Didn't talk much—except to mention how good the strawberries tasted or the way those clouds hung over the hay barn roof. Simple—that's how we started up the day. |
http://uploads8.wikipaintings.org/im...g!xlMedium.jpg In the Late Season by Tom Hennen At the soft place in the snowbank Warmed to dripping by the sun There is the smell of water. On the western wind the hint of glacier. A cottonwood tree warmed by the same sun On the same day, My back against its rough bark Same west wind mild in my face. A piece of spring Pierced me with love for this empty place Where a prairie creek runs Under its cover of clear ice And the sound it makes, Mysterious as a heartbeat, New as a lamb. |
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...H1BMK2LzjmHkbM Trombone Lesson by Paul Hostovsky The twenty minutes from half past nine to ten of ten is actually slightly longer than the twenty minutes from ten of ten to ten past ten, which is half downhill as anyone who's ever stared at the hillocky face of a clock in the 5th grade will tell you. My trombone lesson with Mr. Leister was out the classroom door and down the tessellating hallway to the band room which was full of empty chairs and music stands from ten past ten to ten-forty, which is half an hour and was actually slightly shorter than the twenty minutes that came before or after which as anyone who's ever played trombone will tell you, had to do with the length of the slide and the smell of the brass and also the mechanism of the spit-valve and the way that Mr. Leister accompanied me on his silver trumpet making the music sound so elegantly and eminently better than when I practiced it at home for hours and hours which were all much shorter than an hour actually, as anyone who's ever practiced the art of deception with a musical instrument will tell you, if he's honest and has any inkling of the spluttering, sliding, flaring, slippery nature of time, youth and trombones. |
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S.Eliot)
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9...ugijo1_500.gif
(not in its entirety...just the bits I love most) LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question…. Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. http://dktqof0r04orj.cloudfront.net/...250ecb72_o.jpg |
http://unsilly.com/string-quartet-instruments.jpg String Quartet by Carl Dennis Art and life, I wouldn't want to confuse them. But it's hard to hear this quartet Without comparing it to a conversation Of the quiet kind, where no one tries to outtalk The other participants, where each is eager instead To share in the task of moving the theme along From the opening statement to the final bar. A conversation that isn't likely to flourish When sales technicians come trolling for customers, Office-holders for votes, preachers for converts. Many good people among such talkers, But none engaged like the voices of the quartet In resisting the plots time hatches to make them unequal, To set them at odds, to pull them asunder. I love the movement where the cello is occupied With repeating a single phrase while the others Strike out on their own, three separate journeys That seem to suggest each prefers, after all, The pain and pleasure of playing solo. But no. Each near the end swerves back to the path Their friend has been plodding, and he receives them As if he never once suspected their loyalty. Would I be moved if I thought the music Belonged to a world remote from this one, If it didn't seem instead to be making the point That conversation like this is available At moments sufficiently free and self-forgetful? And at other moments, maybe there's still a chance To participate in the silence of listeners Who are glad for what they manage to bring to the music And for what they manage to take away. |
| All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:19 AM. |
ButchFemmePlanet.com
All information copyright of BFP 2018