Choice

I'd rather have the thought of you
To hold against my heart,
My spirit to be taught of you
With west winds blowing,
Than all the warm caresses
Of another love's bestowing,
Or all the glories of the world
In which you had no part.

I'd rather have the theme of you
To thread my nights and days,
I'd rather have the dream of you
With faint stars glowing,
I'd rather have the want of you,
The rich, elusive taunt of you
Forever and forever and forever unconfessed
Than claim the alien comfort
Of any other's breast.

O lover! O my lover,
That this should come to me!
I'd rather have the hope of you,
Ah, Love, I'd rather grope for you
Within the great abyss
Than claim another's kiss-
Alone I'd rather go my way
Throughout eternity.


Angela Morgan

1996 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature
 

True Love

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn't they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends' sake?
Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
The language they use - deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines -
it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!

It's hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who'd want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there's no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

~ Wislawa Szymborska-Wlodek
(Kraków, Poland: July 2, 1923 - February 1, 2012)

The best way to predict your future is to create it” ― Abraham Lincoln


I am the me I choose to be.” ― Sidney Poitier


When I saw you I was afraid to meet you... When I met you I was afraid to kiss you... When I kissed you I was afraid to love you... Now that I love you I m afraid to lose you. ” ― Some Emo Kid

Alone by Maya Angelou


Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

I love this Grenade!!! It is sad but beautiful.

Stop giving your life away to other people.” ― Steve Maraboli

Right now we are here, and nothing can mar this evening, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.”― Audrey Niffenegger


“Be sure it's your real self you're showing. Because it is your real self that needs to be loved.” ― Daphne Rose Kingma


“When what you hear and what you see don't match, trust your eyes.”
― Dale Renton

Human beings need pleasure the way they need vitamins.:bunchflowers:

~Lionel Tiger

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

Education is the proper way to promote compassion and tolerance in society. Compassion and peace of mind bring a sense of confidence that reduces stress and anxiety, whereas anger and hatred come from frustration and undermine our sense of trust. Because of ignorance, many of our problems are our own creation. Education, however, is the instrument that increases our ability to employ our own intelligence.
- Dalai Lama

My favorite Poet... my favorite line
 

Tonight I Can Write... Pablo Neruda


Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, "The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance."


The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.


Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her,
and sometimes she loved me too.


Through nights like this one, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.


She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.


Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her.
To feel that I have lost her.


To hear the immense night,
still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.


What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered
and she is not with me.


This is all.
In the distance someone is singing.
In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.


My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her,
and she is not with me.


The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.


I no longer love her, that's certain,
but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.


Another's. She will be another's.
Like my kisses before.
Her bright body.
Her infinite eyes.


I no longer love her, that's certain,
but maybe I love her. Love is so short,
forgetting is so long.


Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.


Thought this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

more Neruda
 

I crave your mouth... Pablo Neruda


I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.


I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.


I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,


and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

building trust takes years of thought, effort, patience, tears, humility, and honesty; all oft repeated. unbuilding trust can take a single second, a hasty assumption, a thoughtless act; especially when oft repeated.

Abraham Lincoln


the manner in which one endures that which must be endured is more important than the thing to be endured

also Abraham Lincoln


self respect is about saying 'stop' when someone hurts you, saying 'no' to the person you love most, saying 'unacceptable' when you're being fed a line of shit and saying 'step off' when even G*d treds on your toes

Dad


i refuse to give someone power if they refuse to respect the fact that i did it. that's like putting your balls in someone elses vice and forgetting to pocket the key

also Dad

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes.
William Shakespeare

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
William Shakespeare

I bear a charmed life.
William Shakespeare

If there ever comes a day where we can't be together,
keep me in your heart..I'll stay there forever.

~Winnie the Pooh

Song by Allen Ginsberg


The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

San Jose, 1954

letters to fanny brawne
 

John Keats

I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving - I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love - You note came in just here - I cannot be happier away from you - 'T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion - I have shudder'd at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr'd for my Religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you.

“Never judge someone by their relatives.” - Charles Martin


“You want the fairy tale, I want a chance at it.” ― Rachel Gibson


“It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.” ― Henry Miller

The weakness of man is the thing to be feared, not his strength.

“I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.” ― Shana Abé

“You know,” he said, “this is why I love you so much.”
Her tone was heartbreakingly warm. “What do you mean?”
You don’t ask me to go inside because it’s cold. You just want to make it easier for me to be where I want to stand.”― J.R. Ward


" What a luxury it was, for people to hold their loved ones whenever they wanted." - Ceclia Athern

Jacob served seven years for Rachel,
and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.


~Genesis 29:20

Here's an old army phrase I just saw;

"Always spend good money on your shoes and your bed, because if you're not in one you're in the other."

*Demonstrating my deeply philosophical side*

Quietly

By Kenneth Rexroth

Lying here quietly beside you,
My cheek against your firm, quiet thighs,
The calm music of Boccherini
Washing over us in the quiet,
As the sun leaves the housetops and goes
Out over the Pacific, quiet—
So quiet the sun moves beyond us,
So quiet as the sun always goes,
So quiet, our bodies, worn with the
Times and penances of love, our
Brains curled, quiet in their shells, dormant,
Our hearts slow, quiet, reliable
In their interlocked rhythms, the pulse
In your thigh caressing my cheek. Quiet.

The thing is

by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

Certain People

by Richard Jones

My father lives by the ocean
and drinks his morning coffee
in the full sun on his deck,
talking to anyone
who walks by on the beach.
And in the afternoons he works
part-time at the golf course–
sailing the fairways like sea captain
in a white golf cart.
My father must talk
to a hundred people a day,
yet we haven't spoken in weeks.
As I get older, we hardly speak at all.
It's as if he were a stranger
and we had never met.
I wonder, if I
were a tourist on the beach
or a golfer lost in woods
and met him now for the very first time,
what we'd say to each other,
how his hand would feel in mine
as we introduced ourselves,
and if, as is the case
with certain people, I'd feel,
when I looked him in the eye,
I'd known him all my life.

"Whatever one loves most is beautiful." --Sappho

Falling Leaves and Early Snow
by Kenneth Rexroth

In the years to come they will say,
"They fell like the leaves
In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine."
November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.
Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.
The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,
The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,
The olive, velvety alder leaves,
The scarlet dogwood leaves,
Most poignant of all.

In the afternoon thin blades of cloud
Move over the mountains;
The storm clouds follow them;
Fine rain falls without wind.
The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.
When the rain pauses the clouds
Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.
In the evening the wind changes;
Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.(f)

~Dalai Lama

Each time you fall into the past or jump into the future you miss what is going on right now. Right now you have the opportunity to create a fresh new start. Release the past! Receive your good now. Trust that when you reach tomorrow, there will be nothing but good waiting for you.

~Iyanla Vanzant

“Even if it is only for a matter of moments, because those moments bring with them a love so intense that it justifies the rest of our days.” ― P Cicero




“The urge to jump into his arms and feel the warmth of them surrounding me is so powerful, I wonder if it's medically possible to be addicted to another human being.”― Simone Elkeles


“Everything that happens to you matters to me.” ― Unkown

"I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it." --Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

--mevlana jelaluddin rumi

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle,”

~ Ernest Hemingway

"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea."
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

"Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home." ― James Joyce, Ulysses

"Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?"
― James Joyce, The Dead

"Love loves to love love."
― James Joyce, Ulysses

"And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart?"
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

"If you like it, you'll find a way to justify it.
But if you don't , you'll find ways to falsify it."
― Toba Beta,

If you want to leave footprints in the sands of time, don't drag your feet. Annot L Sheppard


If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. - Milton Berle

"Most people who judge a book by it's cover have difficulty reading."


You may have to endure some people speaking against you, but if you can stay on the high road, you will prove their criticism invalid. Joel Osteen

Try to be like the turtle-at ease in your own shell. Bill Copeland

“One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not?”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“It is the possibility that keeps me going, and though you may call me a dreamer or a fool or any other thing, I believe that anything is possible.”
― Nicholas Sparks

“When its gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.”
― Ian McEwan