Your Favorite Poems

[SoNotHer]

Poem In Which Words Have Been Left Out
by Charles Jensen

—The "Miranda Rights," established 1966


You have the right to remain
anything you can and will be.

An attorney you cannot afford
will be provided to you.

You have silent will.
You can be against law.
You cannot afford one.

You remain silent. Anything you say
will be provided to you.

The right can and will be
against you. The right provided you.

Have anything you say be
right. Anything you say can be right.

Say you have the right attorney.
The right remain silent.

Be held. Court the one. Be provided.
You cannot be you.

[adorable]

DUST OF SNOW

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued. ~Robert Frost

[Truly Scrumptious]

Loving you is like living
in the war years.
I do think of Bogart & Bergman
not clear who’s who
but still singin’ a long smoky
mood into the piano bar
drinks straight up
the last bottle in the house
while bombs split
outside, a broken world.

A world war going on
but you and I still insisting
in each our own heads
still thinking how
if I could only make some contact
with that woman across the keyboard
we size each other up
yes …

Loving you has this kind of desperation
to it, like do or die, I
having eyed you from the first
time you made the decision to move
from your stool
to live dangerously.

All on the hunch
that in our exchange of photos
of old girlfriends, names
of cities and memories back in the states
the fronts we’ve manned
out here on the continent
all this on the hunch

that this time there’ll be
no need for resistance.

Loving in the war years
calls for this kind of risking
without a home to call our own
I’ve got to take you as you come
to me, each time like a stranger
all over again. Not knowing
what deaths you saw today

I’ve got to take you
as you come, battle bruised
refusing our enemy, fear

We’re all we’ve got. You and I

maintaining
this war time morality
where being queer
and female is as rude
as we can get.

~ Cherrie Moraga

[smouldering]

‎"Before I understood how to open with you, I tried giving you orgasms so I knew I was a good lover.

But now, all I want is your surrender.

I want your heart's pleasure to ripple through your open body and saturate my life with your love.
...
Your body's openness to love's flow draws me into you, and through your heart's surrender I am opened to the love that lives as the universe.

Whether you have an orgasm or not while we make love, your body's trust and devotional openness is my secret doorway to love's deepest bliss."

-David Deida

[adorable]

Originally Posted by smouldering

‎"Before I understood how to open with you, I tried giving you orgasms so I knew I was a good lover.

But now, all I want is your surrender.

I want your heart's pleasure to ripple through your open body and saturate my life with your love.
...
Your body's openness to love's flow draws me into you, and through your heart's surrender I am opened to the love that lives as the universe.

Whether you have an orgasm or not while we make love, your body's trust and devotional openness is my secret doorway to love's deepest bliss."

-David Deida

I LOVE DAVID DEIDA!!!! (Yes, I was yelling.)

[Greco]

Joy and Sorrow


Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises
was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine
the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit,
the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous,
look deep into your heart and you shall find
it is only that which has given you sorrow
that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping
for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow,"
and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

KAHLIL GIBRAN

[adorable]

The Buried Life
by Matthew Arnold


Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile;
But there 's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne;
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reprov'd;
I knew they liv'd and mov'd
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast.

But we, my love—does a like spell benumb
Our hearts—our voices?—must we too be dumb?

Ah, well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!

Fate, which foresaw
How frivolous a baby man would be,
By what distractions he would be possess'd,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity;
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey,
Even in his own despite his being's law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded River of our Life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life,
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us, to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas, none ever mines!
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power,
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves;
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress'd.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well—but 'tis not true!
And then we will no more be rack'd
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul's subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.

Only—but this is rare—
When a belovèd hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a lov'd voice caress'd—
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again!
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know,
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur, and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
The flying and elusive shadow, Rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the Sea where it goes.