Please post your treasured poems about anything or everything below. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper, fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. (Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau) Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove,
Oh no! It is an ever fix'd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark;
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare
If you can keep your head when those around you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you And make allowance for their doubting too If you can wait and not be tired by waiting Or being lied about- don't deal in lies Or being hated don't give way to hating And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise If you can dream and not make dreams your master If you can think and not make thought your aim If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters both the same If you can bear to hear the words you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools Or see the things you gave your life to, broken And stoop and build them up with worn-out tools If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them, "Hold on" If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue Or walk with Kings- nor lose the common touch If neither foe nor loving friend can hurt you If all men count on you, but none too much If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds worth of distance run Yours is the earth and everything that's in it And, which is more, you'll be a Man, my Son! ~Rudyard Kipling~~one of Wind's especiallist authors~ More e.e. cummings In time of daffodils who know the aim of living is to grow forgetting why remember how. There's more but I don't remember it! FrannyIsRad (i know not what it is about you that opens and closes only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all the roses)nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands. -e.e. cummings this is just an excerpt but i think it's so amazingly beautiful.-jennyrose Mind Thy Self. Kiss The Sky. Never Run From Passion. Trust That My Smile Is Pure. ~erin's magnetic poetry on naomi's washing machine i read this at my hsgroup's graduation ceremony... (-summer) From having been born so often
I have salty experience
like creatures of the sea
with a passion for stars
and an earthy destination.
And so I move without knowing
to which world I'll be returning
or if I'll go on living.
While things are settling down,
here I've left my testament,
my shifting extravagaria,
so whoever goes on reading it
will never take in anything
except the constant moving
of a clear and bewildered man,
a man rainy and happy,
lively and autumn-minded.
And now I'm going behind
this page, but not disappearing.
I'll dive into clear air
like a swimmer in the sky,
and then get back to growing
till one day I'm so small
that the wind will take me away
and I won't know my own name
and I won't be there when I wake
Then I will sing in the silence Pablo NerudaSnow comes last for it quiets down everything ~Joesph Concha as my eyes look across the prairie i feel the summer in the spring ~ an Ashinabe "spring poem" translated by Gerald Vizenor We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world forever, it seems. ~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover. ~ Wendell Berry Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom-- Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home-- Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene--one step enough for me. I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that Thou Shouldst lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path, but now Lead Thou me on! I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will; remember not past years. So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone; And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. - Cardinal John Henry Newman A Ballad of Suicide The gallows in my garden, people say, Is new and neat and adequately tall; I tie the noose on in a knowing way As one that knots his necktie for a ball; But just as all the neighbours on the wall-- Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!" The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all I think I will not hang myself to-day. To-morrow is the time I get my pay-- My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall-- I see a little cloud all pink and grey-- Perhaps the rector's mother will not call-- I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall That mushrooms could be cooked another way-- I never read the works of Juvenal-- I think I will not hang myself to-day. The world will have another washing-day; The decadents decay; the pedants pall; And H.G. Wells has found that children play, And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall, Rationalists are growing rational-- And through thick woods one finds a stream astray So secret that the very sky seems small-- I think I will not hang myself to-day. ENVOI Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way; Even to-day your royal head may fall, I think I will not hang myself to-day. - G.K. Chesterton <b>First Snow, by Mary Oliver</b> The snow began here this morning and all day continued, it's white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to /why/, /how/, /whence/ such beauty and /what/ the meaning; such an oracular fever! flowing past windows, and energy it seemed would never ebb, never settle less than lovely! and only now, deep into the night it has finally ended. The silence is immense, and the heavens still hold a million candles; nowhere the familiar things: stars, the moon, the darkness we expect and nightly turn from. Trees glitter like castles of ribbons, the broad fields smolder with light, a passing creekbed lies heaped with shining hills; and though the questions that have assailed us all day remain - not a single answer has been found - walking out now into the silence and the light under the trees and through the fields, feels like one. /On Eryn's wall, thanks to Rosie!/ Oh, oh, how I love Poe! ~*~ The Bells/-By Edgar Allen Poe-/ Hear the sledges with the bells - Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody fortells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens seem to twinkle With a chystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. Hear the mellow wedding bells - Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony fortells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! - From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush on euphony volumiously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the future! - how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! Hear the loud alarum bells - Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor, Now - now to sit, or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosum of the palpitating air! Yet the ear, it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -- Of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - In the clamor and the clanking of the bells! Hear the tolling of the bells - Iron bells! What a world of solumn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people... ah, the people - They dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone - They are neither man nor women - They are neither brute nor human - They are Ghouls: - And their kind it is who tolls: - And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paen from the bells! And his merry bosum swells At the paen from the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme; To the paen of the bells: - Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paen of the bells: - Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells - To the sobbing of the bells; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells - To the tolling of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells - Bells, bells, bells - To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. /~Eryn/ The Cinnamon Peeler If I were a cinnamon peeler I would ride your bed and leave the yellow bark dust on your pillow. Your breasts and shoulders would reek you could never walk through markets without the profession of my fingers floating over you. The blind would stumble certain of whom they approached though you might bathe under rain gutters, monsoon. Here on the upper thigh at this smooth pasture neighbour to your hair or the crease that cuts your back. This ankle. You will be known among strangers as the cinnamon peeler's wife. I could hardly glance at you before marriage never touch you -your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers. I buried my hands in saffron, disguised them over smoking tar, helped the honey gatherers... When we swam once I touched you in water and our bodies remained free, you could hold me and be blind of smell. You climbed the bank and said this is how you touch other women the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter. And you searched your arrns for the missing perfume and knew what good is it to be the lime burner's daughter left with no trace as if not spoken to in the act of love as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar. You touched your belly to my hands in the dry air and said I am the cinnamon peeler's wife. Smell me (Note: the above was posted by me, Christy, although I have no clue who wrote it. A loving friend sent it to me, at least partly in response to discussions about how people change one another... about belonging, indentity and relationships. In this strange postmodern wrold how are two people supposed to come together? We are supposed to be independant, right? But not so... somehow it seems strange how poetry can lead people to different understandings of things. This poem brings to my mind a picture of a sort of ginger-bread man, with my darling James' smile... daring me to let go, and let myself be loved.) It's by Michael Ondaatje. I say this because I found one of his books of poetry, The Cinnamon Peeler, last night. So much of his poetry is so awesome! --- The love Supreme Blow Blow. Wail Wail. Tap slowly while I speak of Mexican Buddha Mountains and rolling moss accountants with green calculaters with quotations of Kerouac and the love supreme. Cry out like the painting on my Bathroom door. Whitman singing jazz in unholy latin horizon form. Blow bang and crack the sky To let in smoke. Rap tap Clap and snap. Wooden coke bottle dream East of the drunken boat Is Eden Is Hell. Green bass line and duct tape memos. Flowing guitar cord sandles and glass book jewels. Stone elephant photographs and desert queen incence holders. Top hat speech writer Son of the naked King. Loving red scene of Mental Institution prostotution. Your love supreme Loads of cream. You scream the words into the dark night. I bang and clang against the junk car dreams. Red rose curtain turn. Your reception is worse than a broken controceptive of words burned into the trumpet of dreams. cement jazz cracks the Sax of visons. It's all over Drowning in the seas of dover. Three leafed clover dreams are over. Stuart G. writen in bedroom date unknown This is a great poem sung by the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (by Roald Dahl). /Attention please! Attention please!/ /Don't dare to talk! Don't dare to sneeze!/ /Don't dose or daydream! Stay awake!/ /Your health, your very life's at stake!/ /Ho-ho, you say, they can't mean me./ /Ha-ha, we answer, wait and see./ /Did any of you ever meet/ /A child called Goldie Pinklesweet?/ /Who on her seventh birthday went/ /To stay with Granny down in Kent./ /At lunchtime on the second day/ /Of dearest little Goldie's stay./ /Granny announced, 'I'm going down/ /To do some shopping in the town.'/ /(D'you know why Granny didn't tell/ /The child to come along as well?/ /She's going to the nearest inn/ /To buy herself a double gin.)/ /So out she creeps. She shuts the door./ /And Goldie, after making sure/ /That she is really by herself,/ /Goes quickly to the medicine shelf,/ /And there, her little greedy eyes/ /See pills of every shape and size,/ /Such fascinating colours, too--/ /Some green, some pink, some brown, some blue./ /'All right,' she says, 'let's try the brown.'/ /She takes one pill and gulps it down./ /'Yum-yum!' she cries. 'Hooray! What fun!/ /They're chocolate coated, every one!'/ /She gobbles five, she gobbles ten,/ /She stops her gobbling only when/ /The last pill's gone. There are no more./ /Slowly she rises from the floor./ /She stops. She hiccups. Dear, oh dear,/ /She starts to feel a trifle queer./ /You see, how could young Goldie know,/ /For nobody had told her so,/ /That grandmama, her old relation/ /Suffered from frightful constipation./ /This meant that every night she'd give/ /Herself a powerful laxative,/ /And all the medicines that she'd bought,/ /Were naturally of this sort./ /The pink and red and blue and green/ /Were all extremely strong and mean,/ /But far more fierce and meaner still,/ /Was Granny's little chocolate pill./ /Its blast effect was quite uncanny./ /It used to shake up even Granny./ /In point of fact she did not dare/ /To use them more than twice a year./ /So can you wonder little Goldie/ /Began to feel a wee bit moldy?/ /Inside her tummy, something stirred./ /A funny gurgling sound was heard,/ /And then, oh dear, from deep within,/ /The ghastly rumbling sounds begin!/ /They rumbilate and roar and boom!/ /They bounce and echo round the room!/ /The floorboards shake and from the wall/ /Some bits of paint and plaster fall./ /Explosions, whistles, awful bangs/ /Were followed by the loudest clangs./ /(A man next door was heard to say,/ /'A thunderstorm is on it's way.')/ /But on and on the rumbling goes./ /A window cracks, a lamp bulb blows./ /Young Goldie clutched herself and cried,/ /'There's something wrong with my inside!'/ /This was, we very greatly fear,/ /The understatement of the year./ /For wouldn't any child feel crummy,/ /With loud explosions in her tummy?/ /Granny, at half past two, came in,/ /Weaving a little from the gin,/ /But even so she quickly saw/ /The empty bottle on the floor./ /'My precious laxatives!' she cried./ /'I don't feel well,' the girl replied./ /Angrily Grandma shook her head./ /'I'm really not surprised,' she said./ /'Why can't you leave my pills alone?'/ /With that, she grabbed the telephone/ /And shouted, 'Listen, send us quick/ /An Ambulance! A child is sick!/ /It's number fifty, Fontwell Road!/ /Come fast! I think she might explode!'/ /We're sure you do not wish to hear/ /About the hospital and where/ /They did a lot of horrid things/ /With stomach pumps and rubber rings./ /Let's answer what you want to know:/ /Did Goldie live or did she go?/ /The doctors gathered round her bed,/ /'There's really not much hope,' they said/ /'She's going, going, gone!' they cried./ /'She's had her chips! She's dead! She's died!'/ /'I'm not so sure,' the child replied,/ /And all at once she opened wide/ /Her great big bluish eyes and sighed,/ /And gave the anxious docs a wink,/ /And said, 'I'll be okay, I think.'/ /So Goldie lived and back she went/ /At first to Granny's place at Kent./ /Her father came the second day/ /And fetched her in a Chevrolet,/ /And drove her to their home in Dover./ /But Goldie's troubles were not over./ /You see, if someone takes enough/ /Of any highly dangerous stuff,/ /One will invariably find/ /Some traces of it left behind./ /It pains us greatly to relate/ /That Goldie suffered from this fate./ /She'd taken such a massive fill/ /Of this unpleasant kind of pill,/ /It got into her blood and bones,/ /It messed up all her chromosomes,/ /It made her constantly upset,/ /And she could never really get/ /The beastly stuff to go away./ /And so the girl was forced to stay/ /For seven hours every day/ /Within the everlasting gloom/ /Of what we call The Ladies Room./ /And there she sits and dreams of glory,/ /Alone inside the lavatory./ /So now, before it is too late,/ /Take heed of Goldie's dreadful fate./ /And seriously, all jokes apart,/ /Do promise us across your heart/ /That you will never help yourself/ /To medicine from the medicine shelf./
Bookshelf street.
or
Illusions of M.C. Escher.
My books and cards and my eyes are with me. And beyond and behind Above and below Me. The street The town The illusion of my eyes. My pipe lies Cold and without smoke. My matches unused lay in their cardboard bed and dream. My hallucinating mind see humanity Crawling along the ancient dead streets, Empty except for those with eyes that lie Flowers in windows Or so I thought. A mysterious beauty Can confuse the eye And split the fragile mind. Can bring down all previous notions Of reality Held in foolish adult hood. And when this image no longer before the eye is thought one left in wonder only be Stuart G. Knocksville TN 5/27/00 revised 9/16/00 I escaped the crowds who sought By sheer numbers to drown me into the ranks of obscurity. I fought in mute anger against their war of words And sought to find meaning In Silence. I crowned the night as king While I remained a slave of Dying day. I saw sightless beauty Plastered to the wall of lies Told by a useless generation. I fell before the bombardment of Stereotypical words Crashing in a rain of missunderstanding. I waited for flowing tears of moving dawn that burned the rememberences of fire bound dreams of loving envy. Stuart G. Kalispell MT 6/30/00 The Ending of a relationship I know not why it strikes so deep. After all it was not my relationship at an end. But my pillar of support is now gone. They, the only constant of which I knew. Our bonds so deep. Frienship and love abounding. When last we spoke, Secure they were in their love. Now all lays heaped beneath the ruins And it feels as if a part of me too has died. I pray for the rebirth Of their love. Stuart G. written 10/13/00 Bigfork MT. --- Flander's Fields In Flander's Fields the poppies grow beneath the crosses, row on row, that mark our place, and in the sky, the larks, still bravely singing, fly, scarce heard amidst the guns below. We are the dead short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved, but now we lie in Flander's Fields. Take up our quarrrel with the foe, for to you, with failing hands we throw the torch, for you to hold on high. And if ye break faith with us who die, we shall not rest, though poppies blow, in Flander's Fields hi heres something i did enjoy :) looked at you Looken at you i wonder what your story is. why you love, learn, laugh and cry. Looken at you i can tell so much. By your beat up hands i can tell you have touched many hearts. By the wrinkles on your face i can tell that you have laughed at many jokes and smiled at a sowerful person. By your tear stained face i can tell you have a wond that needs healing by love. Looken at you well sitting beside you i can feel your energy. It makes me want to kiss you and hug you and and learn everything there is to know about you. Help you through the rough times and and hold you in my arms for the good times. Looken at you i want the guts to say I love you. by Heather Calluna (shippy and dawns sister) heres another one i did The boy no one loved but me As I watch the boy on one loved curled up on the ground as 5 other boys kick and pounded him. I run over to the teacher and said "teacher, put a stop to that." The teacher walked over and by that time the bully's had left the boy on the ground. The teacher looked mad at me. "How dare you waist my time." And off she went. I looked down at the boy on one loved and my heart broke. He was crying form the beating. I put my clean soft pail hand into his dirty sweaty bloodstained hand. He looked up with fear in his teary eyes, I helped him to his feet and sat him down on a bench. I put my arm around the boy on one loved. I could feel him shaking from the beating still. I said " god put me on this earth to find a boy a boy no one loved but me.... i have found that boy in you." The boy no one loved got up with tears of joy instead of pain in his starry eyes. Gave me a hug and said "after the beating today i was going to go home and kill myself by a gun. now you have put love and hope in my life for that i should thank you " By Heather Calluna proudly Dawn and Shippys little sister ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Listen with the night falling we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the water looking out in different directions back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging after funerals we are saying thank you after the news of the dead whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you in a culture up to its chin in shame living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you over telephones we are saying thank you in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators remembering wars and the police at the back door and the beatings on the stairs we are saying thank you in the banks that use us we are saying thank you with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you with the animals dying around us our lost feelings we are saying thank you with the forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives we are saying thank you with the words going out like cells of a brain with the cities growing over us like the earth we are saying thank you faster and faster with nobody listening we are saying thank you we are saying thank you and waving dark though it is --- W. S. Merwin ~~~~~~~~~~~(posted by carsie... this is one of my favorites) [1] [1] Oh my god Carsie, thank YOU for posting this. This is the most beautiful poem I have ever read. *speechless* Wow. -wanderlust the urban pixie, who may cry when she reads this again later NBTSWikiWiki | Recent Changes Edited 55 times, last edited on August 22, 2001 by ::ffff:216.28.208.14. © 2000 NBTSC Webmasters |
