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Tink's favorite poems

Started by tinkerbell, September 01, 2006, 01:36:18 AM

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tinkerbell



Where the sidewalk ends


There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Shel Silverstein

**********************************************************


Paris, October 1936


From all of this I am the only one who leaves.
From this bench I go away, from my pants,
from my great situation, from my actions,
from my number split side to side,
from all of this I am the only one who leaves.

From the Champs Elysées or as the strange
alley of the Moon makes a turn,
my death goes away, my cradle leaves,
and, surrounded by people, alone, cut loose,
my human resemblance turns around
and dispatches its shadows one by one.

And I move away from everything, since everything
remains to create my alibi:
my shoe, its eyelet, as well as its mud
and even the bend in the elbow
of my own buttoned shirt.


Cesar Vallejo

**********************************************************

The Lockless Door

It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I though of the door
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again.
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.

Back over the sill
I bade a 'Come in'
To whatever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.

Robert Frost


**********************************************************


A Girl's Garden


A NEIGHBOR of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load.

And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees

And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there to-day is hers,
Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!

It's as when I was a farmer--"
Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.

Robert Frost


**********************************************************

Full Moon 

No longer throne of a goddess to whom we pray,
no longer the bubble house of childhood's
tumbling Mother Goose man,

The emphatic moon ascends--
the brilliant challenger of rocket experts,
the white hope of communications men.

Some I love who are dead
were watchers of the moon and knew its lore;
planted seeds, trimmed their hair,

Pierced their ears for gold hoop earrings
as it waxed or waned.
It shines tonight upon their graves.

And burned in the garden of Gethsemane,
its light made holy by the dazzling tears
with which it mingled.

And spread its radiance on the exile's path
of Him who was The Glorious One,
its light made holy by His holiness.

Already a mooted goal and tomorrow perhaps
an arms base, a livid sector,
the full moon dominates the dark.

No longer throne of a goddess to whom we pray,
no longer the bubble house of childhood's
tumbling Mother Goose man,

The emphatic moon ascends--
the brilliant challenger of rocket experts,
the white hope of communications men.

Some I love who are dead
were watchers of the moon and knew its lore;
planted seeds, trimmed their hair,

Pierced their ears for gold hoop earrings
as it waxed or waned.
It shines tonight upon their graves.

And burned in the garden of Gethsemane,
its light made holy by the dazzling tears
with which it mingled.

And spread its radiance on the exile's path
of Him who was The Glorious One,
its light made holy by His holiness.

Already a mooted goal and tomorrow perhaps
an arms base, a livid sector,
the full moon dominates the dark.

Robert Hayden





  •  

cindianna_jones

... and she always brings me out of the shadows with a work or two by Robert Frost.  I've always enjoyed the Girls Garden.  It is a statement of life... a pearl of wisdom we all should learn.... but few ever do.

Cindi
  •  

tinkerbell

#62
 
Quote from: Cindiand she always brings me out of the shadows with a work or two by Robert Frost.  I've always enjoyed the Girls Garden.  It is a statement of life... a pearl of wisdom we all should learn.... but few ever do.

Cindi

....and you are so right....there is nothing better than poetry to bring us out of the shadows......




MY LITTLE ONE

My little one whose tongue is dumb,
whose fingers cannot hold to things,
who is so mercilessly young,
he leaps upon the instant things,

I hold him not. Indeed, who could?
He runs into the burning wood.
Follow, follow if you can!
He will come out grown to a man

and not remember whom he kissed,
who caught him by the slender wrist
and bound him by a tender yoke
which, understanding not, he broke.


Tennessee Williams


**********************************************************


On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations

 
You'll wait a long, long time for anything much
To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud
And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves.
The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch,
Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud.
The planets seem to interfere in their curves
But nothing ever happens, no harm is done.
We may as well go patiently on with our life,
And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun
For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane.
It is true the longest drought will end in rain,
The longest peace in China will end in strife.
Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awake
In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break
On his particular time and personal sight.
That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night.
 
 
Robert Frost
   

**********************************************************

A Late Walk

 
When I got up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.

And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words.

A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth,
By pickign the faded blue
Of the las remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.
 
Robert Frost

*********************************************************

Acquainted With the Night


I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost


**********************************************************

Once By The Pacific


The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last 'Put out the Light' was spoken.

Robert Frost


What a wonderful poem!!!
Posted on: October 31, 2006, 09:57:37 PM


Untitled

When the door of happiness closes,
another opens, but often times we look
so long at the closed door that we don't
see the one which has been opened for us.

The best kind of friend is the kind you
can sit on a porch and swing with,
never say a word, and then walk away
feeling like it was the best
conversation you've every had.

It's true that we don't know what we've
got until we lose it, but it's also true
that we don't know what we've been
missing until it arrives.

It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone,
an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone,
but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.

Don't go for looks; they can deceive.
Don't go for wealth; even that fades away.
Go for someone who makes you smile because it
takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.
Find the one that makes your heart smile.

There are moments in life when you miss someone         
so much that you just want to pick them from
your dreams and hug them for real!

Dream what you want to dream; go where
want to go; be what you want to be,
because you have only one life and one
chance to do all the things you want to do.

May you have enough happiness to make you sweet,
enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow
to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy.

Always put yourself in others' shoes.
If you feel that it hurts you,
it probably hurts the other person, too.

The happiest of people don't necessarily
have the best of everything;
they just make the most of everything that
comes along their way.

Happiness lies for those who cry,
those who hurt, those who have searched,
and those who have tried, for only they can
appreciate the importance of people who have
touched their lives.

Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss
and ends with a tear.

The brightest future will always be based
on a forgotten past.

You can't go on well in life until you let go
of your past failures and heartaches.

When you were born, you were crying and
everyone around you was smiling.

Live your life so that when you die,
you're the one who is smiling and
everyone around you is crying.

Unknown author


**********************************************************


untitled


We love the smallest things
Yet we never notice they're there
We get attached to them
yet we don't see them until they fade away

Its not until we see them for the very last time
That our eyes get watery
That empty tears fall down

We live with the thought
That they'll always be there
We think we never have to say "I love you"
That we'll have time later to show them we care

Yet in a time so short they just slip away
And we're left with the feeling of loneliness
And the urge to yell "I miss you, come back!"

We never know what we have until we have lost it
Like the wise men say
So when you still have them
Tell them you love them
Show them you care

Don't wait till the next day
Because that next day might be the day-
the day they fade away..... 

Unknown author

Posted on: October 31, 2006, 11:34:17 PM


***************************************************************

STARLIGHT

My father stands in the warm evening
on the porch of my first house.
I am four years old and growing tired.
I see his head among the stars,
the glow of his cigarette, redder
than the summer moon riding
low over the old neighborhood. We
are alone, and he asks me if I am happy.
"Are you happy?" I cannot answer
I do not really understand the word,
and the voice, my father's voice, is not
his voice, but somehow thick and choked,
a voice I have not heard before, but
heard often since. He bends and passes
a thumb beneath each of my eyes.
The cigarette is gone, but I can smell
the tiredness that hangs on his breath.
He has found nothing, and he smiles
and holds my head with both his hands.
Then he lifts me to his shoulder,
and now I too am there among the stars,
as tall as he. Are you happy? I say.
He nods in answer, Yes! oh yes! oh yes!
And in that new voice he says nothing,
holding my head tight against his head,
his eyes closed up against the starlight,
as though those tiny blinking eyes
of light might find a tall, gaunt child
holding his child against the promises
of autumn, until the boy slept
never to waken in that world again.
 
Philip Levine



Posted on: November 01, 2006, 09:04:21 PM



ONE

As the soot and dirt and ash rained down,
We became one color.
As we carried each other down the stairs of the burning building,
We became one class.
As we lit candles of waiting and hope,
We became one generation.
As the firefighters and police officers fought their way into the inferno,
We became one gender.
As we fell to our knees in prayer for strength,
We became one faith.
As we whispered or shouted words of encouragement,
We spoke one language.
As we gave our blood in lines a mile long,
We became one body.
As we mourned together the great loss,
We became one family.
As we cried tears of grief and loss,
We became one soul.
As we retell with pride of the sacrifice of heroes,
We become one people.

We are
One color
One class
One generation
One gender
One faith
One language
One body
One family
One soul
One people

We are The Power of One.
We are United.
We are America

unknown author

**********************************************************


Tomorrow

When tomorrow starts without me
And I'm not there to see
If the sun should rise and find your eyes All filled with tears for me
I wish so much you wouldn't cry
The way you did today

While thinking of the many things
We didn't get to say
I know how much you love me
As much as I love you
And each time that you think of me
I know you'll miss me too

But when tomorrow starts without me
Please try to understand
That an angel came and called my name
And took me by the hand
And said my place was ready
In heaven far above
And that I'd have to leave behind
All those I dearly love

But when I walked through heaven's gates I felt so much at home
When God looked down and smiled at me
>From His great golden throne
He said "This is eternity
And all I've promised you"

I promise no tomorrow
For today will always last
And since each day's the same way
There's no longing for the past

So when tomorrow starts without me
Don't think we're far apart
For every time you think of me
I'm right here in your heart.

unknown author


My God, how very touching... :'( :'( :'(




Posted on: November 02, 2006, 01:00:04 AM

Too Powerful to Extinguish
   

  And there they stood...
Brilliant of speech and sunlight.
Souls pure and cleansed of spirit.
Standing on the side of the right and just.
Grouped and cast upon with evil eyes...
And demonic grins.
They were smeared and jeered
By those who did not understand their strength.
And surrounding them all was the Prince of Light.
Only those who knew Him and His 'glow'
Did not suffer pain or perish!
Their faith was too powerful to extinguish!
They lived eternally...
And knew it!

Lawrence S. Pertillar



**********************************************************


Untitled

This being human is a guest-house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

Who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture.

Still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

unknown author

                   
**********************************************************


"A human being is part of the whole, called by 'Universe'; a part

limited in time and space.  We experience ourselves, our thoughts

and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of

optical delusion of our consciousness.  This delusion is a kind

of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to

affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to

free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of

compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of

nature in its beauty."

Albert Einstein



                                                                     

                                     
Posted on: November 02, 2006, 01:19:16 AM


If those I loved were lost


If those I loved were lost
The Crier's voice would tell me --
If those I loved were found
The bells of Ghent would ring --

Did those I loved repose
The Daisy would impel me.
Philip -- when bewildered
Bore his riddle in!

Emily Dickinson

**********************************************************


I Taught Myself To Live Simply


I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.

Anna Akhmatova


**********************************************************

Love Sonnet XVII


I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda



Posted on: November 02, 2006, 06:03:00 PM
The Dark-eye Man

I

Sitting in the cafeteria sipping his coffee paper in front of him he watched people stroll
in, thinking to himself.
Those people incoming would catch his dark eyes before he returned to his X-ray lab. He wondered to himself.
Staring through the dark tinted window, a lady in white, he acknowledged.
People paid no attention passing him all day buying their coffees and snacks while he sat, hoping to himself.
His cup slackened from wear of the hot liquid cooling, swirling light separated concoctions, as he mused to himself.
A bee buzzing at the window from inside sitting then settling relentless, tired but much to do. He feared.

II

Stopping in the cafeteria for coffee and a snack, aware of the dark-eye handsome man  in the seat closest to the window, she noticed.
Worker from outside waves to the dark-eye man, each morning same response, he smiles and whistles to himself.

III

Alone he sits in awe and wonder, the people he sees, the weather winds that blow the leaves, the lady in white he recognizes.
He smiles, continues with his coffee, his eyes fixated and greets her.


unknown author

Posted on: November 02, 2006, 08:50:22 PM
The Man-Moth

Here, above,
cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.

           But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.

           Up the façades,
his shadow dragging like a photographer's cloth behind him
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push his small head through that round clean opening
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)
But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.

           Then he returns
to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast enough to suit him.  The doors close swiftly.
The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.

           Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain.  He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to.  He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.

           If you catch him,
hold up a flashlight to his eye.  It's all dark pupil,
an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he stares back, and closes up the eye.  Then from the lids
one tear, his only possession, like the bee's sting, slips.
Slyly he palms it, and if you're not paying attention
he'll swallow it.  However, if you watch, he'll hand it over,
cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

Elizabeth Bishop

Posted on: November 02, 2006, 08:56:12 PM
Pour toi mon coeur

L'amour réunit deux êtres
Dans des circonstances qui sont peut être
Pour le meilleur comme pour le pire
Mais la cet amour me fait souffrir
Contre cette douleur qui me torture
Aide moi je te le conjure
T'aimer telle est ma destinée
Te porter dans mes bras, c'est mon devoir
Oui, mon devoir
Et croire que je ne le savais pas
Pourquoi continuer à jouer la comédie
Alors que tout a été déjà dis
Oui, toi je t'aime
Et je t'aimerai pour la vie
Car si tu lisais entre les lignes
Tu y découvrirais les signes qui te mèneraient à la vérité
Et si un jour tu voulais me quitter
Soit certaine que je perdrai à jamais le goût de la vie
C'est un rêve de me trouver à tes côtés
Alors partage cet amour s'il te plait
Et tu feras de moi un homme comblé
Au couché je te ferais frémir de joie et de plaisir
Et là je pourrai te dire :
« Le soir au coucher
Tes yeux me font rêver
Le matin quand je te vois
Je suis fou de joie
Embrasse moi »
Je t'aime mon amour.

Monique Moulinet
Posted on: November 02, 2006, 09:01:04 PM



HAPPY BIRTHDAY



Gerard is like an open, sunny field
Exactly square, meticulously planted.
Running straight across the golden day
Avid for all that his charm can undo,
Revealing truth a certain closeness brings,
Doing, as he does, so much for me.


Joyeux anniversaire Gerard,  Je te souhaite tout le mieux. Merci pour toutes les choses que tu faite pour moi. Ton amitié est très importante à moi.  :)

Feliz Cumpleaños Gerard, te deseo todo lo mejor.  Gracias por todas las cosas que haces por mi.  Tu amistad es muy importante para mi... :)

Happy Birthday Gerard, I wish you all the best.  Thank you so much for all the things you do for me.  Your friendship is very important to me... :)



Robin :icon_chick:
Posted on: November 02, 2006, 09:27:43 PM







Sometimes..
   

  Sometimes you keep on building high walls around you
Not to keep yourself away
But to see who cares enough to break them all
Who cares enough to make them fall

Sometimes you keep on constructing barriers around your heart
Not to keep your heart safe
But to see who cares enough to start

Sometimes you keep yourself inside a fence
Not as a defense
But rather to see who really feels you.. who has enough sense

Sometimes you keep on creating obstacles for whoever wants you close
Not to play "hard to get"
But rather to know why you are the one I chose..

Sometimes you prefer to be isolated
Not to be lonely ...
But rather to see who cares enough to come close and approach you

Sometimes you prefer to be remote
Not because of fear
But rather to see who cares enough to be near

Sometimes you prefer to keep the distance
Not to act arrogant
But rather to see who cares enough to keep the persistence

Sometimes you do not take any initiative
Not because you're acting so protective
But to see who is really attentive

Sometimes you intend to be passive
Not that you are not interested
But to see who cares enough to be impressive

Sometimes you intend to be mysterious
Not because you want to look serious
But rather to see who cares enough to be curious

Sometimes you intend to be unsocial
Not to be rude
But rather to see to whom you are really special

Sometimes you keep on wearing masks hiding your real self
Not to pretend
But rather to see who cares enough to remove them in the end

Sometimes you keep all your secrets covered
To see how you will be discovered

Sometimes you lock your door
To see who is willing to explore
Who really cares enough to know you more

Sometimes ...
you pretend to be someone different everyday
but the truth of the matter is
that I know you better than you know yourself.... ;)


unknown author




Posted on: November 02, 2006, 11:55:02 PM


Winter's Roads


I cannot speak for all who stem
'Long roads less traveled as their way,
Nor question choices made by them
In days long past or nights long dim
by words they spoke and did not say.

Each road is long, though short it seems,
And credence gives each road a name
Of fantasies sun-drenched in beams
Or choices turned to darkened dreams,
To where each road wends just the same.

From North to South, then back again,
I followed birds like all the rest
Escaping nature's snowy den
On roads I've seen and places been,
Forsaking roads that traveled West.

This journey grows now to its end,
As road reflections lined in chrome
Give way to roads with greater bend
And empty signs that still pretend
They point the way to home sweet home.

But all roads lead to where we go
And where we go is where we've been,
So home is just a word we know,
That space in time most apropos
For where we want to be again.

For even home, it seems to me,
Is still a choice we all must face
From day to day and endlessly,
To choose if home is going to be
Another road - or just a place. 

Ron Carnell

**********************************************************


Small Pain In My Chest


The soldier boy was sitting calmly underneath that tree.
As I approached it, I could see him beckoning to me.
The battle had been long and hard and lasted through the night
And scores of figures on the ground lay still by morning's light.

"I wonder if you'd help me, sir", he smiled as best he could.
"A sip of water on this morn would surely do me good.
We fought all day and fought all night with scarcely any rest -
A sip of water for I have a small pain in my chest."

As I looked at him, I could see the large stain on his shirt
All reddish-brown from his warm blood mixed in with Asian dirt.
"Not much", said he. "I count myself more lucky than the rest.
They're all gone while I just have a small pain in my chest."

"Must be fatigue", he weakly smiled. "I must be getting old.
I see the sun is shining bright and yet I'm feeling cold.
We climbed the hill, two hundred strong, but as we cleared the crest,
The night exploded and I felt this small pain in my chest."

"I looked around to get some aid - the only things I found
Were big, deep craters in the earth - bodies on the ground.
I kept on firing at them, sir. I tried to do my best,
But finally sat down with this small pain in my chest."

"I'm grateful, sir", he whispered, as I handed my canteen
And smiled a smile that was, I think, the brightest that I've seen.
"Seems silly that a man my size so full of vim and zest,
Could find himself defeated by a small pain in his chest."

"What would my wife be thinking of her man so strong and grown,
If she could see me sitting here, too weak to stand alone?
Could my mother have imagined, as she held me to her breast,
That I'd be sitting HERE one day with this pain in my chest?"

"Can it be getting dark so soon?" He winced up at the sun.
"It's growing dim and I thought that the day had just begun.
I think, before I travel on, I'll get a little rest ..........
And, quietly, the boy died from that small pain in his chest.

I don't recall what happened then. I think I must have cried;
I put my arms around him and I pulled him to my side
And, as I held him to me, I could feel our wounds were pressed
The large one in my heart against the small one in his chest. 

Michael Mack

**********************************************************

Sometimes You Have To Choose A Song


Rain . . .

Softly falling down . . .
each drop a symphony of sound . . .
as it hits the tin roof . . .
tap . . . tap . . . tap.

It can sound just like a sad song with a slow beat . . .
the kind that makes you daydream . . .
and feel sad and sigh . . .
as you think of what might of been or could be in your life.

Or maybe it is a happy song that brings back sweet memories . . .
tender thoughts and special smiles . . .
thinking of someone who makes your heart beat faster . . .
and your laughter ring with happiness and joy.

Or maybe it is a love song . . .
with sweet and soft lyrics . . .
tender and romantic and sensual . . .
that makes you think of dancing in the rain.

Only you can decide which song . . .
is the one you are hearing . . .
which music soothes your soul . . .
and which song you want to sing along with.

Sometimes, you have to choose a song . . .
and the choosing isn't easy.


unknown author







Posted on: November 03, 2006, 11:29:22 PM

Nothing broken but my heart by Celine Dion



I've been over you for some time now baby
I don't miss your kiss like before now anymore now
If you asked me how I'm doin' I'm fine
All I needed was a little time
So if you think that I still need you Baby
I really don't know why
Oh baby, since you left me
You might think that my world's been torn apart
But if you see me
Baby you'll see that
Nothing's broken, nothing broken but my heart

You won't find no tears in my eyes now baby
If you think I'm sad that you're gone now
Then you're wrong now
If you ask I'll say I'm happy I'm free
Tell you that's the way I wanna be
And all those nights we shared together baby
Well they don't mean a thing

Oh baby since you left me
You might think that my world's been torn apart
But if you see me
Baby you'll see that
Nothing's broken, nothing broken but my heart

So if you still think that I need you baby
I don't think about you
I'm happy now without you

Oh baby since you left me
You might think that my world's been torn apart
But if you see me
Baby you'll see that
Nothing's broken, nothing broken but my heart
Nothing broken, nothing broken but my heart

Baby, you might think that my world's been torn apart
But nothing's broken, nothing broken but my heart







tinkerbell :P
Posted on: November 04, 2006, 09:52:22 AM





I think this poetry thread is slowly transitioning to music videos too.  As a matter of fact, most of the romantic songs started as poems like this one for example:


At This Moment
Billy Vera & The Beaters


What did you think,
I would do at this moment,
When you're standing before me,
With tears in your eyes..
Tryin to tell me that you,
Found you another..
And you just don't love me, No more..

What did you think,
I would say at this moment,
When I'm faced with the knowledge,
That you just don't love me..
Did you think I would curse you,
Or say things to hurt you,
Cause you just don't love me no more..

Did you think I could hate you,
Or raise my hands to you,
Now come on you know me too well..
How could I hurt you,
When darling I love you,
And you know, I'd never hurt you..

What do you think,
I would give at this moment,
If you stay I'd subtract twenty years from my life..
I'd fall down on my knees,
Kiss the ground that you walk on,
If I could just hold you again..

I'd fall down on my knees,
Kiss the ground that you walk on baby,
If I could just hold you..
If I, Could just, Hold you..
If I....If I could just hold you.
Again.
---





beautiful poem and song too. ;)


tinkerbell :icon_chick:
Posted on: November 04, 2006, 11:29:55 PM


THE POWER OF LOVE (Celine Dion)

The whispers in the morning
Of lovers sleeping tight
Are rolling like thunder now
As I look in your eyes

I hold on to your body
And feel each move you make
Your voice is warm and tender
A love that I could not forsake

(First chorus)
'Cause I am your lady
And you are my man
Whenever you reach for me
I'll do all that I can

Lost is how I'm feeling lying in your arms
When the world outside's too
Much to take
That all ends when I'm with you

Even though there may be times
It seems I'm far away
Never wonder where I am
'Cause I am always by your side

(Repeat first chorus)

(Second chorus)
We're heading for something
Somewhere I've never been
Sometimes I am frightened
But I'm ready to learn
Of the power of love

The sound of your heart beating
Made it clear
Suddenly the feeling that I can't go on
Is light years away.



though there may be times
It seems I'm far away
Never wonder where I am
'Cause I am always by your side

(Repeat first chorus)

(Second chorus)
We're heading for something
Somewhere I've never been
Sometimes I am frightened
But I'm ready to learn
Of the power of love

The sound of your heart beating
Made it clear
Suddenly the feeling that I can't go on
Is light years away.




URL:   



**********************************************************

Somewhere Out There

written by James Horner, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil


Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight
Someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight

Somewhere out there someone's saying a prayer
That we'll find one another in that big somewhere out there

And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky

Somewhere out there if love can see us through
Then we'll be together somewhere out there
Out where dreams come true

And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky

Somewhere out there if love can see us through
Then we'll be together somewhere out there
Out where dreams come true.




URL:


Ahhhhhhhhhh, how romantic....and yeah...I know! :-X >:D :P ;)



tinkerbell :icon_chick:
  •  

tinkerbell

#63
THE FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE (Celine Dion)

The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
To the night and the empty skies my love
To the night and the empty skies

The first time ever I kissed your mouth
I felt the earth turn in my hand
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command my love
That was there at my command

The first time ever I lay with you
And felt your heart beat close to mine
I thought our joy would fill the earth
And would last 'till the end of time my love
And would last 'till the end of time

The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
To the night and the empty skies my love
To the night and the empty skies




URL: 

**********************************************************

WHERE DOES MY HEART BEAT NOW ? (Celine Dion)

So much to believe in - We were lost in time
Everything I needed
I feel into your eyes
Always thought of keepin - Your heart next to mine
But now that seems so far away
Don't know how love could leave without a trace
Where do silent hearts go?

Where does my heart beat now
Where is the sound
That only echoes through the night
Where does my heart beat now
I can't live without
Without feeling it inside
Where do all the lonely hearts go

Candle in the water - Drifting helplessly
Hiding from the thunder - Come and rescue me
Driven by hunger - Of the endless dream
I'm searching for the hand that I can hold
I'm reaching for the arms that let me know
Where do silent hearts go?

I know that out there somewhere
He waits for me
Someone who's searching just like me
Then one touch overcomes the silence
Love still survives
Two hearts needing one another
Give me wings to fly
I hear my heartbeat now
I hear the sound
Hear it echo through the night

I feel my heart beat now
Now that I've found
The feeling lives inside
I've got someone to give my heart to
Feel it getting stronger and stronger and stronger
Hearts are made to last
Till the end of time.



URL=


**********************************************************


MY HEART WILL GO ON (Celine Dion)


Every night in my dreams I see you, I feel you
That is how I know you go on.
Far across the distance and spaces between us
You have come to show you go on.
Near, far, wherever you are,
I believe that the heart does go on.
Once more you open the door
And you're here in my heart,
And my heart will go on and on.

Love can touch us one time and last for a lifetime,
And never let go till we're gone.
Love was when I loved you, one true time I hold to
In my life we'll always go on.
Near, far, wherever you are,
I believe that the heart does go on.
Once more you open the door
And you're here in my heart,
And my heart will go on and on.

You're here, there's nothing I fear
And I know that my heart will go on.
We'll stay forever this way,
You are safe in my heart,
And my heart will go on and on.



URL:


**********************************************************




IF YOU ASKED ME TO (Celine Dion)

Used to be that I believed in something
Used to be that I believed in love
It's been a long time since I've had that feeling
I could love someone
I could trust someone
I said I'd never let nobody near my heart again darlin'
I said I'd never let nobody in

But if you asked me to
I just might change my mind
And let you in my life forever
If you asked me to
I just might give my heart
And stay here in your arms forever
If you asked me to
If you asked me to

Somehow ever since I've been around you
Can't go back to being on my own
Can't help feeling darling since I've found you
That I've found my home
That I'm finally home
I said I'd never let nobody get too close to me darling
I said I needed, needed to be free

(But if you asked me to)

Asked me to, I will give my world to you baby
I need you now
Ask me to and I'll do anything for you baby, for you baby

If you asked me to
I'd let you in my life forever
If you asked me to.



URL: 


**********************************************************


I HATE YOU THEN I LOVE YOU (Celine Dion & Luciano Pavarotti)

I'd like to run away from you
But if I were to leave you I would die
I'd like to break the chains you put around me
And yet I'll never try

No matter what you do you drive me crazy
I'd rather be alone
But then I know my life would be so empty
As soon as you were gone

Impossible to live with you
But I could never live without you
For whatever you do / For whatever you do
I never, never, never
Want to be in love with anyone but you

You make me sad
You make me strong
You make me mad
You make me long for you / You make me long for you

You make me live
You make me die
You make me laugh
You make me cry for you / You make me cry for you

I hate you
Then I love you
Then I love you
Then I hate you
Then I love you more
For whatever you do
I never, never, never
Want to be in love with anyone but you

You treat me wrong
You treat me right
You let me be
You make me fight with you / I could never live without you

You make me high
You bring me down
You set me free
You hold me bound to you

I hate you
Then I love you
Then I love you
Then I hate you
Then I love you more / I love you more
For whatever you do / For whatever you do
I never, never, never
Want to be in love with anyone but you

I never, never, never
I never, never, never
I never, never, never
Want to be in love with anyone but you
But you.





:'( :'( Awe!!!....Antonio, a veces me sacas de mis casillas pero te quiero muchisimo.  Robin.

**********************************************************


ALL THE WAY (Celine Dion)

When somebody loves you
It's no good unless he loves you - all the way
Happy to be near you
When you need someone to cheer you - all the way

Taller than the tallest tree is
That's how it's got to feel
Deeper than the deep blue sea is
That's how deep it goes - if its real

When somebody needs you
It's no good unless he needs you - all the way
Through the good or lean years
And for all the in between years - come what way

Who know where the road will lead us
Only a fool would say
But if you'll let me love you
It's for sure I'm gonna love you - all the way, all the way





URL: 


**********************************************************


ONLY ONE ROAD (Celine Dion)

I'm looking back through the years
Down this highway
Memories, they all lead up to this one day
And many dreams lost along the way
Haunt me still
I guess they always will

When love was too much to bear
I just left it there
But here I stand face to face
With this heart of mine

Livin' without you I only fall behind
We had a love most people never find
All this time I never realized
And the courage I finally found
Has made me turn around

(Chorus)
There is only one road I'm walkin'
Only one lifetime one heart to guide me
Only one road I'm walkin'
But I'm gonna run back, I'm gonna run back
'Cause I need you right here
Beside me

I can still hear the song of your laughter
I can still taste the sorrow of your tears
We said goodbye but our hearts did not hear
Now my love there's nothing left to fear
With all my heart put me through
It leads me back to you

Repeat Chorus X2

But I'm gonna run back, I'm gonna run back
'Cause I need you right here
Beside me







URL:


**********************************************************


Because You Loved Me (Celine Dion)

For all those times you stood by me
For all the truth that you made me see
For all the joy you brought to my life
For all the wrong that you made right
For every dream you made come true
For all the love I found in you
I'll be forever thankful baby
You're the one who held me up
Never let me fall
You're the one who saw me through through it all

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'coz you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me

You gave me wings and made me fly
You touched my hand I could touch the sky
I lost my faith, you gave it back to me
You said no star was out of reach
You stood by me and I stood tall
I had your love I had it all
I'm grateful for each day you gave me
Maybe I don't know that much
But I know this much is true
I was blessed because I was loved by you

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'coz you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me

You were always there for me
The tender wind that carried me
A light in the dark shining your love into my life
You've been my inspiration
Through the lies you were the truth
My world is a better place because of you

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'coz you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me

(bis)
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me





URL: 


**********************************************************



....and of course....the TransAmerica poem and song.....


Travelin' Thru
Song InformationBy: Dolly Parton
Original Appearance: Transamerica Soundtrack
Compilations: None
Alternate Versions: None


Well I can't tell you where I'm going, I'm not sure of where I've been
But I know I must keep travelin' till my road comes to an end
I'm out here on my journey, trying to make the most of it
I'm a puzzle, I must figure out where all my pieces fit
Like a poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song
I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home
Where that is no one can tell me, am I doomed to ever roam
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' on

Questions I have many, answers but a few
But we're here to learn, the spirit burns, to know the greater truth
We've all been crucified and they nailed Jesus to the tree
And when I'm born again, you're gonna see a change in me

God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain
Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain
Oh sweet Jesus if you're listening, keep me ever close to you
As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wonderin', as I'm travelin' thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru

Oh sometimes the road is rugged, and it's hard to travel on
But holdin' to each other, we don't have to walk alone
When everything is broken, we can mend it if we try
We can make a world of difference, if we want to we can fly

Goodbye little children, goodnight you handsome men
Farewell to all you ladies and to all who knew me when
And I hope I'll see you down the road, you meant more than I knew
As I was travelin', travelin', travelin', travelin', travelin' thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin'
Drifting like a floating boat and roaming like the wind
Oh give me some direction lord, let me lean on you
As I'm travelin', travelin', travelin', thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru

Like the poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song
I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find my own way home
Oh sweet Jesus if you're out there, keep me ever close to you
As I'm travelin', travelin', travelin', as I'm travelin' thru
 



URL:





Posted on: November 06, 2006, 09:53:12 AM




I will always love you

If I should stay
I would only be in your way.
So I'll go but I know
I'll think of you
Every step of the way.

And I will always love you.
I will always love you.
You my darling you mmm

Bittersweet memories,
That is all I'm taking with me.
So goodbye, please don't cry.
We both know I'm not what you, you need.

I hope life treats you kind
And I hope you have
All you've dreamed of.
And I wish for you joy
And happiness.
But above all this, I wish you love.



URL:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=VUoEil40qZA

*************************************************************************************************


Unbreak my heart

Don't leave me in all this pain
Don't leave me out in the rain
Come back and bring back my smile
Come and take these tears away
I need your arms to hold me now
The nights are so unkind
Bring back those nights when I held you beside me

Un-break my heart
Say you'll love me again
Undo this hurt you caused
When you walked out the door
And walked outta my life
Un-cry these tears
I cried so many nights
Un-break my heart
My heart
Take back that sad word good-bye
Bring back the joy to my life
Don't leave me here with these tears
Come and kiss this pain away
I can't forget the day you left
Time is so unkind
And life is so cruel without you here beside me

Don't leave me in all this pain
Don't leave me out in the rain
Bring back the nights when I held you beside me

Un-break my heart
Come back and say you love me
Un-break my heart
Sweet darlin'
Without you I just can't go on
Can't go on.






URL:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=pVjTVsjEw6Q


*************************************************************************************************


Woman in love

Life is a moment in space
When the dream is gone
It's a lonelier place
I kiss the morning good-bye
But down inside you know
We never know why

The road is narrow and long
When eyes meet eyes
And the feeling is strong
I turn away from the wall
I stumble and fall
But I give you it all

With you eternally mine
In love there is
No measure of time
They planned it all at the start
That you and I
Live in each other's heart


We may be oceans away
You feel my love
I hear what you say
No truth is ever a lie
I stumble and fall
But I give you it all

I am a woman in love
And I'd do anything
To get you into my world
And hold you within
It's a right I defend
Over and over again
What do I do?

I am a woman in love
And I'm talkin' to you
You know how you feel
What a woman can do
It's a right I defend
Over and over again





URL:http://youtube.com/watch?v=khQIaMXcOB8

*************************************************************************************************




Artist: Barbra Streisand
Album: Way We Were
Title: Way We Were, The



Mem'ries,
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again

Tell me, would we? could we?
Mem'ries, may be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember...
The way we were...
The way we were





URL: http://youtube.com/watch?v=zHOf5CIpen0


Oh boy, I am a wreck right now! :( :'( :'(
Posted on: November 06, 2006, 02:08:31 PM

Missing You
Diana Ross
(Lionel Richie)


Since you've been away
I've been down and lonely
Since you've been away
I've been thinking of you
Trying to understand
The reason you left me
What were you going through?

I'm missing you
Tell me why the road turns
Ooh ooh
I'm missing you
Tell me why the road turns

As I look around
I see things that remind me
Just to see you smile
Made my heart fill with joy
I'll still recall
All those dreams we shared together
Where did you run to, boy?

I'm missing you
Tell me why the road turns
Ooh ooh
I'm missing you
Tell me why the road turns

Sometimes I've wondered
I didn't understand
Just where you were trying to go
Only you knew the plan
And I tried to be there
But you wouldn't let me in

But now you've gone away boy
I feel so broken hearted
I knew the day we started
That we were meant to be
If only you'd let me!
I've cried so many tears
Gotta face now all my fears
We let time slip away
I need you boy
Here today!

There was so much you gave me
To my heart
To my soul
There was so much of your dreams
That were never told
You had so much hope
For a brighter day
Why were you my flower
Plucked away

I'm missing you
Tell me why the road turns
Ooh ooh
I'm missing you
Tell me why the road turns





URL: http://youtube.com/watch?v=wdHjKSHhO74


:( :(
Posted on: November 06, 2006, 08:13:09 PM
**********************************************************

Piececitos
by Gabriela Mistral


Piececitos de niño,
azulosos de frío,
¡cómo os ven y no os cubren,
Dios mío!

¡Piececitos heridos
por los guijarros todos,
ultrajados de nieves
y lodos!

El hombre ciego ignora
que por donde pasáis,
una flor de luz viva
dejaís;

que allí donde ponéis
la plantita sangrante,
el nardo nace más
fragrante.

Sed, puesto que macháis
por los caminos rectos,
heróicos como sois
perfectos.

Piececitos de niño,
dos joyitas sufrientes,
¡cómo pasan sin veros
las gentes!


Little Feet
by Gabriela Mistral, translated by Doris Dana


Little feet of children
blue with cold,
how can they see you and not cover you—
dear God!

Little wounded feet
cut by every stone,
hurt by snow
and mire.

Man, blind, does not know
that where you pass,
you leave a flower
of living light.

And where you set
your little bleeding foot,
the spikenard blooms
more fragrant.

Walking straight paths,
be heroic, little feet,
as you are
perfect.

Little feet of children,
two tiny suffering jewels,
how can people pass
and not see you!

**********************************************************

'Out, Out—'

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.


Robert Frost

**********************************************************


Next Day


Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to my station wagon,
What I've become
Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I'd wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn't see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home. Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Some soap and water—
It was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don't know . . . Today I miss
My lovely daughter
Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work—I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
And I go through the sure unvarying days
At home in them. As I look at my life,
I am afraid
Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,
The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look
Of gray discovery
Repeats to me: "You're old." That's all, I'm old.

And yet I'm afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend's cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,
Her undressed operated-on, dressed body
Were my face and body.
As I think of her I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything , I'm anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.
 
 
Randall Jarrell

Posted on: November 07, 2006, 10:57:45 PM
**********************************************************




Born
   

  Born to live
Some will learn
Others crash
Maybe even yearn
But we only we once
So we might as well try
I don't want to be someone
Who was merely born to die


Jeremy Williams




Posted on: November 08, 2006, 01:00:28 AM


One of my favorite poems and songs:

Lady In Red 


I've never seen you looking so lovely
As you did tonight
I've never seen you shine so bright
I've never seen so many men ask you if you wanted to dance
They're looking for a little romance
Given half a chance
And I've never seen that dress you're wearing
Or that highlights in your hair
That catch your eyes
I have been blind

The lady in red is dancing with me
Cheek to cheek
There's nobody here
It's just you and me
It's where I wanna be
But I hardly know this beauty by my side
I'll never forget the way you look tonight

I've never seen you looking so gorgeous
As you did tonight
I've never seen you shine so bright
You were amazing
I've never seen so many people
Want to be there by your side
And when you turned to me and smiled
It took my breath away
And I have never had such a feeling such a feeling
Of complete and utter love, as I do tonight

The lady in red is dancing with me
Cheek to cheek
There's nobody here
It's just you and me
It's where I wanna be
But I hardly know this beauty by my side
I'll never forget the way you look tonight

I never will forget the way you look tonight
The lady in red
My lady in red
I love you





Play video


There used to be this lady in red in my previous life....anyway... :-X :-X ;D ;)
Posted on: November 08, 2006, 01:56:43 AM
*********************************************************


Once A Cheater...Always A Cheater

Which fingers can you feel tonight,
So many you've been touched by,
You've hurt and used so many now,
Does it ever make you cry?

You've cheated on EVERY girlfriend,
Made them feel so cheap,
Their hearts was all they lay out for you,
Their souls was all you'd reap,

I can't even advise the girls,
Of what they will get,
It's up to them to learn themselves,
That your web or trap's been set,

You pull them in
You smile at them and lie to them
with your sweet talk
and convicing eyes...
and then you lead them...
yes you do...
You are the master of disguise
Aren't you? 
the cheater!  the liar!
the hypocrit!
Shame on you!

I've learnt my lesson now,
Not to deal with scum and hate,
I will keep building myself a better life,
That has taken years to recreate.

Linda robson



No song for this one, but I am sure someone will come up with one.


tinkerbell :icon_chick:

  •  

cindianna_jones

Lady in red was "our" song for an old boyfriend and me.  He wore a handsome tuxedo and I wore a spectacular red dress to a Christmas party where we danced the night away and they played that song.  He bought the CD the next day and played it for me endlessly. He was so romantic.

He was Scottish, tall, and very sophisticated. A perfect gentleman through and through.  That was a very good time in my life Tink.  Thanks for the memory.

Cindi
  •  


tinkerbell

***************************************************************
The Hill Wife


I. LONELINESS

Her Word

One ought not to have to care
So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back
With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the other here --
With birds that fill their breasts
But with each other and themselves
And their built or driven nests.

II. HOUSE FEAR

Always -- I tell you this they learned --
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door night,
They. learned to leave the house-door wide
Until they had lit the lamp inside.

III. THE SMILE

Her Word

I didn't like the way he went away.
That smile! It never came of being gay.
Still he smiled- did you see him?- I was sure!
Perhaps because we gave him only bread
And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.
Perhaps because he let us give instead
Of seizing from us as he might have seized.
Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,
Or being very young (and he was pleased
To have a vision of us old and dead).
I wonder how far down the road he's got.
He's watching from the woods as like as not.

IV. THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM

She had no saying dark enough
For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the window-latch
Of the room where they slept.

The tireless but ineffectual hands
That with every futile pass
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
Before the mystery of glass!

It never had been inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream
Of what the tree might do.

V. THE IMPULSE

It was too lonely for her there,
And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
And no child,

And work was little in the house,
She was free,
And followed where he furrowed field,
Or felled tree.

She rested on a log and tossed
The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
On her lips.

And once she went to break a bough
Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard.
When he called her --

And didn't answer -- didn't speak --
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother's house
Was she there.

Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.

Robert Frost

**********************************************************

The Valley's Singing Day


The sound of the closing outside door was all.
You made no sound in the grass with your footfall,
As far as you went from the door, which was not far;
But had awakened under the morning star
The first song-bird that awakened all the rest.
He could have slept but a moment more at best.
Already determined dawn began to lay
In place across a cloud the slender ray
For prying across a cloud the slender ray
For prying beneath and forcing the lids of sight,
And loosing the pent-up music of over-night.
But dawn was not to begin their 'pearly-pearly;
(By which they mean the rain is pearls so early,
Before it changes to diamonds in the sun),
Neither was song that day to be self-begun.
You had begun it, and if there needed proof--
I was asleep still under the dripping roof,
My window curtain hung over the sill to wet;
But I should awake to confirm your story yet;
I should be willing to say and help you say
That once you had opened the valley's singing day.

Robert Frost

**********************************************************

The Exposed Nest


You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But 'twas no make-believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once--could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might out meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven't any memory--have you?--
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.

Robert Frost

Posted on: November 13, 2006, 12:55:24 AM


Place

On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree

what for
not for the fruit

the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted

I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time

with the sun already
going down

and the water
touching its roots

in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing

one by one
over its leaves.


from THE RAIN IN THE TREES -- Alfred A. Knopf

**********************************************************



Native Trees

Neither my father nor my mother knew
the names of the trees
where I was born
what is that
I asked and my
father and mother did not
hear they did not look where I pointed
surfaces of furniture held
the attention of their fingers
and across the room they could watch
walls they had forgotten
where there were no questions
no voices and no shade
Were there trees
where they were children
where I had not been
I asked
were there trees in those places
where my father and my mother were born
and in that time did
my father and my mother see them
and when they said yes it meant
they did not remember
What were they I asked what were they
but both my father and my mother
said they never knew.

W. S. Merwin

**********************************************************


 

PURIFICATION

In Taiwan, a child washes me in a tub

as if I were hers.

At fifteen she has tried to conceal

her age with makeup, says her name is Cher.

Across the room,

her dresser has become an altar.

Looming largest,

photos of her three children, one black,

one with green eyes, one she still nurses,

then a row of red votive candles, and in front,

a Buddha, a Christ, a Mary.

She holds my face to her breasts, rocks me.

There is blood still under my fingernails

from the last man who died in my arms.

I press her nipple in my lips,

feel a warm stream of sweetness.

I want to be this child's child.

I will sleep for the first time in days.

Doug Anderson


**********************************************************


To an Iraqi infant

do you know
that your mother's nipples
are dry bones?
that her breasts
are bursting
with depleted uranium?

do ou know
that the womb's window
overlooks
a confiscated land?

do you know
that your tomorrow
has no tomorrow?
that your blood
is the ink
of new maps?

do you know
that your mother is weaving
the slowness of her moments
into an elegy?
And she is already
mourning ou?

don't be shy!
your funeral is over
the tears are dry
everyone's gone

come forward!
it's only a short way
don't be late
your grave is looking
at its watch!

don't be afraid!
We'll arrange your bones
which ever way you want
and leave your skull
like a flower
on top

come forward!
your many friends await
there are more every day
. . .
your ghosts
will play together

come on!

Sinan Antoon


  :'( :'( :'(

**********************************************************

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
Get it wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Eqyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not a language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.

Jack Gilbert

**********************************************************


A Woman Is the Heart of a Home

Some days, the heart wonders how
she ended up in such a responsible position,

moving the blood along and never
going anywhere herself,

never visiting the elbows or going
to see what the toes are doing.

The heart gets a hankering, some days,
for a new sentence to sing,

but an old rhythm thrums
and drums through her rooms,

a bass line, a syntax whose momentum
the heart is hard-pressed to overcome.

The hardest part is, the heart can't stop
even for a minute, wait for a second wind—

Someone will come running, counting
the seconds, pound on her like a door.

And the heart almost always relents,
beats, believes she should, accepts

what she's been told: That of all
the muscles, she is the strongest,

and most involuntary.

Diane Gilliam Fisher

**********************************************************


The Sadness of Parents

The sadness of fruit is like the sadness
of scissors, their blue handles cerulean on the white counter,
appearing suddenly at night, when the child's hands
that wanted them are asleep, maybe pressed together
under a cheek in the body's sidelong mutation of prayer,
and then someone throws the knife switch and the AC of dailiness
stops alternating, goes like a monster bolt through my body
and I am all heart, pumping the BFG of mother love,
a solo performance of big oafish sentimentality, wasted
on this angel, more angelic because the mosquito netting
honeycombs her into ever-smaller windows of vulnerability,
because earlier there was a scorpion in her room,
because one teddy bear earring is up, the other down,
because awake she is a center of gravity toying
between sun and black hole, crayoning out an orbit,
part of which I hate traveling, into the darkness
that is darker in its innocence.
Because some people spend their whole lives with their mouths open,
because she asked about Siamese twins
in the Nova special and whether they make clothes
for those kids, because her life happens at a run,
because she tucked a packet of sugar into her ID wallet
and rice into a Ziplog bag with her mouse
to keep the mildew from spreading, because I have no
unselfish answer to why she has to sleep alone while we
big bruisers get each other and try to pawn off
stuffed animals, creature comfort, the same dumb
bunnies she'll bring along when she wants to crawl
into bed with us, because where in carnation is it,
because asleep we don't know if sadness is softening
this fruit into the color of sunset, this angel
whose wings beat us into gods, lavish in our love,
who will fall into another day and our deals to get her
to live with less.

Barbara Ras

**********************************************************


Distance


From up here, the insomniac
        river turning in its bed
    looks like a line somebody painted
       so many years ago it's hard
to believe it was ever liquid; a motorboat
       winks in the sun and leaves a wake
that seals itself in an instant, like the crack
           in a hardly broken heart.

           And the little straight-faced houses
        that with dignity bear the twin
     burdens of being unique and all alike,
        and the leaf-crammed valley like the plate
of days that kept on coming and I ate
     though laced with poison:  I can look
over them, from this distance,  with an ache
           instead of a blinding pain.

      Sometimes, off my guard, I half-
        remember what it was to be
     half-mad: whole seasons gone; the fear
        a stranger in the street might ask
the time; how feigning normality
      became my single, bungled task.
What made me right again?  I wouldn't dare
           to guess; was I let off

      for good behavior? Praise
        to whatever grace or power preserves
     the living for living...Yet I see the square
        down there, unmarked, where I would pace
endlessly, and as the river swerves
     around it, wonder what portion of
love I'd relinquish to ensure
      I'd never again risk drowning.


Mary Jo Salter



Posted on: November 13, 2006, 10:07:06 PM


Silence

I am tired of all voices. Friend and fool
Have come too nearly with me to the shrine
That is the secret kept by wind and pine.
Now, when the shadowy hands of dusk are cool
About my eyes, shall silence like a god
Drive them with whips of starlight from his stairs.
Only the small grass striving in its clod,
Only the stream, that fragile moonlight bears
Like blossoms on its breast, move in this place,

All earth lies still as some beloved face
Whose dreaming mouth and deep-curved eyelids make
Bridges to God that lightest sound would break,
Towers where one word would seem iconoclast. . . .
Yet if through darkening trees you came at last,
Wearing the dew of meadows on your shoon,
And in your eyes the blessing of the moon,
I think it would be well. I think our greeting
Would be as quiet as two rivers meeting,
Which, drawn together, sparkling up in foam,
Slide into one bright seeking; and our home
Should be the furthest longing of pale seas,
Beyond the purple caverns of the trees.


Robin Hyde


**********************************************************


Desert

Here is no joy, to gleam like jewelled waters
Of those blue lakes that desert-goers find,
No little rain of peace, no dew of dreaming,
No chalice for the thirsting of my mind.

Bold and blue, the mirage of many palm trees,
Of mocking fountains, grows and glimmers nigh.
I stumble, clutch at ghostly sapphires, waken
Blind in the sand, with lips and fingers dry.

Are you indeed a guarded city? Wander
Old wisdoms and young ardours in your street?
Does ever Pity, in some fragrant courtyard,
Unloose the sandals from the traveller's feet?

And does your palace keep such darkling perfumes,
Such songs as haunted men since time began,
Somewhere, beyond the desert of your silence,
Beyond the last bewildered caravan?

Daylong you haunt my dream, a restless legend
Of sharp blue towers nobody can find,
Their calling bells remembered in the twilight
By men who seek no more, grown old and blind.

Does the wind lie, that leans against your bosom,
Touches your hair, and suddenly is sweet,
Where naught prevaileth but the sun's white passion,
The blind, long desert, burning for my feet?


Robin Hyde


**********************************************************

Half Moon

The little pools of starlight splash
Against the poplars' slender lines;
The moon is like a golden comb,
Caught in the tresses of the pines.

Go quietly, lest unaware
You find the leafless path that leads
To where an older god than God
Makes cruel music through the reeds.

The lilies float like slender hands
Towards a satyr-trampled brink.
With crowns of oakleaves in their hair
The shouting fauns come down to drink.

Not Innocency's self shall walk
These breathless ways and shall not see
The wine-stained lips and dangerous eyes,
The swart-faced folk of Arcady;

And lovers, who have wandered through
The clover-purple evening's peace,
Have seen, deep-breasted, insolent,
The mocking loveliness of Greece —

Have heard the lawless bugles sing
From that defiant Paradise,
And glimpsed, like moonlight through the trees,
The glory of unearthly eyes.

And never shall the watcher seek
His tender human loves again;
For marble-white, with singing lips,
The woodmaids glimmer through his brain.

Go quietly. The tall gods here
Would wear your beauty like a flower,
To crush with jests and cast aside
In one unpitying, splendid hour.


Robin Hyde


**********************************************************


Over the Fields

A way lies over these blue fields of sleep,
Lingers in short, sweet grasses, glimmers white
Through woods of silver birch trees, where in deep
Green quietness the winds lie hid from sight.
Meadow and stream and house of lighted window,
Each listens for the sound of passing feet,
And knows my step again, and gives me welcome
In still ways and sweet.

It is not strange at all that you should pass,
Turn back and smile, stand presently in dream
Beside the little coppice on the stream,
Where willow leaves lie tangled in the grass.
It is not strange at all that there should be
The little fallen leaves, caught in your dress,
And your voice saying forgotten things to me,
Forgotten tenderness.

Hardly I wonder that we walk together,
And talk of simple things, winds, birds, and skies,
Or that lost dreams laugh suddenly in greeting
From the dark woods in your eyes.
But standing with the shadow of dawn above us
By the grey stream's broken gleaming,
We whisper thanks to those old gods that love us,
For night, for dreaming.


Robin Hyde


**********************************************************


Running Water


I sit beside a little shadowy stream,
And try to tell in words my thoughts of you.
It is in vain.
The running waters quiver, beckon, gleam,
The running water glitters through my brain,
Dragon-fly blue.
The irises are sweet with half-forgotten rain.
Their dark heads bend beneath their diadems of dew,
One petal falls, and, like a little boat,
Clings drowning where the yellow rushes float.
The waters with soft fingers draw it down.
So, one by one, my petal fancies drown,
And all my unborn words
Fall and flutter and sink, like wounded birds.
Cool waters close above them. Silver-grey,
The running waters hurry them away.


Robin Hyde


**********************************************************


The Desolate Star

Little winds of dawn come gently to them,
All the living stars, the other stars.
Dim rains passionate with scents bedew them,
My brother stars,
And I go, lonely.
Steadfast and clear their shining —
Are the shadows, and the song of the wind's pining
For ever, mine only?

Ah, the winds are kind to them! They know not,
They whose flowers quicken at their heart,
Of the darkness where the life-fires glow not,
Where, set apart,
I must follow, lost
On a blue road's descending,
Which, for years that know not birth or ending,
No wayfarer has crossed.

Purple-plumed, the nesting twilight covers
All their golden windows. One last gleam
Shows me tranquil gardens, where go lovers
With eyes adream.
And I go, lonely,
Remembering lovelit faces —
Is the cry of the wind's going through empty spaces,
For ever, mine only?


Robin Hyde

**********************************************************


The Trees

I saw the little leaves that have
So gay a dance, their tiny veins
Skilfully painted by some grave,
Firm hand, that spared not love or pains.

And here a mystery was wrought
In secret letters hard to find;
Each leaf was perfect, each a thought
Made shapely in the dreamer's mind.

In caverns deep beneath the earth
The blind roots twist. They do not know
How their boughs rock with April's mirth,
Or feel the ripening Autumn's glow;

And the swift tides of sap that pass
From gloom to sunshine have no words
To tell the lovely scents of grass,
The plash of rain, the call of birds.

Yet still the blind, brown fingers grope,
And wrench asunder rocky bars
For no reward but some dim hope
And far-off knowledge of the stars.

Oh Life! In caverns deep as these
We build and break. In dusk profound
As any plumbed by ancient trees
We wander blindly underground;

And blindly from strange soil we drink
The very milk of mother Earth,
The secret rivers, by whose brink
Nor daffodil nor scent has birth.

Nor may we know how swiftly these
Dark tides shall gift our boughs with wings,
Shall blossom into melodies
And starry-plumed immortal things.

But, where the tree of Man grows tall
And soars to straightness from its clod,
Widen the flowers that shall not fall,
Whereof the perfume pleases God.


Robin Hyde


**********************************************************


Wind of Spring



Wind, blow softly to-day, lest you should lift
Ten years' careful curtain before our eyes
Wind of Spring, go lightly as petals drift;
Trouble us not with fragrance, lest we know
Passions keen as flame to walk at our side
Once again, the terror and hope and pride;
Lest again in our hearts should burn the slow
Tears that saved men shed for the ransom-price.
Touch not the grass, that better were left unstirred
Under the trees they loved, the faithful trees;
Start no song of youth's remembering bird,
Lest, like sharp blue scimitars, memories
Cleave through their quiet, dream they never so deep.
Better it is to forget, better to sleep.
Wind, you are freighted with wisdom. Lover and saint,
King and shepherd, have given you all their tale.
Flying by Nineveh town, you gather the faint
Broken songs of men that triumph or fail.
Wind agleam in the blossoms, know then the truth:
Never the dreamers builded their city of youth,
Never the spired azure towers have grown
Over the lives laid down for a cornerstone,
Never the reapers sing through Canaan won,
Field and orchard white to a risen sun.
Yet, should They listen, hearing with patient ears
All the vanished hopes of the vanished years,
Wind of Spring, adream where the petals drift,
Ask them now the rich and ultimate gift.
Seek the field where the wooden crosses stand,
Guarding England's glory in Holy Land.
Pilgrim wind, with wondering heart draw near —
Half the treasure of earth lies buried here.
Wait amid the poppies; with bended head,
Ask for faith, of the faithful-hearted dead.


Robin Hyde

**********************************************************

I don't know about you guys, but I'm beginning to like this poet's style....there is this special flavor in her words....and besides she has a beautiful name.. ;)


tinkerbell :icon_chick:
Posted on: November 14, 2006, 07:18:47 PM



Reaching The Unreachable Star




I dreamed the impossible dream

I fought the unbeatable foe

I've born with unbearable sorrow

And ran where the brave dare not go.

I've righted the unrightable wrong

And transformed myself to be better by far

I've tried when my arms have been weary

To reach my unreachable star.

It's been my quest, to follow that star,

No matter how hopeless, no matter how far

I've fought for the right without question or pause,

I was willing to march into hell for my heavenly cause!

And now having been true to this glorious quest

My heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this

That one woman scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with her last ounce of courage

And REACHED the unreachable star.


Roxie Lynn Howard



by tinkerbell
Posted on: November 15, 2006, 08:58:09 PM
Open Door


Hadn't known you too long,

though it seemed like a lifetime.

When you walked into my world,

your heart already belonged to another.

Your past rules your emotions,

fear had been your companion.

That road was a familiar one, for fear had cloaked a shadow over my heart, too.


So there we were, you on your side and I on mine,

our swords drawn up, ready to fight.

A suit of armor protected us from the pain;

But was it really worth the coldness it left behind?


Your entrance shook up my concrete foundation,

leaving me exposed without my wall.

You came from behind your own for an instant, only to hide behind it again.

You hid so I couldn't reach you more than you wanted me to.


If only you had known,  if only you could have seen into the soul of who I really was.

Maybe then you would have seen that I was not foe, but friend;

and quite possibly the best thing that ever crossed your path.


Right from the start, I heard the click fall into place and felt the fire around us.


Thoughts of mine, not expressed aloud, would later be spoken by you.

How easily I laughed when I felt you near,

and how nice it was to smile again.

To be able to share without judgment,

to have someone accept me for who I was.

Little things you said, and little things you did,

played over and over in my mind like some endless movie.


I though I was one who didn't fall for someone so easily.

Being crushed and broken in half had prevented my heart from melting.

But now I stood, emotions in havoc,

not knowing which way to turn.

I wanted to run from you,

as fast as my legs would fly.

An invisible hand wouldn't allow that,

keeping me frozen here in my place.

I fought this force, but it was stronger than I.

Not knowing if I should have stayed,

but not knowing where to go,

I felt there was no choice left for me anymore.

I was playing the game of "A Little Too Late."


Your words were sweet candy to my ears,

but there was so much more you never said.

Those secrets you guarded,

they glowed behind your blue eyes.

Fire came from your lips,

heat from your hands.

Still there was something deeper than just attraction floating around us.


Maybe I was the only one who felt it, but maybe you did, too.

Deep down there was something going on, surely we both must have felt it,

though I wondered if you denied it more than I.


You still held onto your current life and love,

you still tried to grab them desperately

although you knew nothing could be built

upon them no more...yes you did know this

you still do.

So afraid were you to dive in without looking to see how deep,

so afraid was I to drown because I'd already jumped.

Being torn by the impulse to shake you or hug you,

my hands itched but were at a loss.


I wish you had taken your blinders off and taken a good look,

but maybe you just wanted to lie to yourself and stay blind.

Perhaps you wanted to stay hidden behind your fortress forever,

or quite possibly you just needed time to capture some courage.


You had issues and insecurities to sort out,

you had your own demons to face.

You were running scared, not knowing where you would end up

That made two of us.


Wish I could have read your mind,

for just a little while.

Then maybe I could have prepared myself,

for when you "showed me your cards"

Why would you do such a thing?

You could have taken my place for a sec

You could have tried to be on the other end of that knife yourself.

Just to see how you felt, how it hurt,


In my heart of hearts, I believe you are incapable of such torment,

though I can't be absolutely sure.

I see through your armor,

of who you appear to be.


I couldn't see inside your heart because I couldn't even see inside my own.

I didn't know what I was feeling,

except it was something fierce and foreign.

It was a road I had never traveled before,

and one I did not know where it'd lead me.

Maybe I was playing the game of a fool to believe such thoughts,

though I was certainly not one who was puffed up with self-indulgent pride.

I know who I am inside,

and I know that I could offer someone more than they've ever imagined.

I can offer someone happiness,

and I deserve that happiness twofold.


Maybe you didn't believe you deserved that happiness,

or maybe you felt I couldn't give it to you.

Perhaps you didn't want to try again,

maybe you didn't want to put your happiness before someone else's

or perhaps I was not good enough in your eyes to try.


Right then, I stood as the scared and helpless fool.

I couldn't run and I couldn't hide anymore.

All I could do was wait awhile to see how the situation unraveled.

Every minute of pleasure and pain,

brought me both joy and torture.


I could have waited and I could have granted you

the time you perhaps needed

But I could only do it for so long

Because my train was about to arrive.

And once it arrived, it was a one-way ride with no looking back.

It is true when they say only a fool rushes in,

but it's an even bigger fool who waits so long it passes him by.


Though I'm far from naive,

I know my perceptions may be inaccurate.

Regardless, I feel you are a good soul,

someone who is rare and has more beauty in him than he knows.

You've got a soft heart, much like me,

that gets easily stepped on.

Just remember,

don't become too bitter to feel,

and don't become too blind to see what might be right in front of you.

Maybe I didn't need to look any farther,

and maybe what you needed was right under your nose.


The joy I felt when I was with you,

and the ache I felt when I was not,

scared me to death.

Just remember that beauty lives deep within the heart,

embedded within the soul.

It's underneath the flaws of character,

and it hides behind the masks we all wear.


It's honest and it's pure,

it's loving and it's thoughtful.

It feels the pain of others,

it has compassion for other human souls.

It feels torment and guilt when it inflicts pain upon others,

it's helpful and it always tries.

It wants to reach out,

but is afraid it will be slapped.

It wants to hold,

but it's afraid it will only clutch the air.

It hopes and it dreams,

it has faith, but still doubts.

It creates art from the inside,

so the outside world can touch it.

It inspires and it praises,

it encourages and it supports.

It's vulnerable and acts like a scared child,

but only because of past battles.

It's part of me, and it's part of you and everybody else.


I don't know if prayers do any good,

though they've worked miracles in the past.

When it comes to the game of my heart,

those prayers never seem to have been answered.

Faith can be blind when you have a hard time,

trusting the most wished thought will come true.


Until then,

this is an open door to my heart

and a mirror to my soul.


unknown author

  •  

tinkerbell

a girl like me

by Martina




          I've always wanted to be female

          and give my identity for sale.

          I've never felt like a boy -

          playing with dolls instead of army toys.

          I've searched for explanations the whole day,

          just dreaming and not listening to what my parents

          wanted to say.

          I've worn the clothes of my sister and my mother,

          but they've never seen the pain from which I suffered.



          Just being the first day at school,

          there were others who made the rules.

          As I entered the class: all eyes on my.

          Didn't believe what they've obviously seen:

          I've just worn what I always wore,

          but I already heard their laughter standing in front

          of the door.

          WIthout any make-up - my mother's idea.

          Just going into the class with kind of fear.



          In the evening I told my parents about my day,

          but they didn't care about the things I tried to say.

          At night, laying crying in my bed.

          Coming downstairs, hear my parents say: 'Not every

          day's that bad.'

          But it was that way every single time

          and at one point I began asking myself whether there

          was something wrong with my mind.

          After a few weeks I began to observe the others at

          school,

          but I never got out why they (and not I) ruled.



          This went that way for months and years.

          Don't know whether somebody in any way cared.

          They did nothing to support my life

          and in my thoughts, I started to dive.

          I slowly suppressed my identity towards the others.

          A coat of disinterest was what me covered.

          Guess, the people thought that I was through it.

          The lonely table in the corner was where I used to

          sit.



          Suddenly everything erupted again.

          On a party: my mum saw some kind of make-up on my

          skin.

          First reaction: she only yelled

          (don't think she'd considered what I felt).

          Second: telling her friends I was just making a joke

          (thought to themselves: 'he only wants to provoke').

          Third and kinda worst for me: they gave me into

          psychiatrist's care

          (didn't consider that it were my thoughts, that would

          be shared.)



          First session I was sitting and playing with toys.

          Before it my parents had told me not to make too much

          noise.

          The psychiatrist on the other hand told me to do what

          I want to,

          thus I did not at all know what to do.

          First, as mentioned, I only sat there around

          and played with the dolls I'd found.

          She talked with my parents about different solutions,

          but they did not really come to a conclusion.



          She then sent my parents outside the room

          and started to talk to me quite soon.

          She asked me: 'What do you think and feel?'

          Was a weird situation for me, didn't feel like real.

          I didn't talk that much at all.

          At that moment I did not want to break my fall.

          After an hour or something in that way,

          we finished the session. Guess, she didn't know what

          else to say.



          My parents took me home that day without talking at

          all.

          Don't know whether they maybe waited for my call.

          Arriving at home, I went fast to bed -

          Had to be prepared for tomorrow. The next appointment

          had been set.

          The appointment was the same way the other had been,

          but she told me that what I did was a sin.

          She said, it was God's choice who we are -

          I only thought to myself: He could tell being that

          far.



          Again the session brought nothing to light.

          And I did nothing to prove their views right.

          We did these sessions a few more weeks -

          the psychiatrist was so excited, she always had

          reddened cheeks.

          I didn't care that in her eyes, I was a fool,

          I had more problems ordering my life at school.

          The things got worse there every day I stepped in.

          And at last my self-esteem was wearing pretty thin.



          One day I was walking down the hall,

          I actually was on my way to the mall.

          A group of some boys kept on following me.

          Don't know whether they wanted to be seen.

          They stopped me dead in the middle of the street

          and hit me hard, so I had problems staying on my feet.

          They finally left me as I lay crumpled on the ground.

          Think, they thought I was unconscious as I didn't

          utter a sound.



          It was not the only time this took place.

          I believed, I had a chance to win once, but that never

          was the case.

          They called my queer, fairy, ->-bleeped-<- and a lot of other

          names.

          They verbally abused me everywhere I came.

          I tried to tell them that I was not like that.

          They shouted that they wouldn't believe what some

          fairy said.

          I did not tell my parents about it at that time -

          everthing they would have done was telling: 'it will

          be fine.'



          I tried to tell them after a year of getting beaten on

          a daily base.

          But honestly, I couldn't stand it - looking into my

          mother's face.

          One day, I finally decided to tell my parents

          everything

          and at that point I wished that I could have wings -

          to fly away from all the mess.

          I felt so useless and even less.

          My parents realised that I couldn't live on like that.

          They were worried that if I stayed I'd be rather dead.



          So it was settled that we would move,

          my fears had not vanished, but they surely had been

          soothed.

          Still, I was scared how they would react in the new

          city.

          Hoped, they'd be cooler there and wouldn't hit me.

          The day of our arrival I stayed inside,

          the only reason was that I wanted to hide.

          Couldn't keep this up for so much longer.

          Told myself, that this time I'd be stronger.



          I dreaded my first day in my new school.

          I nearly knew that it would be as cruel

          as it was on the other one.

          Had already prepared myself to have surely no fun.

          My parents accompanied me to my destination -

          they did everything to support my situation.

          Everybody was in class as I stepped through the

          doorway.

          Hoped that this wouldn't be the only luck which would

          happen to me this day.



          I had to talk to the headmaster a little.

          I can't remember exactly what he said as he spoke in

          riddles.

          Something like 'we know what you feel, it's alright',

          'You don't have to say anything, it won't come to

          light.'

          Can't remember what the goal of this talk was.

          It seemed weird to me and kinda gross.

          I didn't know what to expect of my life from now on.

          My dreams and wishes were already long gone.



          The headmaster accompanied me to my first room.

          He said: 'You'll meet the other kids pretty soon.'

          Couldn't he notice that I was scared like hell?!

          He probably couldn't, that's what I could tell.

          He opened the door and I looked into faces I didn't

          know.

          He didn't care and he told me so.

          I expected hatred and disgust on every face,

          instead I saw smiles - staying in place.



          He introduced me to the others who sat around.

          I couldn't believe what I had found.

          Everybody seemed to have no problem at all,

          although I heard them whispering about me while going

          out into the hall.

          One of them, a boy, stood suddenly by my side.

          'I heard what happened and you did the right.

          Nobody will harm you round here

          and soon your worries will disappear.'



          I wanted to believe what he did say,

          but I simply didn't trust him already that day.

          I said 'thanks' and left him in the hall.

          I was around the corner when I heard his call.

          I didn't turn around to him though,

          guess, he also didn't think I'd do so.

          From then on, the day went fairly alright.

          I don't think, I again crossed the boy's sight.



          As I drove homes with my mother I bounced up and down

          on my seat.

          Even when walking to the house the ground was barely

          touched by my feet.

          I couldn't even remember when I'd been the last time

          that content -

          still, I didn't know what the boy had meant.

          I still thoughts that I was truly female.

          And I feared that I would friend-like fail.

          Nevertheless I went to school happy again

          and luckily nobody expected me to be a man.



          Nobody seemd to mind the way I was.

          'It's okay.' everybody said whose ways I crossed.

          I was grateful that they let me be the way I wanted

          to.

          Guess, all of them knew what I'd been through.

          One day, as I began to think everything would always

          be fine,

          somebody else's thoughts defested mine.

          Some older guy started to hold a kind of speech during

          lunch

          and it was not long before I caught the first punch.



          I ended up even worse this time around.

          And I suddenly felt like I had lost everything I'd

          found.

          I lay alone in my hospital bed.

          Feeling less alive - more dead.

          Nobody visited me during these 28 days

          and when I came home I didn't want to see a face.

          It took me again another month before I had the

          courage to go back to school.

          My parents were pretty understanding during that time

          and kept it cool.



          On day eight at home my mum knocked at my door.

          Didn't know why - there was nothing I was waiting for.

          She told me: 'Somebody wants to visit you.'

          I kinda panicked and did not know what to do.

          A boy entered my room and stopped in front of me.

          The departure of my mother was the only thing I did

          see.

          He turned his head downwards and hid his face.

          This way he stood for five minutes without leaving his

          place.



          Call it embarassment - even now I don't know what he

          had.

          Maybe he did feel fine and didn't think something had

          to be said.

          I eventually stood up from where I sat,

          going from there to the window and back to the bed.

          I finally came to a stop two feet in front of him.

          Was it me or was his breath really getting thin?

          Suddenly, something changed in the air

          and I cannot say that I didn't care.



          He made one step forward as did I.

          In my belly suddenly thousands of butterflies seemed

          to fly.

          When our eyes locked both of us realised that this was

          it.

          And even now, I can't recall what me hit.

          Abruptly, I turned around on my heels,

          without caring what he may did feel.

          He then stammered a little 'see you'

          and just at that point it dawned on me what I did do.



          I didn't run after him though that day.

          My mother asked what had happened, but I didn't know

          what to say.

          I thought about him all the time I was in my room.

          And I promised myself to talk to him really soon.

          Eventually, it was again him who made the first step.

          My mother let him in and he entered my room while I

          was taking a nap.

          He didn't wake me up - just sat beside me.

          Guess, there was nothing else of interest in my room

          to see.



          When I opened my eyes, I looked into his

          and he then gave me a cute little kiss.

          He caught me off guard and I did not know how to

          react.

          I also didn't want it to look like such a big act.

          I could barely catch him as he tried to leave,

          I even accidentally ripped a part of his sleeve.

          He then turned around to look at me once more.

          And I guess, he saw that he was the one I'd been

          longing for.



          We stared at each other for another awkward minute.

          Before I beckoned him beside me - to sit.

          He hesitated before following my word.

          I couldn't beliebe what I next heard:

          'Listen, I do know that this seems quite odd.

          And I do think that you'll hate my quite a lot.

          I see you like the girl you are

          and I've already noticed you from afar.



          I want you to know that I love you

          and I do hope that you do so, too.

          I know, I can't force you into anything you hate

          and I do know that it's maybe already too late.'

          I kissed him and told him: 'I love you, too.'

          and he said he's sorry for what I'd been through.

          It didn't matter - our love was the only thing I could

          see.

          My love for him. And his love for a girl like me.



Posted on: November 16, 2006, 01:53:47 AM
Very Old Poems By Tinkerbell -- Pre-transition, early transition

Solo Soy

Solo soy un recuerdo, que se pierde en el tiempo
Una caricia olvidada, un rostro bañado de nostalgias
Una brisa, una esperanza perdida en el silencio
Solo soy un callado suspiro
Que ha quedado dormido entre unos labios
Un pasado dormido
Solo soy el agua entre los dedos
Suavizando lo duro de un gesto
Solo soy una hoja extraviada
que se ha llevado el viento
Mujer que se sintió olvidada
Solo soy.......ese amor que pasa

Tinkerbell


Translation


I am only

I am only a memory lost in time
a forgotten caress, a face full of nostalgic tears
a breeze, a hope lost in silence.

I am only a quiet sigh
that has fallen asleep between your lips,
a dormant past

I am only water between your fingers
softening the appearance of a gesture
I am only a lost leaf
that the wind has taken
I am only a woman
who feels forgotten
I am only a love
that fades away..

Tinkerbell

**********************************************************


A ti, cuyo cariño me hace dedicarte estas líneas.

Si solo ........................Pudiera vivir mi vida otra vez, ................Hubiera sabido lo que ahora se, .....................Hubiera hecho lo que debía,
Solo que...............Ahora es tarde.
¿Quién puede decir que nunca a cometido un error, perdido un sueño, o arrepentido de una decisión?
Muchas tenemos historias con finales no felices, es difícil quitarnos de la mente un error, y mas difícil dejar de imaginar como pudimos evitarlo, y como serian las cosas si solo...............
Es como tratar de caminar mirando hacia atrás.
Rumiando la falla una y otra vez.
No podemos avanzar ni funcionar.
Imagina conmigo que te ataca la sed, cerca esta una llave de agua, nos aproximamos y no sale nada,
Esperamos confiadas en la esperanza y nada.
¿Cuánto mas vale la pena esperar?
Mejor buscamos otra alternativa, ¿Verdad?
Así existen muchas alternativas en la vida, a veces nos quedamos esperando, por que escuchamos un ruido de agua en la tubería, sale una gota, quizá dos, quizá un chorrito.
No calmamos la sed, solo que nos decimos que esto es mejor que nada.
Con la punta de los dedos te sostienes de un sueño, una creencia, una fantasía, y lo que obtienes, es un raquítico espejismo de la felicidad por lo que con frecuencia recurrimos a la imaginación.
Las ilusiones son una forma de escape.
Es vivir en la irrealidad.
Pueden ser un regalo de la vida, o hacernos daño cuando nos atormentamos imaginando como pudieron ser las cosas.
Lo que paso, pasó.
Si una oportunidad se fue, pues, ¡Se fue!
Lamentarnos no va a hacer que regrese.
Pensar en: hubiera, debí, pude.....................
Solo nos paraliza, nos vence.
Pensar que puedo hacer ahora, como lo puedo hacer bien, que nuevas oportunidades pueden surgir, nos lleva a la acción, al cambio, a la esperanza, a una nueva actitud de vida.
Lo que paso, paso, si una oportunidad se fue, pues, ¡Se fue!
Y lamentarnos no va a arreglar el pasado,
Una historia nos narra como una persona todos los días, le pidió a Dios que le ayudara a ganar la lotería.
Pasaron diez años y nunca gano nada.
Frustrado se arrodillo, levanto la cara a el cielo y grito: Dios mió, ¿Por qué me has abandonado?
¿Porque no me has respondido?
De repente, aparece una gran luz y una voz se escucha; Hij@, hij@,, te escucho, he escuchado tus plegarias, se que eres una buena persona, déjame ayudarte, solo que ...............compra un billete.
Para estar mejor, tenemos que comprar boleto.
Hacer un esfuerzo para cambiar los sentimientos negativos, la soberbia, la auto compasión, para convertirnos en seres de hago, quiero y puedo.
Te quiero aunque lo dudes, y confió en que te ayuden mis palabras.



tinkerbell


This is a recent poem which I will translate next time..
  •  

Kisa

Beautiful poems, some of them made me cry. :( you're a great writer!
  •  

tinkerbell

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But 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 thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em 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 talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with 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

***********************************************************

The Gift Outright


The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Robert Frost

***********************************************************

One Hundred and Three

With the frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild,
And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child;
With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity—
And the Warder says, in a softened tone: 'Keep step, One Hundred and Three.'

'Tis a ghastly travesty of drill—or a ghastly farce of work—
But One Hundred and Three, he catches step with a start, a shuffle and jerk.
'Tis slow starvation in separate cells, and a widow's son is he,
And the widow, she drank before he was born—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)

They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air,
Twenty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues there.
And the dead stone walls and the iron door close in as an iron band
On eyes that followed the distant haze far out on the level land.

Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud,
A Bible and thin flat book of rules, to cool a strong man's blood;
They take the spoon from the cell at night—and a stranger might think it odd;
But a man might sharpen it on the floor, and go to his own Great God.

One Hundred and Three, it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn;
There were girls that rode through the bush at eve, and girls who lolled on the lawn.
There were picnic parties in sunny bays, and ships on the shining sea;
There were foreign ports in the glorious days—(Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)

A man came out at exercise time from one of the cells to-day:
'Twas the ghastly spectre of one I knew, and I thought he was far away;
We dared not speak, but he signed 'Farewell—fare—well,' and I knew by this
And the number stamped on his clothes (not sewn) that a heavy sentence was his.

Where five men do the work of a boy, with warders not to see,
It is sad and bad and uselessly mad, it is ugly as it can be,
From the flower-beds laid to fit the gaol, in circle and line absurd,
To the gilded weathercock on the church, agape like a strangled bird.

Agape like a strangled bird in the sun, and I wonder what he could see?
The Fleet come in, and the Fleet go out? (Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
The glorious sea, and the bays and Bush, and the distant mountains blue
(Keep step, keep step, One Hundred and Three, for my lines are halting too)

The great, round church with its volume of sound, where we dare not turn our eyes—
They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise.
In all the creeds there is hope and doubt, but of this there is no doubt:
That starving prisoners faint in church, and the warders carry them out.

They double-lock at four o'clock and the warders leave their keys,
And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories;
Their window slits are like idiot mouths with square stone chins adrop,
And the weather-stains for the dribble, and the dead flat foreheads atop.

No light save the lights in the yard beneath the clustering lights of the Lord—
And the lights turned in to the window slits of the Observation Ward.
(They eat their meat with their fingers there in a madness starved and dull—
Oh! the padded cells and the O—b—s are nearly always full.)

Rules, regulations—red-tape and rules; all and alike they bind:
Under 'separate treatment ' place the deaf; in the dark cell shut the blind!
And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb, with never a word to save,
One Hundred and Three is keeping step, as he'll keep it to his grave.

The press is printing its smug, smug lies, and paying its shameful debt—
It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have, and 'holidays' prisoners get.
The visitors come with their smug, smug smiles through the gaol on a working day,
And the public hears with its large, large ears what authorities have to say.

They lay their fingers on well-hosed walls, and they tread on the polished floor;
They peep in the generous shining cans with their ration Number Four.
And the visitors go with their smug, smug smiles; the reporters' work is done;
Stand up! my men, who have done your time on ration Number One!

Speak up, my men! I was never the man to keep my own bed warm,
I have jogged with you round in the Fools' Parade, and I've worn your uniform;
I've seen you live, and I've seen you die, and I've seen your reason fail—
I've smuggled tobacco and loosened my tongue—and I've been punished in gaol.

Ay! clang the spoon on the iron floor, and shove in the bread with your toe,
And shut with a bang the iron door, and clank the bolt—just so,
With an ignorant oath for a last good-night—or the voice of a filthy thought.
By the Gipsy Blood you have caught a man you'll be sorry that ever you caught.

He shall be buried alive without meat, for a day and a night unheard
If he speak to a fellow prisoner, though he die for want of a word.
He shall be punished, and he shall be starved, and he shall in darkness rot,
He shall be murdered body and soul—and God said, 'Thou shalt not!'

I've seen the remand-yard men go out, by the subway out of the yard—
And I've seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard.
They send a half-starved man to the court, where the hearts of men they carve—
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve.

You get the gaol-dust in your throat, in your skin the dead gaol-white;
You get the gaol-whine in your voice and in every letter you write.
And in your eyes comes the bright gaol-light—not the glare of the world's distraught,
Not the hunted look, nor the guilty look, but the awful look of the Caught.

There was one I met—'twas a mate of mine—in a gaol that is known to us;
He died—and they said it was 'heart disease'; but he died for want of a truss.
I've knelt at the head of the pallid dead, where the living dead were we,
And I've closed the yielding lids with my thumbs—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)

A criminal face is rare in gaol, where all things else are ripe—
It is higher up in the social scale that you'll find the criminal type.
But the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen—
The public call us the 'criminal class,' but the warders call us 'the men.'

The brute is a brute, and a kind man kind, and the strong heart does not fail—
A crawler's a crawler everywhere, but a man is a man in gaol!
For forced 'desertion' or drunkenness, or a law's illegal debt,
While never a man who was a man was 'reformed' by punishment yet.

The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell—
They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel.
But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me,
And the drums, they are beating loud and near. (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)

The clever scoundrels are all outside, and the moneyless mugs in gaol—
Men do twelve months for a mad wife's lies or Life for a strumpet's tale.
If the people knew what the warders know, and felt as the prisoners feel—
If the people knew, they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastile.

And the cackling, screaming half-human hens who were never mothers nor wives
Would send their sisters to such a hell for the term of their natural lives,
Where laws are made in a Female Fit in the Land of the Crazy Fad,
And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit and the mad condemn the mad.

The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down—
It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown.
There are swift-made signs that are not to God, and they march us Hellward then.
It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to 'for ever and ever, Amen. '

Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot dry and slow—
The author must not write for his own, and the tailor must not sew.
The billet-bound officers dare not speak and discharged men dare not tell
Though many and many an innocent man must brood in this barren hell.

We are most of us criminal, most of us mad, and we do what we can do.
(Remember the Observation Ward and Number Forty-Two.)
There are eyes that see through stone and iron, though the rest of the world be blind—
We are prisoners all in God's Great Gaol, but the Governor, He is kind.

They crave for sunlight, they crave for meat, they crave for the might-have-been,
But the cruellest thing in the walls of a gaol is the craving for nicotine.
Yet the spirit of Christ is everywhere where the heart of a man can dwell,
It comes like tobacco in prison—or like news to the separate cell.

. They have smuggled him out to the Hospital with no one to tell the tale,
But it's little the doctors and nurses can do for the patient from Starvinghurst Gaol.
He cannot swallow the food they bring, for a gaol-starved man is he,
And the blanket and screen are ready to draw—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)

'What were you doing, One Hundred and Three?' and the answer is 'Three years hard,
And a month to go'—and the whisper is low: 'There's the moonlight—out in the yard.'
The drums, they are beating far and low, and the footstep's light and free,
And the angels are whispering over his bed: 'Keep step, One Hundred and Three!'


Henry Lawson

***********************************************************

After All

The brooding ghosts of Australian night have gone from the bush and town;
My spirit revives in the morning breeze, though it died when the sun went down;
The river is high and the stream is strong, and the grass is green and tall,
And I fain would think that this world of ours is a good world after all.

The light of passion in dreamy eyes, and a page of truth well read,
The glorious thrill in a heart grown cold of the spirit I thought was dead,
A song that goes to a comrade's heart, and a tear of pride let fall --
And my soul is strong! and the world to me is a grand world after all!

Let our enemies go by their old dull tracks, and theirs be the fault or shame
(The man is bitter against the world who has only himself to blame) ;
Let the darkest side of the past be dark, and only the good recall;
For I must believe that the world, my dear, is a kind world after all.

It well may be that I saw too plain, and it may be I was blind;
But I'll keep my face to the dawning light, though the devil may stand behind!
Though the devil may stand behind my back, I'll not see his shadow fall,
But read the signs in the morning stars of a good world after all.

Rest, for your eyes are weary, girl -- you have driven the worst away --
The ghost of the man that I might have been is gone from my heart to-day;
We'll live for life and the best it brings till our twilight shadows fall;
My heart grows brave, and the world, my girl, is a good world after all.

 
Henry Lawson

***********************************************************


Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.


Sara Teasdale

***********************************************************


How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning





Posted on: November 20, 2006, 06:12:41 PM
somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands


e. e. cummings


***********************************************************

Petals

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Amy Lowell


***********************************************************

My Love Reveals Objects


my love reveals objects
silken butterflies
concealed in his fingers

his words
splash me with stars

night shines like lightning
under the fingers of my love

my love invents worlds where
jeweled glittering serpents live

worlds where music is the world

worlds where houses with open eyes
contemplate the dawn

my love is a mad sunflower that forgets
fragments of sun in the silence


Isabel Fraire


SPANISH VERSION


Mi amor descubre objetos


mi amor descubre objetos
sedosas mariposas
se ocultan en sus dedos

sus palabras
me salpican de estrellas

bajo los dedos de mi amor la noche
brilla como relámpago

mi amor inventa mundos en que habitan
serpientes cuajadas de brillantes

mundos en que la música es el mundo
mundos en que las casas con los ojos abiertos
contemplan el amanecer

mi amor es un loco girasol que olvida
pedazos de sol en el silencio

Isabel Fraire

***********************************************************


Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?


Robert Frost


***********************************************************

Twisted Rose


She was pursued by a throng of suitors,
as his one shy rose
wooed her

with idling patience
in tentative
low gear,

but when he accelerated,
boastful,
certainly sure,

he flew preoccupied
off an unseen curve
and never returned.

Now a sculpture
of twisted petals
dance in sardonic curves

around a shrunken heart
in a vase
without water.


Judith Pordon


SPANISH VERSION


Rosa Torcida


Perseguido por una horda de demandantes
su timida rosa
la cortejaba

con una atronadora paciencia
en una tentativa
baja velocidad

Pero cuando el acelero
orgulloso
ciertamente seguro

el volo preocupado
de una curva no vista
y nunca regreso

Ahora una escultura
de torcidos petalos
danza en sarcasticas curvas

alrededor de un encogido corazon
en un florero
sin agua.


Judith Pordon

***********************************************************

Time does not bring relief

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go - so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, 'There is no memory of him here!'
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.


Edna St Vincent Millay

***********************************************************


NO ONE MUST KNOW


You lean to my side
tickling my desires.

Below my clothes
I quiver in infinities.

Others lean towards us.
Do they sense

your exhale is my inhale,
your out, my in?

We sit motionless
but betray ourselves,

glancing around
to see if anyone is looking.


Judith Pordon


Wow...I think someone taped them! ;) ;D

***********************************************************

Is She Found?


Yesterday we walked apart
Separate and cold and mortal.
Now the sacred kiss has joined us,
Now we stand inside the portal

That permits of no returning
And my heart is burning, burning.

I know not what the word may be,
Or what the charm, or what the token
That has filled us with this glory,
But never let the spell be broken;

Let it stay a mystery
For all times to be.

Yesterday, with lighter joys
We wantoned at the outer portal.
Now, with love's old alchemy
We have made ourselves immortal.

Elsa Gidlow



Yes, they have indeed, haven't they? ;)

***********************************************************


AMANTE

A waterfall of hair
cascades
down his shoulders.

Silence breathes them,
butterflies
in their hands.

Their dinners
half eaten
packed for later.

A five star meal
relished
on their warm spines.

While they languish
on rented sheets.
No bickering moments,

dismal doubts,
or monotonous chores
shudder their cloistered moments.

Eternity is not
a diamond ring.
It is here.


Grace Ezequiel

***********************************************************

Touch

My hands
open the curtains of your being
clothe you in a further nudity
uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
invent another body for your body

Octavio Paz



SPANISH TRANSLATION

Palpar

Mis manos
abren las cortinas de tu ser
te visten con otra desnudez
descubren los cuerpos de tu cuerpo
Mis manos
inventan otro cuerpo a tu cuerpo

Octavio Paz


***********************************************************

I carry your heart

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


e e cummings
Posted on: November 22, 2006, 10:00:44 PM
A Bird Came Down


A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim.

Emily Dickinson

**********************************************************

A Light Exists In Spring


A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human naturefeels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

Emily Dickinson

**********************************************************

Death Sets A Thing Of Signigicant


Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly

To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With "This was last her fingers did,"
Industrious until

The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then 't was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.

A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,--
At rest his fingers are.

Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.

Emily Dickinson

**********************************************************

When we two parted


When we two parted

In silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted

To sever for years,

Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

Colder thy kiss;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this.
 

The dew of the morning

Sunk chill on my brow ---

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame;

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.
 

They name thee before me,

A knell to mine ear;

A shudder comes o'er me ---

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well: ---

Long, long shall I rue thee,

Too deeply to tell.
 

In secret we met ---

In silence I grieve,

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee? ---

With silence and tears.

Lord Byron

**********************************************************


Meeting At Night


I.
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!


Robert Browning
Posted on: November 26, 2006, 08:41:32 PM
A Divine Image


Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace seal'd,
The human heart its hungry gorge

William Blake

**********************************************************


A Little Boy Lost

"Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.

"And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door."

The Priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired the priestly care.

And standing on the altar high,
"Lo, what a fiend is here! said he:
"One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery."

The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,

And burned him in a holy place
Where many had been burned before;
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such thing done on Albion's shore?

William Blake

**********************************************************


A Little Girl Lost

Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.

In the age of gold,
Free from winter's cold,
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair,
Filled with softest care,
Met in garden bright
Where the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.

Then, in rising day,
On the grass they play;
Parents were afar,
Strangers came not near,
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

Tired with kisses sweet,
They agree to meet
When the silent sleep
Waves o'er heaven's deep,
And the weary tired wanderers weep.

To her father white
Came the maiden bright;
But his loving look,
Like the holy book
All her tender limbs with terror shook.

"Ona, pale and weak,
To thy father speak!
Oh the trembling fear!
Oh the dismal care
That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair!"

William Blake


**********************************************************

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then - in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life - was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.


Edgar Allan Poe
  •  

tinkerbell

How far has Drip traveled?


When we last visited Drip, he had fallen from the sky as rain. When he hit the ground, he began to roll downhill along with many millions of other raindrops. He eventually ended up in a river which carried him to a large lake. So is this the end of the journey for Drip? Will he call the lake home forever? You know the answer to the question. NO WAY! Maybe Drip will spend a very long time in the lake. Perhaps tomorrow the warmth of the summer sun will once again change Drip from liquid water to water vapor and he will again begin another journey on the great water cycle. Water has been doing this same thing for millions of years. Today Drip is in a lake. Tomorrow you may find him in a cloud. Eventually he will return to the ocean. The water cycle is a very important part of the Earth systems that make it possible for life to flourish on this planet.

Unknown Author

**********************************************************
Fighting The Darkness
   
 
Delve into the heart, into the soul
Into the darkness, the bottomless hole
Somewhere beyond the things I control
Lives the pain, the suffering that I seek to console

The center, the stand, the simple white scroll
Upon which I'm written, defined as a whole
Surrounded by shadows as life takes its toll
Attempting to gain back the innocence it stole

In fairness to others, I give my parole
And feed on the darkness, like fire on the coal
To continue on in my self defined role
And act in my life, as if out for a stroll

And the fire inside, oh how it does roll
When light is let in, and my heart does extol
For I've taken a step towards reaching my goal
Against the horrors of life, I've maintained my patrol

unknown author

**********************************************************

New Beginning


The beginning of something new
The end of something true
Excitement in the mind replete
A new path to complete

Some things must come to end
And always we must make amends
Moving on in wary hope
A new thing now with which to cope

Wondering at how it works
Haven't figured out the quirks
Lots to learn, and lots to give
Starting now, this life to live

So much gone by overlooked
A sacrifice for passage booked
The fast lane train, ahead is black
Now or never, not looking back

Searching frantically for unlocked doors
Open one and close ten more
Choosing right, the secret here
Just go with it, forget the fear

So much opportunity
So much room to spread my wings
Close my eyes, just listening
To the sound of my new beginning

unknown author

**********************************************************


She Wakes

She Wakes A new day dawns upon the quiet countryThe sun, whirling caldron of heat and light Upon its path to cross the azure sky yet againRises up from below the lip of EarthLife and light cast out the darkness evermore A day like so many others yet not the sameRipe with joy and possibilities; the symphony beginsThis day, unlike countless others, carries harmony on highFor in this day, the world is born anewQuiet movement, rustling awareness, she stirs Warmth and comfort, sensation of peaceSweet fragrance upon the airEyes flutter, sparkling morning dewAwareness piques, turmoil stilled, what is this place?Memories flood in, she wakes In the moment, sun beyond the windowRays of light trace upon the floor, the wallMountains at a distance, garden belowSoft breezes caress her cheek, her hairThe first day of forever, she lives!

Diana Lynn

**********************************************************

REBIRTH



Some years ago mother bore a boy

a child's mind as you may know

is always society's toy

I tried in vain to fit their mold

to my true self I was blind

A few of us can be so bold

to make gender self-define

A struggling woman's spirit

was desperate to be free

I tried so not to hear it

but I knew that she was me

I no longer lay my head sedated

on a pillow damp from crying

I have been reincarnated

without ever really trying.


Ivy Marie

**********************************************************


For an SRS surgeon

BLESS YOU

May you be blessed as you correct the errant ways of Mother Nature.

May your hands be steady as you do your artwork that may be seen by few.

May your eyes be clear as you put finishing touches on our dear one's life.

May your mind be sharp as you make your masterpiece decisions.

Bless you as you care for those misunderstood by many and loved by few.

Unknown author

**********************************************************

Reborn Metaphor
   

I was born to be a metaphor;
Darwin, embarrassed, did not talk of me;
I did not fit into his scheme of things; I,
knowing secrets of the tears of things,
while he used his fine mind
(which is, so obviously, beyond the physical)
to deny that world, the metaphysical..

To be a metaphor
you need to know your place;
stay around too long, you lose
that vital force; no one believes
in the unbelievable – when there's no mystery,
that's the end of metaphor for man.

Better choose a quiet place,
some corner of a foreign field
only to be found in mind,
do the necessary – a few dry leaves and sticks
to lay false trail – and the semblance of a nest; you,
a place apart..

The desert, then, was easier; Egypt understood;
the sun rose warm
on the eggshell of pure thought;
Greece, appreciative, then found a name for me;
a whole race followed in my rise;
Rome was, how to put it, unoriginal;
America called a dry town, in an arid zone, after me;
may yet know me, nested in my cruellest magnificence,
ash and twisted steel and concrete, office equipment;
I a metaphor, awaiting a new birth.


Michael Shepherd 





Posted on: November 27, 2006, 08:17:13 PM

TODAY WE ARE BUTTERFLIES

  We have traveled our respective roads as caterpillars, we
consumed I of the information we could about our confused lives
and we learned and we grew.
  Finally our roads that we have traveled have joined for our
final journey. We've spun our cocoons and with much nurturing and
love we entered the pupa stage. And through the hands of a
skilled Doctor we were able to break out of our pupal bonds and
at last we were born  to live the lives we were meant to live.
  As we dry our wings and prepare to go forth in our new lives
as beautiful butterflies we pause to give thanks.

By Gloria

**********************************************************


On Being a Woman


a friend of mine
was asked to write about being a femme
for a queer women's event
she wasn't quite sure where to begin
"it's hard to write about being a girl," she said
and i knew exactly what she meant

for some time
i've been trying to write my own poem
about what it means to be a woman
but every time i pick up my pen
i'm afraid that i'll paint myself into a corner
betrayed by words
forged from soft vowel sounds
and weak, diminutive connotations
words so delicate that they crumple
under any further introspection
i'm afraid that i may lose a part of myself
as i navigate my way
through the landmines
of other people's definitions and dogma

pop-culture tells us that a real woman
knows how to use her body
to get what she wants
wielding the power of attraction
seducing with her animal magnetism
but i ask how much power is there
in being a carrot on a stick
that is dangled in front of someone?

and i can't help but notice
that when men try to flatter us
they often use words
like "enchanting" and "mysterious"
but to me, those words seem like
a subconscious attempt by them
to place some distance between us

so it bothers me when i hear women
buy into a similar mysticism
as they try to empower us
by proclaiming that we are magical
that we are mother earth
with the ability to give birth
bearing life cycles
that follow the moon
like the tides of the ocean
but don't they see the danger
in buying into the idea
that we are supernatural beings
for if we call ourselves goddesses
then there is no need for anyone
to treat us like human beings

i believe
that this is where second wave feminism
came to a grinding halt
when we got caught up in the myth
that women are special because of our biology
because when we take pride
in how fundamentally different we are from men
we unknowingly engage
in a dangerous game of opposites
for if men are big
then women must be small
if men are strong
then women must be soft
and it becomes impossible
to write a loud and proud poem
about what it means to be a woman
without either ridiculing men
or else pulling the rug out
from under ourselves

and being a woman is contradiction enough
without being both a transsexual
and a dyke like myself
i often feel like the monkey in the middle
on one side of me
are lesbian separatists
who insist that i am still a man
as if being born male
was some awful disease
that has infected my blood
and my bones
permanently
on the other side of me
are younger dykes
who are infatuated with trans men and ->-bleeped-<-bois
yet secretly confess to friends
that they are disturbed by trans women
because we act so "effeminate"
i wonder how they can be
so oblivious to their own arrogance
for anyone who admires trans-men
but dismisses trans-women
is simply practicing
another form of sexism
i used to think it was a contradiction
that some dykes abhorred me for my masculinity
while others hated me for my femininity
until i realized that being a woman
means that everyone has a stake
in seeing what they want to see in me

my friend said
"it's hard to write about being a girl"
i believe that's because the word "girl"
doesn't really have a meaning of it's own
it is always defined in opposition to boy
so when being butch
is to make yourself rock solid
then being femme becomes
allowing yourself to be malleable
and if being a man means
taking control of your own situation
then being a woman becomes
living up to other people's expectations

well i refuse to believe in this myth
of opposites
if we want to shatter the glass ceiling
we must first learn to move beyond biology
and give ourselves permission
to become anything we want to be
i say to set any standard
that all women must meet
is to commit an act of misogyny

i refuse to believe in the myth
that all women share a common bond
the truth is
we are all very different from one another
we each live with a different set
of privileges and life experiences
and once we acknowledge this fact
it will become obvious
that when we try to place all women
into the same box
we unintentionally suffocate ourselves

instead of pretending
that all women share the same experience
that we are one in the same
let's make the word "woman"
a perpetual agent of change
instead of repeating history
by chaining ourselves
to one specific definition or concept
let's make the word "woman"
a celebration of each of our uniqueness.

Julia Serano

**********************************************************

FREE


Free from the prison of my mind
Free from the fear that bound me
Free from the denial and guilt and pain
Free of the sorrows of the past
Free to experience passion and joy
Free to grow, free to feel, free to love, free to laugh
Free to cry, free to sing, free to live rather than merely exist
Free to walk my own path
Free to follow my dreams
Free to embrace the splendor and the beauty
Free to explore; free to be me

Unknown author

**********************************************************





Posted on: November 29, 2006, 11:54:24 PM

I knew you'd come! ;D  I'm watching you! :)

What you did today was something that no one had ever done for me in the past; I am still in awe about the whole thing and will never be able to thank you enough.  I can't find the right words to tell you how very grateful I am for everything you do for me, for the tutoring, for sharing your knowledge and ideas, for sticking up for me, for the practice lessons, for the recommendations, for putting my needs before yours, for blaming yourself for something you were not guilty of, for the rides, for the carnation, for lunch, for everything else..... :'( :'(...okay I am losing it already....Thank you! :)


A toi


À toi, mon ange qui guide mes pas,
mon rayon de soleil qui illumine chacune de mes journées.
À toi encore, mon étoile qui me montre toujours le nord alors que je suis déboussolée,
Mon trésor qui enrichit ma vie !
Je crois que ça veut déjà tout dire.
Ton soutien et ton amour me comble de bonheur !  :)

Thank You


Thank you" is one of those wonderful phrases
people use to express a special gratitude.

But there's often a lot more to it
than those two words can say.

When it comes from the heart, from deep
inside
the nicest feelings and the most special
thoughts,
"Thank you"means so much.
It means thank you for taking the time to
show
that you care. It means "you really
made my day,"
and sometimes it means that you really
make all
the days so much better.
It means you make me feel so nice,
and I wish I could do the same for
you...
just by letting you know how much you
mean to me.

"Thank you" means you didn't have to...
but I'm so grateful that you did.
"Thank you" means that you've done
something special
that I'll never forget.

Unknown author ;)


R :icon_chick:




Posted on: November 30, 2006, 06:42:02 PM
Truths and Lies



I have been told
that I am a figment
of my own imagination,
that what I am cannot be,
that my truths are lies
and their lies are truths.
But I know that I am
and that my truths are not lies
and their lies are not truths.
They may keep me
outside the boundaries
of their imaginations,
but I refuse to be invisible.


Jason Cromwell
Posted on: December 03, 2006, 03:25:15 AM



I know!  I can't sleep again, and I was thinking about you and yesterday  ;) so I logged into goggle and did some research, and guess what?  I found it.....it is called the numa, numa song  (whatever that means);  I just wasn't sure about the name.  Anyhow, then I went to the youtube webpage and found both versions, the one we listened to and the one in the original language which is (sounds) like Portuguese, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan??  I really can't say but I know it is a Romance Language. (naturally it is not Italian, Spanish or French!)  ;D :D)


This is the one we listened to (English version):







...and this is the one in "Portuguese or Esperanto, Romanian or Catalan??" whatever language it is they speak. :D







....and this is a parody of the video from some wacky girls which, I'm sure, you're going to love: ;D







They are so very cute!!!  the songs, I mean, of course! ;) :P

See ya tomorrow, well actually today, considering that it is 5:30 am Sunday morning.  Take your video camera... :)


R :icon_chick:

P.S.  Je rêvais de toi et que nous avons fait hier. ;)










Posted on: December 03, 2006, 07:31:57 AM
Decalogue of the Artist


I. You shall love beauty, which is the shadow of God
over the Universe.

II.There is no godless art. Although you love not the
Creator, you shall bear witness to Him creating His likeness.

III.You shall create beauty not to excite the senses
but to give sustenance to the soul.

IV. You shall never use beauty as a pretext for luxury
and vanity but as a spiritual devotion.

V. You shall not seek beauty at carnival or fair
or offer your work there, for beauty is virginal
and is not to be found at carnival or fair.

VI. Beauty shall rise from your heart in song,
and you shall be the first to be purified.

VII.The beauty you create shall be known
as compassion and shall console the hearts of men.

VIII.You shall bring forth your work as a mother
brings forth her child: out of the blood of your heart.

IX. Beauty shall not be an opiate that puts you
to sleep but a strong wine that fires you to action,
for if you fail to be a true man or a true woman,
you will fail to be an artist.

X. Each act of creation shall leave you humble,
for it is never as great as your dream and always
inferior to that most marvelous dream of God
which is Nature.


Gabriela Mistral


Spanish Translation


Decálogo del Artista


I. Amarás la belleza, que es la sombra de Dios sobre
el Universo.

II. No hay arte ateo. Aunque no ames al Creador,
lo afirmarás creando a su semejanza.

III. No darás la belleza como cebo para los sentidos,
sino como el natural alimento del alma.

IV. No te será pretexto para la lujuria ni para
la vanidad, sino ejercicio divino.

V. No la buscarás en las ferias ni llevarás
tu obra a ellas, porque la Belleza es virgen,
y la que está en las ferias no es Ella.

VI. Subirá de tu corazón a tu canto y te habrá
purificado a ti el primero.

VII.Tu belleza se llamará también misericordia,
y consolará el corazón de los hombres.

VII.Darás tu obra como se da un hijo: restando
sangre de tu corazón.

IX. No te será la belleza opio adormecedor,
sino vino generoso que te encienda para la acción,
pues si dejas de ser hombre o mujer,
dejarás de ser artista.

X. De toda creación saldrás con vergüenza,
porque fué inferior a tu sueño, e inferior
a ese sueno maravilloso de Dios,
que es la Naturaleza.


Gabriela Mistral

Translated by Doris Dana


***********************************************************


Pity, We Were A Good Invention

They amputated
Your thighs from my waist.
For me they are always
Surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us
One from another. For me they are engineers.
Pity, We were a good and loving

Invention: an airplane made of man and woman,
Wings and all:
We soared a bit from the earth,
We flew a bit.


Yehuda Amichai


***********************************************************


Answers

I keep my answers small and keep them near;
Big questions bruised my mind but still I let
Small answers be a bulwark to my fear.

The huge abstractions I keep from the light;
Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
I let the stars assume the whole of night.

But the big answers clamoured to be moved
Into my life. Their great audacity
Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.

Even when all small answers build up to
Protection of my spirit, I still hear
Big answers striving for their overthrow

And all the great conclusions coming near.
 

Elizabeth Jennings

***********************************************************


When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted

When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it -- lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.
And those that were good shall be happy; they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair.
They shall find real saints to draw from -- Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only The Master shall praise us, and only The Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!


Rudyard Kipling


***********************************************************





THE SLOTH

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),
He will assume that you have Heard -

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
Hell sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows.


Theodore Roethke

***********************************************************


The Rhodora


In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.


Ralph Waldo Emerson

***********************************************************

A WOMAN'S QUESTION

Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the hand above?
A woman's heart, and a woman's life--
And a woman's wonderful love.

Do you know you have asked for this priceless thing
As a child might ask for a toy?
Demanding what others have died to win
With the reckless dash of a boy.

You have written my lesson of duty out,
Manlike, you have questioned me.
Now stand at the bars of my woman's soul
Until I shall question thee.

You require your mutton shall always be hot,
Your socks and your shirt be whole;
I require your heart be as true as God's stars
And as pure as His heaven your soul.

You require a cook for your mutton and beef,
I require a far greater thing;
A seamstress you're wanting for socks and shirts---
I look for a man and a king.

A king for the beautiful realm called Home,
And a man that his Maker, God,
Shall look upon as he did on the first
And say: "It is very good."

I am fair and young, but the rose may fade
From this soft young cheeck one day;
Will you love me then, 'mid the falling leaves
As you did 'mong the blossoms of May?

Is your heart an ocean so strong and true,
I may launch my all on its tide?
A loving woman finds heaven or hell
On the day she is made a bride.

I require all things that are grand and true,
All things that a man should be;
If you give this all, I would stake my life
To be all you demand of me.

If you cannot be this, a laundress and cook
You can hire and little to pay;
But a woman's heart and a woman's life
Are not to be won that way.


Lena Lathrop


***********************************************************

I Am

I am! The ages on the ages roll:
And what I am, I was, and I shall be:
by slow growth filling higher Destiny,
And Widening, ever, to the widening Goal.
I am the Stone that slept; down deep in me
That old, old sleep has left its centurine trace;
I am the plant that dreamed; and lo! still see
That dream-life dwelling on the Human Face.
I slept, I dreamed, I wakened: I am Man!
The hut grows Palaces; the depths breed light;
Still on! Forms pass; but Form yields kinglier
Might!
The singer, dying where his song began,
In Me yet lives; and yet again shall he
Unseal the lips of greater songs To Be;
For mine the thousand tongues of Immortality.


Voltaraine De Cleyre


***********************************************************

Expect Nothing


Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.


Alice Walker 



G and I

Te quiero como nunca he querido a nadie
me siento flotando en un arco iris de colores
cubierta de nuves de color blanco y celeste
el paraiso que veo es verde lleno de lirios blancos
y con un sol resplandeciente que me consume.

No se a donde llegara todo esto
lo unico que se es que te quiero
y tu despiertas en mi una pasion incontrolable
la cual no habia sentido por mucho tiempo

Me niego a decir "no", me niego a deshacerme de lo que siento
me niego a dejarte ir y volver otra vez a lo mismo
no quiero hacerlo y no lo hare
hasta el dia que tu me digas que lo haga

Lamento mucho el haberte dejado antes
pero en cierta forma eso ayudara a que ahora
te agarre con mas fuerza, con mas ternura, y mas ainco
que los dias pasados cuando despertaste en mi
lo que siento ahora.

Te quiero, como nunca he querido a nadie
como nunca antes nadie me ha querido
y hasta ayer no me daba cuenta de ello
Pero ahora que lo inevitable ha sucedido
me siento con la obligacion de hacertelo saber
porque te quiero, como nunca antes he querido.

by R :icon_chick:
Posted on: December 04, 2006, 02:04:18 AM

The Rainbow Bridge

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.
When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.
They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together.... 

Author unknown


***********************************************************

The Dress

Flowers
The color
Of new blood
Red petals
Softness
Taking me places
My heart has never known

I shiver
The Dress
Brushes
My breast
Heaving
As I gasp
Newness defined within me

Her words
Entwined
In cool fabric
Set fire
My passion
Emotions flare
As the dress slips over me

Wearing it
Now more naked
Than nakedness
Could feel
Being taken
By the dress
The climax of weeks in this moment

My power
Exploding
Rushing, tingling
Face flushed
As red
As the flowers
I find bliss in feminine power.

Kate Esme

***********************************************************

A Story of a Mother's Love


"Do you like my dress?" she asked of a passing stranger.
"My mommy made it just for me." She said with a tear in her eye.

"Well, I think it's very pretty, so tell me little one, why are you crying?"

With a quiver in her voice the little girl answered.
"After Mommy made me this dress, she had to go away."

"Well, now," said the lady, "with a little girl like you waiting for her,
I'm sure she'll be right back."

"No ma'am, you don't understand," said the child through her tears,
"my Daddy said that she's up in heaven now with Grandfather."

Finally the woman realized what the child meant, and why she was
crying. Kneeling down she gently cradled the child in her arms and
together they cried for the mommy that was gone.

Then suddenly the little girl did something that the woman thought
was a bit strange. She stopped crying, stepped back from the woman
and began to sing.

She sang so softly that it was almost a whisper. It was the sweetest
sound the woman had ever heard, almost like the song of a very small bird.

After the child stopped singing she explained to the lady,
"My mommy used to sing that song to me before she went away,
and she made me promise to sing it whenever I started crying
and it would make me stop."

"See," she exclaimed, "it did, and now my eyes are dry!"

As the woman turned to go, the little girl grabbed her sleeve,
"Lady, can you stay just a minute? I want to show you something."

"Of course," she answered, "what do you want me to see?"

Pointing to a spot on her dress, she said, "Right here is where
my Mommy kissed my dress, and here," pointing to another spot,
"and here is another kiss, and here, and here,"
"Mommy said that she put all those kisses on my dress so that
I would have her kisses for every boo-boo that made me cry."

Then the lady realized that she wasn't just looking at a dress,
no, she was looking at a Mother... Who knew that she was going
away and would not be there to kiss away the hurts that she knew
her daughter would get.

So she took all the love she had for her beautiful little girl and
put them into this dress, that her child now so proudly wore.

She no longer saw a little girl in a simple dress.
She saw a child wrapped...in her Mother's love.

Author Unknown




  •  

tinkerbell



The Sentence


And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready.
I will manage somehow.

Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—

Unless . . . Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.
For a long time I've foreseen this
Brilliant day, deserted house.

Anna Akhmatova


***********************************************************



My Last Duchess


That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
"Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
"Must never hope to reproduce the faint
"Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
"Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
"Or there exceed the mark"—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and make excuse,
—E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Robert Browning

***********************************************************

Hope is the thing with feathers #254


"Hope" is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I've heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of Me.

Emily Dickinson

***********************************************************

Little Brown Baby


Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,

Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh—makin' san' pies?

Look at dat bib—you's ez du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf—dat's merlasses, I bet;

Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's.
Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit,

Bein' so sticky an sweet—goodness lan's!

Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,

Who's pappy's darlin' an' who's pappy's chile?
Who is it all de day nevah once tries

Fu' to be cross, er once loses dat smile?
Whah did you git dem teef? My, you's a scamp!

Whah did dat dimple come f'om in yo' chin?
Pappy do' know you—I b'lieves you's a tramp;

Mammy, dis hyeah's some ol' straggler got in!

Let's th'ow him outen de do' in de san',

We do' want stragglers a-layin' 'roun' hyeah;
Let's gin him 'way to de big buggah-man;

I know he's hidin' erroun' hyeah right neah.
Buggah-man, buggah-man, come in de do',

Hyeah's a bad boy you kin have fu' to eat.
Mammy an' Pappy do' want him no mo',

Swaller him down f'om his haid to his feet!

Dah, now, I t'ought dat you'd hug me up close.

Go back, ol buggah', you sha'n't have dis boy.
He ain't no tramp, ner no straggler, of co'se;

He's pappy's pa'dner an' palymate an' joy.
Come to you' pallet now—go to yo' res';

Wisht you could allus know ease an' cleah skies;
Wisht you could stay jes' a chile on my breas'—

Little brown baby wif' spa'klin' eyes!
 
 
Paul Laurence Dunbar


***********************************************************


The World Is a Beautiful Place


The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician.


Lawrence Ferlinghetti




Posted on: December 13, 2006, 09:06:44 PM
The Hideous Chair

This hideous,
upholstered in gift-wrap fabric, chromed
in places, design possibility

for the future canned ham.
Its genius
wonderful, circa I993.

I've assumed a great many things:
the perversity of choices, affairs
I did or did not have.

But let the record show
that I was happy.

O let the hideous chair

stand! For the Chinese apothecary
with his roots and fluids;
for Paoul at the bank;

for the young woman in Bailey's Drug,
expert on henna; and Warren Beatty,
tough, sleek stray. For Fluff and Flo,

drunk at noon, and the Am Vets lady
reading her Vogue, the cholos
on the corner where the 57 bus comes by,

for their gratifying, cool appraisal
and courtly manner when I pass.
Let the seat be comfortable

but let the chair be hideous
and stand against the correct,
hygienic, completely proper

subdued in taxidermied elegance.
Let me have in any future
some hideous thing to love,

here Boston, MA, 8 Farrington Ave.


Erin Belieu


***********************************************************


Coffee & Dolls


It was a storefront for a small-time numbers runner,
pretending to be some sort of grocery. Coffeemakers
and Bustello cans populated the shelves, sparsely.
Who was fooled. The boxes bleached in the sun,
the old guys sat inside on summer lawn chairs,
watching tv. The applause from the talk shows and game shows
washed out the propped-open door like distant rain.

It closed for a few months. The slick sedan disappeared.
One spring day, it reopened, this time a sign
decorated the window: COFFEE & DOLLS.
Yarn-haired, gingham-dressed floppy dolls
lolled among the coffee cans. A mastiff puppy,
the size and shape of a tipped-over fire hydrant,
guarded as the sedan and the old guys returned.

I don't know about you, but I've been looking
for a narrative in which suffering makes sense.
I mean, the high wail of the woman holding her dead child,
the wail that filled the street. I mean the sudden
fatal blooms on golden skin. I mean the crack deaths,
I mean the ice-cream truck that cruised the alphabets
and sold crack to the same deedle-dee-dee tune as fudgesicles.
I mean the raw scabs of the beaten mastiff, and many other things.

April Bernard

***********************************************************

Has My Heart Gone To Sleep?


Has my heart gone to sleep?
Have the beehives of my dreams
stopped working, the waterwheel
of the mind run dry,
scoops turning empty,
only shadow inside?

No, my heart is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
Not asleep, not dreaming—
its eyes are opened wide
watching distant signals, listening
on the rim of vast silence.

Antonio Machado


***********************************************************

Last Night As I Was Sleeping


Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Antonio Machado

  •  

tinkerbell


Making Love

This is the most we know of heaven, my back arching, body spreading slowly into glory like a peacock. Whoever coined the term "making love" had known this, how we curl around each other, how we push gravity and death further and further away, this ritual that cracks the carapace of pain, years and years of pain slipping away like beads of sweat, the baptism not to expunge original sin but excise grief and regret growing hard like a tumor in each of us, all of the body comes away new, and that is the yes of ecstasy, the body holding love in its hands like a torch pouring light over the room of its life - it is the body singing its delirious joy for this world.

Carrie Etter


***********************************************************



At Last

At last, when all the summer shine
   That warmed life's early hours is past,
Your loving fingers seek for mine
   And hold them close—at last—at last!
Not oft the robin comes to build
   Its nest upon the leafless bough
By autumn robbed, by winter chilled,—
   But you, dear heart, you love me now.

Though there are shadows on my brow
   And furrows on my cheek, in truth,—
The marks where Time's remorseless plough
   Broke up the blooming sward of Youth,—
Though fled is every girlish grace
   Might win or hold a lover's vow,
Despite my sad and faded face,
   And darkened heart, you love me now!

I count no more my wasted tears;
   They left no echo of their fall;
I mourn no more my lonesome years;
   This blessed hour atones for all.
I fear not all that Time or Fate
   May bring to burden heart or brow,—
Strong in the love that came so late,
   Our souls shall keep it always now!
 

Elizabeth Akers Allen

***********************************************************




Beautiful Dreamer

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world heard in the day,
Lull'd by the moonlight have all pass'd away!

Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life's busy throng.

Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea,
Mermaids are chaunting the wild lorelie;
Over the streamlet vapors are borne,
Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.

Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,
E'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea;
Then will all clouds of sorrow depart,

Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!


Stephen Foster

***********************************************************




Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
   Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
   Like nature's patient sleepless eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
   Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
   Of snow upon the mountains and the moors;
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
   Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
   Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

John Keats

***********************************************************



Meeting at Night


1

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

2

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
 
Robert Browning

***********************************************************


Madonna of the Evening Flowers

All day long I have been working,
Now I am tired.
I call:  "Where are you?"
But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?
I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.

You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.
 

Amy Lowell

  •  

tinkerbell

For the Young

I came to this place to ease my pain
and get to know others
who were just the same

each individual accepts me for me
what others never noticed
my new friends can see

but while I regret what I've not yet done
I watch in sad silence
the frustration of the young

and while I listen to their lonely plight
my heart slowly breaks
I know their grief,  their daily fight

I can only sit here and for them hope
they can make it down this road
and along the way still cope

and one day their goals I hope they achieve
and the roles they had to play
behind them they can leave.

by Michael

***********************************************************


Silent Sister


She stands alone on the playground,
     Shut out,
           Uninvited.
The door is barred
     To hopscotch
           And jumprope,
By taunts and teases and jabs and jeers
She does not face.
The pants she wears and shirts of colors bare
     Betray her,
           Block her way.
Her feelings mark her as an easy target.
Boys and girls together join
As they may never again,
     To let her know
           What she is,
                 Sissy, Sissy, Sissy.


I will build a fortress of stone, where I will be safe, always alone
I will be tough, I will be strong, a boy to make my parents proud.
And no one will ever know, no one will ever see.
     The truth that I know, the truth that I breathe,
           There's a girl who lives inside of me.


Shut off from her sisters,
From their shared secrets,
Their hallway giggles.
Living in hatred and envy
Of their long soft hair
     Never perverted
           Into a crew cut.
The softness and colors that they wear,
She can only stare
     And dream
           Of a best friend
                 To whisper to in the night,
                       To trust with her heart.

As puberty's brush paints others
With the blush of womanhood's bloom
Her body rebels, and forces her into hostile places
     Rooms full of boys
           Soon to be men.
Overcome by her young woman's natural desire
Her budding womanhood betrays her again.
A girl's lust marks her for hate.

I will build a fortress of stone, where I will be safe, always alone
I will be tough, I will be strong, a boy to make my parents proud.
And no one will ever know, no one will ever see.
     The truth that I know, the truth that I breathe,
           There's a girl who lives inside of me.

Shut off from her sisters,
From shopping sprees
     Silly surprises
           Staring at boys.
Living her life through the girls she sees,
Dancing and laughing inside the TV.
With models from magazines she has afternoon tea.
Her boyfriends stare from those pages,
Seduce her in the dark.

With no mommy to comb
     and braid
           and brush
                 and fuss
The night of the prom,
She must watch as others play her part.

As time passes by
No life fills her womb
No milk fills her breasts.
She lives by herself
In a world all alone,
Shut off from her sisters.

I will build a fortress of stone, where I will be safe, always alone
I will be tough, I will be strong, a Man like no other.
I will make women weak with desire,
I will make men tremble in fear.
And no one will ever know, no one will ever see.
     The truth that I know, the truth that I breathe,
           There's a woman who lives, inside of me.
           
by Leazabeth

***********************************************************


Homecoming

There is a temple, on an island, in an ocean, across a sea
It is waiting, standing barren, filled with vermin and dust of age
a marble throne, guilt with gold, white alabaster lines the silent hall
a diamond studded scepter lies unused, purple robes rot on the ground
bold and brazen serpents slide over statues smoothed by scales
rodents run through carrion stench, bleached bones hide insect lair
spiders weave empires in the sky, they rise and fall as seasons pass
dunes of dust drift across the floor, undisturbed by human feet

who has lived here
who has died
from where did They come
to where did They go

on the beach a fire burns, barely warming a woman there
she squats in the sand, warming meager fare in humble flames
priestess robes, slowly shredding, almost cover her freezing limbs
the royal sun returns, from the sea of clouds, to his ocean grave
eyes on horizon, bare feet in sand, gulls circle above, cries unheard
time passes by unnoticed, salt air unsmelt, food untasted, sleep unslept
tarnished rings burden arthritic hands, ancient rituals fill mind's places
the fire low but not untended, feeble flames of eternal hope

They are coming
Those who died
now reborn
They are coming
Those who lived here
To reclaim
Their Island Home

unknown author

***********************************************************


Warrior

A warrior's time has come
And now the dragon flies
Far away into the sun
To bring the fire back to the night

There stands a woman, brave and strong
Where there was once a little boy
Hers arms are made of steel
Her touch as soft as joy

A tear slowly fills her eye
As she recalls
Fallen friends and fallen foes
But a warrior must go on
A warrior must go on..

unknown author

***********************************************************


Elizabeth - Self Portrait

A little girl a little boy, they hold hands in the spring
They giggle in secret hiding places, dance in the warm rain
Catch minnows and tadpoles in bent paper cups
Pick bouquets of dandelions, hoard priceless treasures
Safe in their fortress, in the tall meadows grass
Sleeping in each other's arms, unafraid and unashamed

A mighty warrior, muscles slick with sweat
Astride a beast of battle, a dragon of war
On his face grim determination flourishes
None shall pass
None disturb his sleeping charges
Nor shall they want in any way

A maiden, softer than dreamtime
Beauty to make men weep
Purity unbreached
A touch of such healing kindness
All come to receive
And when given the chance, none of them leave

A simple peasant shoulders his burden for another day
His toils made worthwhile by those in his care
Gladly he suffers daily torment and abuse
His pain unnoticed as he goes on his way
Thanking god for his existence
He sleeps in peace tonight

A mother with her newborn child at breast
Her safety guaranteed, her kitchen full, her hearth warm
Rocks slowly, a lullaby softly escapes her lips
Carried on angel's wings to her grateful baby
She hears the winter winds outside her door
But knows they can't come in

A king and a queen, secure on their throne
Wisdom beyond knowledge, compassion beyond love
Fills their hearts as they share the burden of decision
Of steering a course through the choices that come
Tears fall to the floor with each change of path
For the loss of what might have been, and the joy of what will be

A thunderstorm in august, a silent night in spring
A rhino that's charging, a hummingbird's wings
The mystery of the ocean depths, the sand upon the beach
Tiny diamonds spreading out, as far as one can see
To count the facets of a single one would take a lifetime
If we pick one up and peer down deep inside
And probe the atom's depths, looking beyond the eye
We see Elizabeth, inviting us to come,
To be caressed by the dancing waves
And kissed by the laughing sun.

unknown author
  •  

tinkerbell

 

Ser un Instante


La certidumbre llega como un deslumbramiento.
Se existe por instantes de luz. O de tiniebla.
Lo demás son las horas, los telones de fondo,
el gris para el contraste. Lo demás es la nada.

Es un momento. El cuerpo se deshabita y deja
de ser la transparencia con que se ve a sí mismo.
Se incorpora a las cosas; se hace materia ajena
y podemos sentirlo desde un lugar remoto.

Yo recuerdo un instante en que París caía
sobre mí con el peso de una estrella apagada.
Recuerdo aquella lluvia total. París es triste.
Todo lo bello es triste mientras exista el tiempo.

Vivir es detenerse con el pie levantado,
es perder un peldaño, es ganar un segundo.
Cuando se mira un río pasar, no se ve el agua.
Vivir es ver el agua; detener su relieve.

Mi vagar se acodaba sobre el pretil de hierro
del Pont des Arts. De súbito, centelleó la vida.
Sobre el Sena llovía y el agua, acribillada,
se hizo piedra, ceniza de endurecida lava.

Nada altera su orden. Es tan sólo un latido
del ser que, por sorpresa, llega a ser perceptible.
Y se siente por dentro lo compacto del hierro,
y somos la mirada misma que nos traspasa.

La lucidez elige momentos imprevistos.
Como cuando en la sala de proyección, un fallo
interrumpe la acción, deja una foto fija.
Al pronto el ritmo sigue. Y sigue el hundimiento.

La pesada silueta de Louvre no se cuadraba
en el espacio. Estaba instalada en alguna
parte de mí, era un trozo de esa total conciencia
que hundía con su rayo la certeza absoluta.

Ser un instante. Verse inmerso entre otras cosas
que son. Después no hay nada. Después el universo
prosigue en el vacío su  muerte giratoria.
Pero por un momento se detiene, viviendo.

Recuerdo que llovía sobre París. Los árboles
también eran eternos a la orilla. Al segundo,
las aguas reanudaron su curso y yo, de nuevo,
las miraba sin verlas, perderse bajo el puente.

***


To be an Instant

Certitude comes as a bedazzlement,
instants of light. Or blackness.
The rest is just hours passing, the backdrop,
gray for contrast. The rest is the void.

It's a moment. The body untenants itself, sets free
that transparency with which it can see itself.
It moves into things, materializes in matter,
and we can sense it from some distant place.

I remember an instant when Paris struck me
with the weight of a burnt-out star.
I remember that total rain. Paris is sad.
Everything lovely is sad while time exists.

To live is to pause with one foot lifted;
losing a step, to gain a second.
Watching a river flow, we don't see the water.
to live is to see the water, to hold its patterns.

I was lazily propped on my elbows over the iron railing
of the Pont des Arts. Suddenly, life flashed out.
It was raining over the Seine and the water, riddled,
turned into stone, the ash of hardened lava.

Nothing alters its order. It's only one heartbeat
of a self which, by surprise, becomes perceptible.
And the density of iron is sensed from within,
and we become the glance that pierces us.

Lucidity always selects unforeseen moments,
as when in the projection room, a failure
interrupts the action, leaving a still-shot.
The motion begins again, and we sink into it.

The heavy silhouette of the Louvre
no longer took up space, but was installed
in some part of me, part of that total consciousness
split by a ray whose aim is absolute.

To be one instant. Yourself immersed in other
things that are. Afterwards, nothing. The universe
continues its whirling death in the void.
But for one moment, it pauses, fully alive.

I remember it rained over Paris. Even the trees
on the banks became eternal. The next moment
the water renewed its course and once more I
watched it, seeing nothing, lose itself under the bridge.


Rafael Guillén
(translation) Sandy McKinney


***********************************************************


The World Is a Beautiful Place


The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

***********************************************************


Reincarnation
   

  He sat there miserable,

Sweet memories bled his heart,

Deafening sounds surround him,

For she was no longer there,

How had he cried,

How had he pleaded and begged,

But she listened to none,

She has gone heartless,

No words could pacify her,

No emotions could soften her,

No tears could break her,

She was adamant,

He was far beyond dead

He was empty

He was emotionless

He was lifeless

He checked his heart and felt no pulse

He wondered in his mind but his thoughts were no where,

He bled himself to see if he were still alive,

Life had come to a miserable end....

And than out of nowhere

He felt a breeze of warmth pass him by

Bedazzled, he wandered what it was

For it made him feel better

For it was good

For he felt uplifted

For he felt complete, like never before

A smile stretched across his face

For he felt peace

And finally his eyes closed and he slept...

Life had found him again

Only this time it was no one else

This time his soul had found its back to him

He had just been reborn.

Hamza Farooq


***********************************************************

Reincarnate?


Running, scrambling,
dodging bullets
foxhole to foxhole
camouflage khakis
dusted in silt
a warm breeze
sun glances swaying palms

I can't take notice
but glimpse my shiny,
up to code boots
as ordered by the Captain

Crest the hill
and there he is
A reflection
of myself
Painted in fear

Gaze for
one iota in time
triggers - - FIRE!

Hot lead thuds my chest
sends me aback
one barren,
fruitless tree to lean

Dog tags rattle
as I search out
precious photos
She will be sad
at my parting
as my children will
fatherless

Slam...

Then I watch myself
crumpled and lone at tree
one last expulsion
and I'm free

The subliminal umbilical cord
is not severed - - why?

I'm outside, rising...rising
inside my memories
floating...speed of light
furthering into life past
The fear is gone
...the light is welcoming

I follow

Stop...!

Sucking breath, gasping,
intense pounding of the heart

I fall back to reality
this was a dream
or was it?

Life and death
are such parallels
I see
death
was not accepting me
this time

...not this time
not this girl of seventeen

Just a dream?

unknown author

***********************************************************

Poem On Reincarnation


I died from the mineral and became a plant;
I died from the plant, and reappeared in an animal;
I died from the animal and became a man;
Wherefore then should I fear?
When did I grow less by dying?
Next time I shall die from the man,
That I may grow the wings of angels.
From the angel, too, must I seek advance;
All things shall perish save His face
Once more shall I wing my way above the angels;
I shall become that which entereth not the imaginations.
Then let me become naught, naught, for the harp string crieth unto me,
Verily unto Him do we return...

Jalai Al-Din







Geez I had my baby thread all abandoned. :)

I Changed

I changed my address
From abiding in my brain
To vacationing in my body

I changed my home
From existing in my mind
To living in my heart

I changed my focus
From trying to change the world
To changing nothing but/even myself

I changed my vision
From sensing with my eyes
To seeing beyond the senses

I changed my identity
From struggling human doing
To joyful spiritual being

I changed my purpose
From bringing joy to all
To being joy from within

I changed my motivation
From searching for meaning
To making each moment meaningful

I changed my goal
From avoiding a broken heart
To offering my heart to the broken-hearted

I changed my desire
From care-free bliss in the future
To living heart-fully in the now

I changed my attitude
From all I need is love
To all I be is love

I changed nothing
I changed everything
I am the change that never changes

by Darina


*******************************************************



 

Be my doctor

Be my doctor
and let me know
the cause of this
sudden irregular heartbeat
that is worrying my chest is love.

Tell me after you've read
the reports from the ECG department
that the virus that has eaten
deep into my chest is a disease
called love and it has no cure.

Let the prognosis not come from
any known medical journal so,
just make it up and tell me
things don't look good and that
my condition is a terminal one.

Cover me up with your love balm
and smile to me to reassure me
that l would be fine and that you
would always be there for me,

Do not look for any medication.
just embrace me and give me the
cuddles that would lighten the
tightness in my chest muscles
so that l can smile back to you.

Francis Kokutse


*******************************************************


A poem Dr. M has in his office, it does not have the name of the author, but it certainly conveys the gratitude of the patient.

Untitled

Because of you, I am not just a pretty face
You gave me back to myself
As well as a normal life I only dreamed of

You gave birth to my womanhood
with your skilled hands
I would love to call you "mom"
But I am afraid you wouldn't like it
I am just so happy that you exist!

Uknown author






Happiness   

Happiness is when I feel the day I was born,
That I could see this world;
Happiness is at what I know
That some people are by me, when I am hurled;
Happiness is when I acknowledge, that I know
Not much, but enough to know myself;
Happiness is what I imbibe
When I single myself with the Master Spirit; .
Happiness is when I know
That he has impeccable faith in me
That he waits for me
That he responds to me
That he loves me...

Yet apart from all these,

Happiness is unique
When I remember you
Happiness is eternal
When I plunge into old, golden days of passions.
Happiness is overwhelming
When I know I am yours
Irrespective of yours belonging to me or someone else...
Happiness is when I am blessed
To give you – if nothing – at least tears and prayers.

Happiness is when I dream
Of you, you, and you – and nothing else.
Happiness is when I know, none can take away my nights
Or stop me from reaching you – when I dream, for sure.

Happiness is welcome

When I hear the bell, and I know in heart
That someday it will serve my knell
And I will leave this world
To reach you...

Nibedita Deb

*******************************************************



Life gives birth to happiness
   

  Clouds give birth to tantalizing droplets of rain;
pacifying the murderous agony of scorching desert
sands,
Rose gives birth to stupendously ravishing fragrance;
casting a spell of unconquerable happiness in those
lives; deluged with horrendous despair,
Sun gives birth to magnificently flamboyant rays;
filtering a path of profuse optimism in every space;
tottering towards helpless extinction,
Soil gives birth to rhapsodic fountains of fruit and
water; ensuring that none remained disastrously
famished; for centuries immemorial,
Ocean gives birth to tantalizingly tangy globules of
salt; inundating drab existence with cloudbursts of
spice and insurmountable poignancy,
Stars give birth to an incredulously serene calm;
miraculously metamorphosing the complexion of the
ghastly night; into one shimmering with milky pearls,
Leaves give birth to exuberantly fluttering breeze;
enveloping dreary souls in its ebulliently vociferous
swirl; as it merrily whipped by,
Benevolence gives birth to invincible humanity;
incessantly reigning as the supreme leader; even as
the planet entangled in webs of lechery and salacious
malice,
Freedom gives birth to the innermost expression; the
mesmerizing fulmination of a persons senses; which
propels him to blissfully lead an infinite more lives,
Mother gives birth to the perpetually divine; the
immaculately wailing offspring for which; God's
specially descended down from fathomless cosmos to
bless,
Truth gives birth to harmonious unity; organisms from
all across the unfathomable planet; embracing each
other irrespective of prejudice; caste or creed,
Honesty gives birth to intransigent conviction; an
astronomical within the most feeble of entities; to
catapult to the pinnacle of ultimate success,
Fantasy gives birth to turbulently seductive desire;
relentlessly exploring and absorbing the unsurpassable
beauty lingering on this planet,
Perseverance gives birth to glorious rays of newness;
evolving and achieving even the most inconspicuous of
your philanthropic dream; as golden perspiration
trickled under the sweltering Sun,
Faith gives birth to the incomprehensibly
unbelievable; with man successfully shooting to the
summit of the impossible; uttering the name of the
entity he adored,
Conscience gives birth to irrefutable righteousness;
which the even the entire wealth on this spuriously
bombastic world; miserably failed to purchase,
Eyes give birth to profoundly caressing empathy;
wholeheartedly commiserating and bonding; with even
the most remotest of alien in devastating pain,
Love gives birth to indispensably precious survival;
the everlasting spirit to celestially exist; beyond
ones ordinary time,
And life gives birth to perennial happiness; an
unconquerably sacred joy and bliss that makes each
birth; exist in symbiotic synergy with the bountifully
divine...

Nikhil Parekh






  •  

cindianna_jones

Yes, thank you Tink.  I do enjoy reading a lot of the poetry you post.

Cindi
  •  

tinkerbell

Quote from: Cindi Jones on January 25, 2007, 01:50:18 AM
Yes, thank you Tink.  I do enjoy reading a lot of the poetry you post.

Cindi

Thanks Cindi.   :)  I'm glad you enjoy them.  I sometimes imerse myself in my own thread and re-read everything.



Heavenly transition

How do I transition through Eden's golden doors
It is a answer I yearn for, more than ever before

To dwell awestruck on streets of gold for all eternity
Looking on the Lord's pure face with angelic tranquility

Uncountable pitfalls are encountered on the way up high
Evil sins from the abyss, that ole serpent sure is sly

So I cut my way down a straight and narrowed path
Following lesson's learned, to escape God's angry wrath

Seeing my father's face again is my greatest wish
Fondness shared with loved ones, what a heavenly gift

So with my new glowing wings I'll take a soaring flight
Thru chilly air, past the clouds, past the deep dark night

Up to receive my crowns I earned, by his gracious side
I'll sing forever, bask in the glory, oh sweet by and by

Ben thompson

***********************************************************

Home

I haven't been me
for a while now

my voice
is softer
less sure
of itself

my heart is tired
too lonely
to find the balance
between war and peace

my feet are still
unwilling to choose
a direction
in fear that the choice
is not mine to make

my eyes
constantly search
for the piece of me
that is lost
the piece that left
too long ago

I want to go home again.

Unknown author

**********************************************************


Heaven's Reward

There are many who think, that god is a myth,
but on judgment day when questioned by him
they won't be able to plead the fifth,
they will be cast off, to hells bottomless pit,
where in agony for all eternity,
they will sit.

But every struggle that you the believer,
face each day,
as you journey along life's frozen highway,
is a test by god, of your belief and faith
will guide you safely through his pearly gate.

The footprints you'll leave behind in this life,
will be a witness of your victory over
every sin and strife,
the lord has assured you that
from you
he'll never depart,
he will restore in you a new life and
a brand new heart.

His blessings and mercy, will daily
meet your needs,
so that you can focus on his kingdom,
and not overcome by lust and greed,
for when you accept him in your life
you've planted a seed,
a seed that will bloom in his garden
regardless of your age, color or creed.

Unknown author


Wow!  :'(


**********************************************************

WHAT IF LIFE?


What if life only lasted a day,
Do you think we'd appreciate it better?
What if life was like hell,
Do you think we would dream?
About a life like we have now?
What if in life we had everything,
Do you think it would get boring?
Why want another life?
Your life is perfect already

B. Allen

**********************************************************

Life Is A Vacation

At birth we started a long vacation
Some vacation becomes too long
Some there duration very  brief
Whether long or brief we still vacate


The schedule starts at infancy
Some schedule are tight and others very loose
However we accomplish only what's destined


On this vacation we climb mountains
And make a descent of valleys
These are the contours of life
For it is filled with ups and downs


Life is a serious vacation
Where success and failures combines
Where some turns out wise
And others remain perpetually foolish
And another category remains on the fence
This the vacation of life

Unknown author

**********************************************************

LIFE

If life where the wind
We would travel the ocean
We would understand the seas
And every moment,
If life were the wind
We'd always be flying
Life would blow by without us knowing
Where would time go?
Would there be such a thing?
We would enjoy every moment
From a higher perspective.

Helen Harvey




With every beat of my heart

Not even the most voluptuously sensuous of clouds; surreally wandering till eternity in fathomless cosmotic space; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most tantalizingly nubile of dewdrops; profoundly shimmering in nocturnal moonlight like the ultimate queen's garland of exotic pearls; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most invincibly Herculean mountaintops; unflinchingly towering towards the heavens in the face of the mightiest of attack; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most royally undulating seas; timelessly blessing the pristine shores with gloriously unassailable froth; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most perennially overflowing of treasuries; from which rained solely a torrentially unstoppable cascade of mystically resplendent silver and gold; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most mellifluously rejuvenating of nightingales; perpetuating the unlimitedly dreary atmosphere with miraculously ameliorating sounds; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most boundlessly burgeoning of skies; celestially reflecting an ocean of bounteously virile crystalline blue; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most vivaciously cascading droplets of rain; metamorphosing every tawdrily sinister patch of aridness on earth into a paradise of mesmerizing beauty; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most ubiquitously silken strands of the inscrutable spider's web; aristocratically glimmering in opulently milky moonlight; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most amazingly vivid of rainbows; filtering fresh rays of optimism and hope in the forlornly dreary sky; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most redolently proliferating of soil; the magical virility which unfathomably multiplied in lightening seconds of time; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most beautifully poignant of roses; synergistically radiating their handsomely scarlet personality to every conceivable cranny of this boundless Universe; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most triumphantly blazing of Sunshine; blistering a path of irrefutably fearless righteousness in the most bashful face of blemishing defeat; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most victoriously iridescent of moonlight; unceasingly enlightening the sordidly hedonistic fabric of the wretchedly incarcerating night; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most effulgently undefeated of blood; indefatigably diffusing the spirit of intrepidly exhilarating camaraderie; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most boundlessly unfettered of deserts; the flamingly impregnable expanse of poignant golden granules; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most tranquilly bewitching of shadows; the uncannily titillating tinge of timeless mystery that they incessantly emanated; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most fierily magnetic of breath; the endlessly insuperable cavern of seduction that it ignited in every tangible and intangible open space which it wholesomely enshrouded; had the slightest of inspiration,

Whilst with every beat of my heart; there unlimitedly triggered unconquerably sparkling fantasy in even the most obsolete dormitory of my brain; and I inevitably and inspiringly wrote an infinite lines of "Immortal Love Poetry"; till even beyond the definitions of veritably ultimate and hopelessly silencing death....


Nikhil Parekh
*******************************************************


Lonesome Heart

The mighty oak I see outside
It's roots are deep and long
It will live a hundred years
And bend when winds are strong

I sometimes feel I can't go on
Losing you is hurting me
I sometimes wish late at night
I had the strength of that old tree

The days my friends they stand by me
They tend to help me through
But then at night when darkness falls
Again I'm missing you

I try to fight but strength won't come
Soon I fall apart
Then the tears fall like rain
So alone is a lonesome heart

I sometimes wish I had the strength
To pick up and move along
But memories that I have with you
Streaches the nights so long

I sometimes wish I had the strength
So I would not fall apart
Missing you is against my will
So alone is a lonesome heart.

Bill Simmons

********************************************************


I Believe

I believe that the sun shines after the rain
I believe if you don't get hurt you'll never gain
I believe in not doing things the easy way
I believe that being selfish doesn't pay

I believe in a second chance
I believe in a life long romance
I believe there is life after death
And standing up to a life of mess

I believe in love at first sight
I believe that revenge isn't right
I believe that first impressions last
And there is nothing better then a good laugh

I believe that dreams do come true
I believe there's destiny for me and you
I believe that good things come to those who wait
I believe love never arrives too late

I believe something good comes from something bad
I believe that for tears of happiness there are tears of sad
I believe everyone has a guardian angel
And the good you do will be rewarded well

I believe sometimes there is no explanation
I believe money can't buy people's affection
I believe you don't know what you've got until it's gone
I believe a new day arrives with every dawn

I believe a smile can be contagious
I believe in being very outrageous
I believe in living with no regrets
I believe that life is as good as it gets

I believe that God watches over us
I believe the little things are worth the fuss
I believe you have each friend for a reason
I believe you will get punished for treason

I believe that what comes first is family
I believe we should all live in harmony
I believe in making the most of a beautiful day
And it's not the end until everything's okay

I believe absence makes the heart grow fonder
I believe you will lose if you sit and wonder
I believe every experience teaches you a lesson
And nothing cures better then a drinking session

I believe everyone has one true love
I believe sometimes we need a little shove
I believe the whole world is a stage
I believe we only get better with age

I believe that to learn you have to live
I believe that to love someone you have to give
I believe one moment can change your life
And there's still help when you're in strife

I believe everyone has one true friend
I believe love helps a broken heart mend
I believe in the power of a song
And things will change before too long

I believe living is the best experience
I believe in not laughing at other people's expense
I believe it's hard to watch a lover leave
And when they're gone all you can do is breath

I believe to always look on the bright side
I believe that life is just one big ride
I believe when I die people will grieve
But it's ok because I believe

Kayla Neil


********************************************************

Living Shadow

Sitting on a big chair
swinging round and round around a round table
bending to and fro luxuriously
having all the courage of life
and the riches of the earth
What amount will purchase a soul?
even strength enough won't be
A heart is heart when full of blood
A soul is a soul with harmony and charity
Can one tell the price of humanity?
yelling to and hurting the poor
is what the rich do?
Disturbing peace for the fulfillment of anger
and the need to be feared
An empty soul is as poor as dead
dead from the beginning of it's creation
even the rich and the poor meet in this
though under the sun
the distinction is done
What's the secret point of money and courage?
without peace, humanity and happiness?
the difference between love and strength?
What about the creator and faith?
Maybe the answers are within one's reach
or we are blinded from the truth
May the creator save our souls! !

Nina Joseph

********************************************************


The wheels of time

The wheels of time roll around,
it dosn't stop for anyone
the wheels of time, for me it's almost done.

The wheels of time rolls around,
changes me with age
the wheels of time for my life a new stage

The wheels of time roll around,
life has passed me by
the wheels of time make me want to cry.

The wheels of time roll around
so many changes they bring
the wheels of time, for me going faster than a train.

The wheels of time roll around
another day gone, another day went by,
the wheels of time, changes in my life, I'll apply.

The wheels of time roll around
changes I need to make,
the wheels of time, chances I have to take

The wheels of time roll around
closing in on me,
the wheels of time, finally I'll face it with glee.

Jim Foulk


********************************************************


Hope Is a Tattered Flag

Hope is a tattered flag and a dream of time.
Hope is a heartspun word, the rainbow, the shadblow in white
The evening star inviolable over the coal mines,
The shimmer of northern lights across a bitter winter night,
The blue hills beyond the smoke of the steel works,
The birds who go on singing to their mates in peace, war, peace,
The ten-cent crocus bulb blooming in a used-car salesroom,
The horseshoe over the door, the luckpiece in the pocket,
The kiss and the comforting laugh and resolve—
Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder.
The spring grass showing itself where least expected,
The rolling fluff of white clouds on a changeable sky,
The broadcast of strings from Japan, bells from Moscow,
Of the voice of the prime minister of Sweden carried
Across the sea in behalf of a world family of nations
And children singing chorals of the Christ child
And Bach being broadcast from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
And tall skyscrapers practically empty of tenants
And the hands of strong men groping for handholds
And the Salvation Army singing God loves us....

Carl Sandburg



Childhood Faded Away
   

Childhood Faded away,
to a far away land,
simple, so simple were we,
Days of Play,
Going our Way,
Having fun, no care,
for another day,
time for us stood still,
playing king of the hill
Childhood Faded away
thinking of another day,
summer time was fine,
when friends were kind,
swiming holes were filled,
our hearts were thrilled
Childhood Faded Away
to a time that makes me sway
many years have passed away,
since childhood faded to another day,
Childhood Faded to places,
UNKNOWN TO US
floating somewhere in time.


Jim Foulk


******************************************************


Childhood Dreams
   

Sunlight peeps thru closed curtains
like a sleepy child, nodding in - out
yet you sleep. the wave of pre-dawn
passion, renaming lost childhood dreams

I often wonder about some childhood friend,
how at the time we were pardners, for life
what has become of him? is he sitting
somewhere with a cup of coffee?

I touch your skin, to gently introduce you
to a new day, and you with a smile, say
'I was just dreaming about you' thus
leaving my thoughts of childhood friends

Joe Howell


*******************************************************


Half The World
   

Half the world lives,
Half the world makes,
Half the world gives
While the other half takes.

Half the world hates,
Half the world runs away,
Half the world's late,
Half the world praises the day.

Half the world is,
Half the world was,
Half the world thinks,
Half the world does.

Half the world lies,
Half the world burns,
Half the world cries
While the other half turns.

Half the world cares,
Half the world weeps,
Half the world shares,
Half the world keeps.

Half the world sings,
Half the world laughs,
Half the world brings,
Half the world tries to be the other half.



Elizabeth Willett

*******************************************************

Truth and the Devil
   

The devil unstoppably took pride in salaciously writing; the book of
obnoxious caste-creed and venomously penalizing hatred,

The devil unstoppably took pride in acrimoniously writing; the book of
indiscriminate bloodshed and disastrously traumatizing ruthlessness,

The devil unstoppably took pride in vengefully writing; the book of
tyrannical devastation and lecherously bellicose orphaning,

The devil unstoppably took pride in fretfully writing; the book of
vindictive war and satanically criminal holocausts,

The devil unstoppably took pride in maliciously writing; the book of
coldblooded barbarism and manipulatively bizarre malice,

The devil unstoppably took pride in forlornly writing; the book of
worthless
ghosts and mortuaries brutally anointed with fresh blood,

T The devil unstoppably took pride in indigently writing; the book of
nonchalant spuriousness and fecklessly insipid meaninglessness,

The devil unstoppably took pride in torturously writing; the book of
ominous
animosity and hedonistically pugnacious illwill,

The devil unstoppably took pride in dictatorially writing; the book of
licentious bawdiness and insanely threadbare nothingness,

The devil unstoppably took pride in heinously writing; the book of
lascivious poverty and baselessly crippling uncertainty,

The devil unstoppably took pride in savagely writing; the book of
despicable
defeat and lethally ballistic atrociousness,

The devil unstoppably took pride in raunchily writing; the book of
dolorous
delinquency and insidiously slandering betrayal,

The devil unstoppably took pride in preposterously writing; the book of
scurrilous lunatism and barbarously incarcerating fiendishness,

The devil unstoppably took pride in frigidly writing; the book of
jejune
mockery and impudently castigating brazenness,

The devil unstoppably took pride in heartlessly writing; the book of
ghastly
bloodshed and indefatigably bombarding politics,

The devil unstoppably took pride in malevolently writing; the book of
prurient ->-bleeped-<- and debasingly corrupt profanity,

The devil unstoppably took pride in diffidently writing; the book of
impeachable slavery and tempestuously crucifying sanctity,

The devil unstoppably took pride in dreadfully writing; the book of
gruesome
extinction and sordidly smutty flagrance,

The devil unstoppably took pride in whippingly writing; the book of
wastrel
withering and invidiously jailing eccentricity,

The devil unstoppably took pride in grotesquely writing; the book of
merciless decimation and countless estranged lives,

The devil unstoppably took pride in gorily writing; the book of
sadistic
despondency and ignominiously deteriorating mankind,

The devil unstoppably took pride in stupidly writing; the book of
goddamned
solitude and murderously decrepit decay,

The devil unstoppably took pride in cacophonically writing; the book of
indolent withering and agonizingly cancerous disease,

The devil unstoppably took pride in belligerently writing; the book of
lost
oblivion and corrosively mad lamentation,

The devil unstoppably took pride in perniciously writing; the book of
stinking discrimination and dastardly languid nervousness,

But no matter what he wrote; where he did choose to write; what
language he
preferred to maliciously scribble; what ink he used to cold-bloodedly
lambaste; what expression he made to lousily concentrate,

Even the most infinitesimally evanescent alphabet inside his books was
irrefutably metamorphosed into a stream of immortally unending love; by
the
intransigently blazing inferno of truth; simplicity; humanity;
benevolence;
beauty; and the unassailably Almighty Lord...


Nikhil Parekh


wow! 

*******************************************************




A True Mother's Love
   

A mother's love is consistent
and patient, it will never fade.
A mother's love is warm and
compassionate, even in the
shade. A mother's love will
always help you through the
weakest hours. A mother's love
is always like a bouquet of
flowers. A mother's love is
strong and will never steer
you wrong. A true mother's
love is beautiful in many ways.
A true mother's love is sincere
and it takes a mother's love to
conquer our fears. A true mother's
love knows the depth of love. A
true mother's love is contentment,
My mother's love is absolutely
all of the above.

Patricia D. Nunn


*******************************************************



Transparency
   

Mother
Your son died last night
His heart still beats
And his lungs still swell
He hangs his head and he begins to write
But mother
Your son died last night

With the quiver of a finger
His hand glides across the paper
Looseleaf holding him at the seams
With a shiver, he will linger
Memory slides across the mind
He's said that nothing is as it seems

Mother
Your son died last night
His heart still beats
And his lungs still swell
He hangs his head and he begins to write
But mother
Your son died last night

His brain still stumbles
His heart still mumbles
But his eyes just don't gleam
But mother
It's exactly as it seems

Mother
Your son died last night
His heart still beats
And his lungs still swell
He hangs his head and he begins to write
But mother
Your son died last night

Mother, it's exactly as it seems

Shane Kanan Abrams


*******************************************************



A Poem for Mothers, and Mine
   

The love of a mother is beyond compare
One who dearly loves and is always there
From scraped knees
To falls from trees
A mother cares for all
From "I told you so"
To "That's a no-no! "
A mother answers the call
Mothers cook, mothers clean, some even work a job
Even with all their strength, a mother still knows how to sob
Mothers should be honored for all they have done
Every day of the year, not just one
There is nothing better than a mother's love
For her time on this earth thank God above
A mother's love endures forever
Its unbreakable bonds no on can sever
No matter how much I have grown
My mother's love is always shown
She has become a mentor and a guide
Within her always I am able to confide
No better payment for her I can find
Then to love her with heart, and with mind
To the one who bore me; I share my emotion
To the one who raised me; Absolute devotion
To this woman I express my joy
You will always be my "mommy" and I your "baby boy"

Glaedr the poet


*******************************************************

Mountain Peak
   

We came together on the highest mountain on this earth.
As years went by we separated into rivers
from the tears this mountain cried.
We all fell into different rivers flowing though
forests, rocks, and waterfalls.
No matter what season we came across
we continued flowing.
We are rivers that started in the mountains,
and rivers that separated as we went through
many waterfalls.
Sometimes we travel together,
and other times we travel alone.
Always remember that these same rivers
that travel many miles through the earth
are once again together when it reaches its final destination
the "Ocean"
So, rivers that started up high in the mountains
and then separated are united
again as a family.

Felix Lugo




  •  

cindianna_jones

I'm trying to figure out the poem titled "Transparency".  The meaning is left to the reader methinks. 

A son writes a letter, is it a suicide note?  Does he die?  Or is he only among the living, dead in his mind?  The deed goes unrecognized, for in the mother's eyes, the events leading to this event have never been acknowledged.

It could be a powerful piece depending on personal circumstance....

Cindi
  •  

tinkerbell

Quote from: Cindi Jones on February 08, 2007, 04:18:44 AM
I'm trying to figure out the poem titled "Transparency".  The meaning is left to the reader methinks. 

A son writes a letter, is it a suicide note?  Does he die?  Or is he only among the living, dead in his mind? 
Cindi

Quote from: Transparency poemMother, it's exactly as it seems

I don't think he actually dies.  This last sentence tells me that he is among the living but "dead" in his mind or perhaps "dead" to the world or to his mom?


tinkerbell :icon_chick:


The Double Rainbow
   

  Once I saw a rainbow
Over the ocean blue
Encompassed by a shadow
Of every color and hue.
It was a double rainbow
Most beautiful to see
and underneath the rainbow
Were two sails upon the sea.
I think it was God's message
Quite old, and get still new
It takes both rain and sunshine
To make the lovely view.
As we go along life's highway
A lot of rain must fall.
But we can find the rainbow
When the sun shines over all.
So, if you feel discouraged
And don't know what to do
Just trust for God's own sunshine
To bring a rainbow over you.

Virginia M. King


************************************************************
Horse and Rider

The prairie blows the grasses
And whips the horse's mane.
They travel, horse and rider,
Through the sea of amber grain

Hills roll by, and clouds pass
But steady are the horse's hooves
Upon the wind blown grass
As they travel, horse and rider

There is no trail that they follow
No path that can be seen
There they travel, horse and rider
Upon the endless blowing green

Ivy Schex

************************************************************


Night Traveler
   

  I am a night traveler
Travel all through the night
And my bed is a sailing boat
I reach for my bed every night
And take a trip places far away
To see new things and people

I travel past the harbors
Full of anchored boats
I travel past the beaches
With swaying coconut trees

I watch the waves
Embracing the shore
I watch the kids playing
And reach out my arms

Then I touch my own bed
Here comes a flash
And my boat is back
And I am back in bed

My boat sails every night
And reach home with morning light
Never did it anchor once
Still traveling every day
Hoping to reach
That unknown destination

Deepa Thomas


************************************************************

LIFE – A MELODRAMA OF LABOUR
   

  The melodrama of labour,
The menace of failure
The determination to achieve,
To make one believe
That success can be near,
Turns down the failure-fear
And a step you advance, success seems to cling
Give more thrust and advance, And you find yourself in success ring.

Success succumbs to the brave,
Cowards fear success break
Paradoxically the want is universal
Made by planned series of rehearsals.

How many can cut the joy of enjoying?
Or learn enjoying in the work?
How many can realize the joy is work?
And learn working without end?

Complacence succumbs to success,
But significant is its degree
So calls for success after success,
Ongoing till breath can be!

Falls to be without distress,
And success to be without rest
Just as Nature weaves the flowers,
Without heed to the whither-showers.

Success is all pervasive,
Success: light or massive
Success is sugar of life,
The sprout of Success is bright.

No onset, No end,
Success has in its blend
Image of one's deity
And gratefulness for complacence.

This is the tale of life,
This is the consent of joy & spice
From a success in having breaths
To an all successful life!

jasleen khanuja


**************************************************************


The New Moon
   

  What have you got in your knapsack fair,
White moon, bright moon, pearling the air,
Spinning your bobbins and fabrics free,
Fleet moon, sweet moon, in to the sea?
Turquoise and beryl and rings of gold,
Clear moon, dear moon, ne'er to be sold?
Roses and lilies, romance and love,
Still moon, chill moon, swinging above?
Slender your feet as a white birds throat,
High moon, shy moon, drifting your boat
Into the murk of the world awhile,
Slim moon, dim moon, adding a smile.
Tender your eyes as a maiden's kiss,
Fine moon, wine moon, no one knows this,
Under the spell of your witchery,
Dream moon, cream moon, first he kissed me.

Zora Bernice May Cross






Phenomenal Woman 

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Maya Angelou


***********************************************************


A Girl 

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast-
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

Ezra Pound


************************************************************


A Dream Within A Dream 

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe


************************************************************


Let America Be America Again 

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes


************************************************************

Happiness 

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.


Raymond Carver

************************************************************


Waiting 

Afield at dusk

What things for dream there are when specter-like,
Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubbled filed,
From which the laborers' voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.

I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
I dream upon the nighthawks peopling heaven,
Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
And on the bat's mute antics, who would seem
Dimly to have made out my secret place,
Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
On the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp
In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
After an interval, his instrument,
And tries once--twice--and thrice if I be there;
And on the worn book of old-golden song
I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
But on the memor of one absent, most,
For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.

Robert Frost


***********************************************************


Life Is Fine 

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

     But it was      Cold in that water!      It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

     But it was      High up there!      It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

     Life is fine!      Fine as wine!      Life is fine!


Langston Hughes
My Guardian Angel

My Angel ever at my side
how lovely you must be -
To leave your home in heaven,
to guard someone like me.

When I'm far away from home,
or maybe hard at work
I know you will protect me,
from harm along the way.

Your beautiful and shining face,
I see not, though you're near
The sweetness of your lovely voice,
I cannot really hear.

When I pray, you're praying too,
your prayer is just for me.
But, when I sleep you never do,
You're watching over me.

Unknown author

***********************************************************


First Kiss

Antagonizing pleasure
Placed upon my lips 
Where dreams come true
In just one kiss!

Sharing an afternoon of ecstasy
Closing the door on reality
Not even the thickest iceberg
Could melt the lust I feel inside!

I shed my fears faster than my clothes
The anticipation begins to unfold
My heart begins to pound faster
As you come closer

Just one look from your eyes
And I become hypnotized
A river of sins, to which I concede
Just one kiss, caused the undoing of me!

Your lips gently pressed against mine
A silent submission of tongues intertwined
My mouth tenderly pressed against yours
My voice trembles as you start to explore

Electric shocks as your tongue touches mine
An erotic dance of passing time
My heart's racing as fast as yours
My body's craving for something more!

Starving and Craving
For an evening
Of erotic bliss
Where dreams come true
In Just One Kiss.


unknown author

************************************************************

I'm tired


I'm tired of being misunderstood,

               nerves are shot,

               weak – like old wood.



I'm tired of being ill,

               no energy, can't think,

               losing my skills.



I'm tired of so-called friends,

               stabbing me in the back,

               again and again.



I'm tired of trying to make things right,

               i give up – I surrender,

               no will to fight.



I'm tired of seeing others in pain,

               raises frustration,

               drives me insane.



I'm tired of not being able to cry,

               i'd melt away,

               nothing left inside.



I'm tired because I can't feel,

               walking in a daze – numb

                this can't be real.



I'm tired of being "strong,"

               i'm weak, i'm fragile,

               its gone on way to long.



I don't know what else to say,

              i'm hoping, i'm dreaming,

              i'm begging, i'm pleading,

              please, take this feeling away.



Right now... I'm just tired...



Dave Harm

***********************************************************


With every beat of my heart
     
     Not even the most voluptuously sensuous of clouds; surreally wandering till eternity in fathomless cosmotic space; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most tantalizingly nubile of dewdrops; profoundly shimmering in nocturnal moonlight like the ultimate queen's garland of exotic pearls; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most invincibly Herculean mountaintops; unflinchingly towering towards the heavens in the face of the mightiest of attack; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most royally undulating seas; timelessly blessing the pristine shores with gloriously unassailable froth; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most perennially overflowing of treasuries; from which rained solely a torrentially unstoppable cascade of mystically resplendent silver and gold; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most mellifluously rejuvenating of nightingales; perpetuating the unlimitedly dreary atmosphere with miraculously ameliorating sounds; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most boundlessly burgeoning of skies; celestially reflecting an ocean of bounteously virile crystalline blue; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most vivaciously cascading droplets of rain; metamorphosing every tawdrily sinister patch of aridness on earth into a paradise of mesmerizing beauty; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most ubiquitously silken strands of the inscrutable spider's web; aristocratically glimmering in opulently milky moonlight; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most amazingly vivid of rainbows; filtering fresh rays of optimism and hope in the forlornly dreary sky; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most redolently proliferating of soil; the magical virility which unfathomably multiplied in lightening seconds of time; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most beautifully poignant of roses; synergistically radiating their handsomely scarlet personality to every conceivable cranny of this boundless Universe; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most triumphantly blazing of Sunshine; blistering a path of irrefutably fearless righteousness in the most bashful face of blemishing defeat; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most victoriously iridescent of moonlight; unceasingly enlightening the sordidly hedonistic fabric of the wretchedly incarcerating night; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most effulgently undefeated of blood; indefatigably diffusing the spirit of intrepidly exhilarating camaraderie; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most boundlessly unfettered of deserts; the flamingly impregnable expanse of poignant golden granules; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most tranquilly bewitching of shadows; the uncannily titillating tinge of timeless mystery that they incessantly emanated; had the slightest of inspiration,

Not even the most fierily magnetic of breath; the endlessly insuperable cavern of seduction that it ignited in every tangible and intangible open space which it wholesomely enshrouded; had the slightest of inspiration,

Whilst with every beat of my heart; there unlimitedly triggered unconquerably sparkling fantasy in even the most obsolete dormitory of my brain; and I inevitably and inspiringly wrote an infinite lines of "Immortal Love Poetry"; till even beyond the definitions of veritably ultimate and hopelessly silencing death....

Nikhil Parekh


*****************************************************************



An Angel?

I figure you're some spirit,
Come to visit in the flesh
Such a rough day, anyway
I need a little bit of divinity to see me through.
Funny you should come by though
Remember how I wouldn't read "The Littlest Angel"
Because angels aren't spirits of the dead
But their own class of Divine Creation?

I assume you've read Dante
Or at least perused the St. James Bible.
Lucifer was the juiciest of the angels, God's favorite
Full of hubris which got him into no end of trouble.

You aren't Lucifer, you say?
Just some garden variety Seraph here on a lark
To remind me of the otherworldliness
Of the universe, nothing more.
OK, to you I say : "Thank You Very Much!"

I am grateful to leave the tiny world behind
To glimpse something brighter than
This morning's headlines.
So spread your rainbow wings
And take a piece of my soul to wait
In a better place.

By Adrienne


***********************************************************


Lost Wings


I think I used to be an Angel and lived with God on high.
I lived in the "Land of Joy" where sunshine did abound.
But now when I flap my wings, no matter how hard I try.
I can not seem to find my wings, not get up off the ground.

I don't even know why I lost my wings or where they came off.
But I do wish I could find some wings, so I could fly aloft.
It is rather nice down here on Earth, especially in the Springs.
But I would gladly give all this up, if I could find my wings.

I met some lovely people while here, I am so happy that I came.
But I want to go back home again, there's a cloud that has my name.
The streets up there are paved with gold and fountains sweet and clear.
It hardly ever seems to rain yet the flowers still abundantly appear.

All the animals are friendly there and there is nothing  for you to dread.
Everybody laughs a lot, joy is in the air, and a soft pillow for my  head
The schools are free, and everyone is welcome to sit at the master's feet.
You don't need any money, everything is free and so are things to eat.

So if you find an extra pair of wings, please send them quickly to me.
Mine were snowy white, edged with gold and soft as they could be.
Once I get back home, the first thing I will do is to save a place for you.
Then we can put the order in and get you a set of angel wings too.

By Joan Estelle High


***********************************************************


Calling All Angels


"Calling All Angels! Calling All Angels!" went out his thunderous plea, 
     "I am thy Lord beseeching my horde to assemble in front of me!" 
     In a flash the angels did dash to gather at his feet, 
     And hear his plan to help all man by use of Heaven's elite. 

     "The Devil's made a play this September day to hurt the ones I love, 
     He's loosed upon earth his demonic worth now push has come to shove. 
     I'll not stand by and have good men die without awareness in their heart, 
     So this day in my plan-full way a battle I'm going to start." 

     "Gabriel old friend to this end welcome every woman and man, 
     That'll come our way this fateful day who died by Satan's hand. 
     And before you go you need to know a few you'll bring straight to me, 
     Firefighters all now standing tall known as The Three-Forty-Three."

     With Gabriel gone and quiet the throng they wondered at his plan, 
     To send and quell the flames of hell by use of mortal man. 
     All manner of doubt filled the strongest and stout of Heaven's holy array, 
     And fear fell upon the heavenly throng at the plan the Lord set this day. 

     "I can sense in thy hearts hesitation to start a battle you don't understand, 
     But confused as you Satan is too and that is the heart of my plan. 
     Fear yea not for what I've wrought I'll ask none here to face his fork, 
     But I'll send into hell those who fell the firefighters from New York." 

     The Lord raised his staff and began to laugh in roaring thunderous glee, 
     And in a booming blaze they stepped from a haze The Angelic Three-Forty-Three. 
     They fell into line in very short time making perfect formations of rows, 
     And the Lord caused to slip onto every man's hip a golden heavenly hose. 

     "The gravest mistake Satan did make when he struck down these men so brave, 
     Thinking idle I'd stand not extending my hand and their souls I would not save. 
     Have no fear for the men standing here the way to his place they know well, 
     For verily each day they collected their pay by stepping into hell." 

     These men know their task now angels I ask that you hasten straight to earth, 
     And comfort their friends when the tally begins and they start to question their worth. 
     Console them with wings and all heavenly things on their shoulder your head is to rest, 
     Send whispers of thanks from our heavenly ranks say, 'God knows you did your best.'"


by Lea MacDonald 


************************************************************


Little Pauper Boy


One little pauper boy, poor sad little lad.
Body so painfully thin, ragged and cold.
Body is twisted with a foot that is lame.
A sad little face both drawn and so old.

You have known but poverty and hunger
Starting from before you were even born.
The darkness comes and you have no one.
You sleep but  lightly,  awaiting  the morn.

The sun finally comes up, all ruby and gold.
You can bathe your body in it's warm light.
But you are still so hungry, weary and cold,
So you lay there, with eyes closed up tight.

Then as you slip out of your frail little self.
It is no problem, easy since you are so thin.
You can't start to explain  the music you hear.
  Is coming from outside or somewhere within.

Your  tiny  soul floats up on the lovely notes.
Drifts through  the clouds to heaven  above.
Feeling  yourself  enfolded in an Angels' wings.
Called by  name from God's throne of love


by Joan Estelle High


************************************************************


Angel In The Moon Light


I walk all alone on the ocean shore.
I watch the waves flow out to sea.
I've never been so alone and poor.
Since they have taken you from me.
My heart beat seems in harmony.
Within the ocean's ebb and flow.
I have tried to release all the pain.
But it just won't seem to let go.
I can hear the ocean calling me.
It is like a temptress in the night.
I yearn to have the sea bury me,
Long to die in the cold moon light.
Suddenly an angel appears to me,
Coming from where I do not know.
It came to calm and comfort me.
For it is not the time for me  to go.
Many other adventures await me.
So I will return to the sandy shore.
For I know we will meet in Eternity,
There my heart will grieve no more.

by Joan Estelle High


************************************************************

Angel Voices



Angel Voices, Softly calling

Lost and lonely sinner come home.

Jesus whispers in the dawning.

Lost and lonely sinner come home.



Father on His throne of glory

Looking in a sea of glass.

Welcomes in His straying children.

Sinner has come home at last.



Holy Spirit breath upon us.

Stir our waiting souls below.

We all need the fire of heaven.

Show us now the way to go.



Though the battle around us rages,

God is still upon  His throne.

And the promise of the ages,

Rock of Ages leads us home.



By Joan Estelle High


************************************************************


Good Bye To Miss Emma


Someone I know just died today. 
She sat down to rest,
And her soul just slipped away.
A gentle spirit sailed out across the void.
That separates "Tomorrow Land",
From this the " Land of Yesterday".

An Angel slipped in quietly, 
Upon a golden beam.
He didn't even startle her,
She thought he was a dream.

He gently called her by her name.
He took her by the hand,
To lead her to the Master
And to the promise land.

She quickly threw aside  her veil of flesh
It was like taking off a glove.
She was carried off to "Tomorrow Land"
Within the angels wings of love.

I am so sorry she had to die.
I know her soul has places to go
And other things she has to do.
I wish I could have said good bye,
For I will miss her too.


by Joan Estelle High

:'( :'( :'(




************************************************************


At Last

At last, when all the summer shine
   That warmed life's early hours is past,
Your loving fingers seek for mine
   And hold them close—at last—at last!
Not oft the robin comes to build
   Its nest upon the leafless bough
By autumn robbed, by winter chilled,—
   But you, dear heart, you love me now.

Though there are shadows on my brow
   And furrows on my cheek, in truth,—
The marks where Time's remorseless plough
   Broke up the blooming sward of Youth,—
Though fled is every girlish grace
   Might win or hold a lover's vow,
Despite my sad and faded face,
   And darkened heart, you love me now!

I count no more my wasted tears;
   They left no echo of their fall;
I mourn no more my lonesome years;
   This blessed hour atones for all.
I fear not all that Time or Fate
   May bring to burden heart or brow,—
Strong in the love that came so late,
   Our souls shall keep it always now!
 

Elizabeth Akers Allen

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Beautiful Dreamer

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world heard in the day,
Lull'd by the moonlight have all pass'd away!

Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life's busy throng.

Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea,
Mermaids are chaunting the wild lorelie;
Over the streamlet vapors are borne,
Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.

Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,
E'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea;
Then will all clouds of sorrow depart,

Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!


Stephen Foster

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Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
   Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
   Like nature's patient sleepless eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
   Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
   Of snow upon the mountains and the moors;
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
   Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
   Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death

John Keats


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The Love We Share

     I want to see you standing
in the moonlight, late one night.
I want to take you in my arms
and say, my love for you is right...

     I want to kiss your lips, again,
and touch your silky skin.
I want to wrap you in my arms,
so this loneliness finally ends...

     You are the breath and drink I take,
each day I might live.
You are the love that dwells in me,
and I want so much to give...

     I want to give you everything,
my heart, my love, my soul.
I want to make sweet love to you,
till we have both grown old...

     The scent of you is everywhere,
as if you are still here.
I long to lie beside you now,
but can only shed a tear...

     This love we share is a lasting love,
I know this in my heart.
Someday, my love, you will be mine,
and never have to part...

     Until that time I will think of you,
in the moonlight shining bright.
Then in my mind hold you in my arms,
until the morning light...


by Loyce Lorree Husky

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All I Want to Do is Make Love to You

It was a rainy night
When he came into sight,
Standing by the road,
No umbrella, no coat.
So I pulled up alongside
And I offered him a ride.
He accepted with a smile,
So we drove for a while.
I didn't ask him his name,
This lonely boy in the rain.
Fate, tell me it's right,
Is this love at first sight?
Please don't make it wrong,
Just stay for the night.

All I wanna do is make love to you
Say you will
You want me too
All I wanna do is make love to you
I've got lovin' arms to hold on to

So we found this hotel,
It was a place I knew well
We made magic that night.
Oh, he did everything right
He brought the woman out of me,
So many times, easily
And in the morning when he woke all
I left him was a note
I told him
I am the flower you are the seed
We walked in the garden
We planted a tree
Don't try to find me,
Please don't you dare
Just live in my memory,
You'll always be there

All I wanna do is make love to you
One night of love was all we knew
All I wanna do is make love to you
I've got lovin' arms to hold on to

Oh, oooh, we made love
Love like strangers
All night long
We made love

Then it happened one day,
We came round the same way
You can imagine his surprise
When he saw his own eyes
I said please, please understand
I'm in love with another man
And what he couldn't give me
Was the one little thing that you can

All I wanna do is make love to you
One night of love was all we knew
All I wanna do is make love to you
Say you will, you want me too

All night long
All night long
All night long
All night long


play song

this is for you, yeah you!  ;) ;D :D >:D :( :-\ :'( good memories! :)

tink :icon_chick:

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Stormy Weather

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

— Jenny Joseph
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