.
Rough Country
Give me a landscape made of obstacles,
of steep hills and jutting glacial rock,
where the low-running streams are quick to flood
the grassy fields and bottomlands.
A place no engineers can master–where the roads
must twist like tendrils up the mountainside
on narrow cliffs where boulders block the way.
Where tall black trunks of lightning-scalded pine
push through the tangled woods to make a roost
for hawks and swarming crows.
And sharp inclines where twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush,
scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly
to find an unexpected waterfall,
not half a mile from the nearest road,
a spot so hard to reach that no one comes–
a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies
and nesting jays, a sign that there is still
one piece of property that won’t be owned.
from The Gods of Winter
Dana Gioia
When I Am Among the Trees
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
Mary Oliver
Gratitude by Louie Schwartzberg
From TEDxSF 06/2011
Hug O’War
from the book “Where the Sidewalk Ends” (1974)
I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.
Shel Silverstein
We Should Be Prepared
The way the plovers cry goodbye.
The way the dead fox keeps on looking down the hill with open eye.
The way the leaves fall, and then there’s the long wait.
The way someone says we must never meet again.
The way mold spots the cake,
The way sourness overtakes the cream.
The way the river water rushes by, never to return.
The way the days go by, never to return.
The way somebody comes back, but only in a dream.
Mary Oliver
Cormac McCarthy Quote
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
Cormac McCarthy
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Success
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tennesse Williams Quote
It is the continual rush of time, so violent that it appears to be screaming, that deprives our actual lives of so much dignity and meaning.
Your Blinded Hand
Suppose that
everything that greens and grows
should blacken in one moment, flower and branch.
I think that I would find your blinded hand.
Suppose that your cry and mine were lost among numberless cries
in a city of fire when the earth is afire,
I must still believe that somehow I would find your blinded hand.
Through flames everywhere
consuming earth and air
I must believe that somehow, if only one moment were offered,
I would
find your hand.
I know as, of course, you know
the immeasurable wilderness that would exist
in the moment of fire.
But I would hear your cry and you’d hear mine and each of us
would find
the other’s hand.
We know
that it might not be so.
But for this quiet moment, if only for this
moment,
And against all reason,
let us believe, and believe in our hearts,
that somehow it would be so.
I’d hear your cry, you mine –
And each of us would find a blinded hand.
Tennessee Williams
Oscar Wilde Quote
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you – Oscar Wilde
Bliss
My reverence stuns the ocean
Dazzling stars embrace the abyss
Shallow shadows melt in motion
Moon’s shy presence proclaims bliss
Like a contour shaped of nothing
Your lean silhouette proceeds
I start witness my heart stinging
And my soul with tears bleeds
Who has sent you in my waters?
What is your protector’s wish?
Why should I bow to your altar?
Why my heart can’t feel unleashed?
I will dive into the abyss
For my kneeling bring you bliss
I will beg for your forgiveness
Dream about your mercy kiss
Dragos Craciun
Tonight I Can Write
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, ‘The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Pablo Neruda
Sonnet 69
Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
without you moving, slicing the noon
like a blue flower, without you walking
later through the fog and the cobbles,
without the light you carry in your hand,
golden, which maybe others will not see,
which maybe no one knew was growing
like the red beginnings of a rose.
In short, without your presence: without your coming
suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:
since then I am because you are,
since then you are, I am, we are,
and through love I will be, you will be, we’ll be.
Pablo Neruda
The Paradox of Time
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter
tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less;
we buy more, but enjoy it less.
We have bigger houses, but smaller families; more conveniences, but less time;
we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgement; more
experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much,
love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learnt how to make a living, but not a
life; we’ve added years to life, but not life to years.
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street
to meet the new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space;
we’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we’ve split the atom, but not our
prejudice.
We have higher incomes, but lower morals; we’ve become long on quantity, but
short on quality. These are the times of tall men and short character; steep profits
and shallow relationships.
These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less
fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes,
but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. It is a time when there is
more in the show window and nothing in the stock room; a time when technology
can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose to make a difference
or to just hit delete.
Dr. Bob Moorehead
Pretty
When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, “What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich?” Which is almost pretty depending on where you shop. And the pretty question infects from conception, passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill fluorescent floodlight of worry.
“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?” But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long and pox-marked where the hormones went finger-painting. My poor mother.
“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist. You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were 6. Otherwise your nose would have been just fine!
“Don’t worry. We’ll get it fixed!” She would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that, as if it were a cabbage she might buy.
But this is not about her. Not her fault. She, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable facade. By 16, I was pickled with ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs. Laying in a hospital bed, face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on 2 pints of my blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist of my gut like my body screaming at me from the inside out, “What did you let them do to you!”
All the while this never-ending chorus droning on and on, like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood. “Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Like my mother, unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.”
And now, I have not seen my own face for 10 years. I have not seen my own face in 10 years, but this is not about me.
This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl 30 stores in 6 malls to find the right cocktail dress, but haven’t a clue where to find fulfillment or how wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath those 2 pretty syllables.
About men wallowing on bar stools, drearily practicing attraction and everyone who will drift home tonight, crest-fallen because not enough strangers found you suitably fuckable.
This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity, begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?” I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer, “No! The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.
Katie Makkai
King
I’m always the king of something. Ruined or celebrated.
newly crowned, or just beheaded. King of the shady grass
and king of the dirty sheets. I sit in the middle
of the room in December
with the windows open, five pills, and a razor. My life long
secret. My killing power and my staying
power. When the erection fails, when the car almost hits
the divider, I’m king. I wave my hand over
the ants bubbling out of the sidewalk and make them all knights,
I sit at the dinner table and look into the deep
dark eyes of my television, my people. I tell them the kingdom
will be remembered in dreams of gold. I tell them
what was lost will be found. So I put on my black-white
checkered Vans, the exact pair of shoes
my older brother wore when he was still a citizen in the world,
and I go out, I go out into the street
with my map of the dead and look for him,
for the X he is,
so I can put the sceptre back in his hands, take the red
cloak from my shoulders and put it around his, lift the crown
from my head and fit it just above his eyebrows,
so I can get down on one knee, on both
knees, and lower my face and whisper my lord, my master, my king.
Matthew Dickman
Disobedience
James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James Said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he;
“You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don’t go down with me.”
James James
Morrison’s Mother
Put on a golden gown.
James James Morrison’s Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James Morrison’s Mother
Said to herself, said she:
“I can get right down
to the end of the town
and be back in time for tea.”
King John
Put up a notice,
“LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!
JAMES JAMES MORRISON’S MOTHER
SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.
LAST SEEN
WANDERING VAGUELY:
QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD,
SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN
TO THE END OF THE TOWN -
FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!”
James James
Morrison Morrison
(Commonly known as Jim)
Told his
Other relations
Not to go blaming him.
James James
Said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he:
“You must never go down to the end of the town
without consulting me.”
James James
Morrison’s mother
Hasn’t been heard of since.
King John said he was sorry,
So did the Queen and Prince.
King John
(Somebody told me)
Said to a man he knew:
If people go down to the end of the town, well,
what can anyone do?
A.A. Milne
Natural History
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of his devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
He spins a ladder to the place
From where he started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.
EB White
Hope
Excerpt from the poem Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune
without the words,
And never stops at all…..
Emily Dickinson
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost
Love Is A Great Thing
Love is a great thing, yea, a great and thorough good;
By itself it makes every thing that is heavy, light;
And it bears evenly all that is uneven.
For it carries a burden which is no burden.
Love desires to be aloft, and will not be
kept back by any thing low and mean.
Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing more courageous.
Nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant,
Nothing fuller nor better in heaven and earth.
He that loveth, flyeth, runneth, and rejoiceth;
He is free, and cannot be held in.
Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble,
Attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility;
For it thinks all things lawful for itself and all things possible.
It is therefore able to undertake all things,
And it completes many things,
And warrants them to take effect,
Where he who does not love, would faint and lie down.
Though weary, it is not tired; though pressed, it is not straitened;
Though alarmed, it is not confounded;
But as a lively flame and burning torch,
It forces its way upwards and securely passes through all.
Thomas Kempis
The Way I Want To Be Friends
Can we touch each other more, please?
can we have our fill of hugs everyday,
fill each other’s arms again and again
Can we let our bare arms brush against each other’s
and our knees bump, with no apologies
squeeze close together in small spaces
can we tickle and tumble and remember play
giggle and stop with a head plopped in an open lap
Can we braid each other’s hair
sprinkle each other’s feet
spread each other’s backs with pungent oils
slip the rings from finger to finger
fasten the clasp at the neck’s nape
wrap each others heads in wide, woven bands
Can we spend the day together
laugh and lean against one another
catch hands in the sunlight and leave them linked
and swinging in the rhythm of our matching stride
Can we spend the night together
and not end up ex-lovers
can we cuddle close on a blanket under the stars
and tell each other stories, sing each other songs
lie long in one another’s arms
holding, holding through the dark
Can we touch each other more please
can we fill each other’s lives
can we fill each other
again and again and again?
Becky Birtha
Excerpt from The Wet Engine
Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptiles and turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have hearts with two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with one chamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although they may have as many as eleven single-chambered hearts. Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end–not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.
Brian Doyle
Their Beauty Has More Meaning
Yesterday morning enormous the moon hung low on the ocean,
Round and yellow-rose in the glow of dawn;
The night-herons flapping home wore dawn on their wings. Today
Black is the ocean, black and sulphur the sky,
And white seas leap. I honestly do not know which day is more beautiful
I know that tomorrow or next year or in twenty years
I shall not see these things–and it does not matter, it does not hurt;
They will be here. And when the whole human race
Has been like me rubbed out, they will still be here: storms, moon and ocean,
Dawn and the birds. And I say this: their beauty has more meaning
Than the whole human race and the race of birds.
Robinson Jeffers
The Storm
Now through the white orchard my little dog
romps, breaking the new snow
with wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
until the white snow is written upon
in large, exuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
the pleasures of the body in this world.
Oh, I could not have said it better
Mary Oliver
The Snowman
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens
The Secret
Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.
I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me
(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even
what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,
the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,
and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that
a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines
in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for
assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
Denise Levertov
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
The Origin
The Origin
of what happened is not in language—
of this much I am certain.
Six degrees south, six east—
and you have it: the bird
with the blue feathers, the brown bird—
same white breasts, same scaly
ankles. The waves between us—
house light and transform motion
into the harboring of sounds in language.—
Where there is newsprint
the fact of desire is turned from again—
and again. Just the sense
that what remains might well be held up—
later, as an ending.
Twice I have walked through this life—
once for nothing, once
for facts: fairy-shrimp in the vernal pool—
glassy-winged sharp-shooter
on the failing vines. Count me—
among the animals, their small
committed calls.—
Count me among
the living. My greatest desire—
to exist in a physical world.
Jane Mead
The Light Above Cities
Sitting in darkness,
I see how the light of the city
fills the clouds, rosewater light
poured into the sky
like the single body we are. It is the sum
of a million lives; a man drinking beer
beneath a light bulb, a dancer spinning
in a fluorescent room, a girl reading a book
beneath a lamp.
Yet there are others — astronomers,
thieves, lovers — whose work is only done
in darkness. Sometimes
I don’t want to show these poems
to anyone, sometimes
I want to remain hidden, deep in the coals
with the one who pulls the stars
through a telescope’s glass, the one who listens
for the click of the lock, the one
who kisses softly a woman’s eyes.
Jay Leeming
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – – -
though their melancholy
was terrible.It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – – – determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.
It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
Oriah
The Guest House
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 it’s 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.
Rumi
Steve Jobs Quote
Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs, Apple CEO
The Field Song Link
The Field
Every step I take
Takes me farther from you
Every move I make
Reminds me that I’ll always love you
Since you were a child
We’ve built our lives around you
Now how am I supposed to live?
In this world we made without you
Sometimes late at night
I go to the field
Is that where you are?
Are you a shooting star?
Can you say my name?
Darling can you hear me?
Tell me where’s your heart?
Now that it’s stopped beating
It’s right here
It’s right here
It’s right here
When you joined the war
We were so proud of you
You seem so grown up
Livin life the way we taught you
Then your first letter came
It sounded nothin’ like you
It took all my strength
To keep myself from runnin’ to you
Sometimes late at night
I go to the field
Is that where you are?
Are you a shooting star?
Can you say my name?
Darling can you hear me?
Tell me where’s your heart?
Now that it’s stopped beating
It’s right here
It’s right here
It’s right here
And it will always be
Until the sun dries the ocean
And you will always be
My little one
If I was the president
If I was that man
I would walk out with those kids out across the sand
If I was the president
If I was that brave
I would take a shovel then dig each child their grave
If I was the president
If my world turned black
I would want no victory
I’d just want you back
I don’t want no victory
I just want you back
Sometimes late at night
I go to the field
Is that where you are?
Are you a shooting star?
Can you say my name?
Darling can you hear me?
Tell me where’s your heart?
Now that it’s stopped beating
It’s right here
It’s right here
It’s right here
And it will always be
Mason Jennings
The Dash Poem
I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning to the end.
He noted that first came the date of her birth
And spoke of the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own,
The cars, the house, the cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard;
Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
That can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough
To consider what’s true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.
And be less quick to anger
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we’ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect
And more often wear a smile,
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.
So when your eulogy is being read
With your life’s actions to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?
Linda Ellis
The Big Sleep
The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet it is the greatest of our miseries.
- Pascal
On Turner Classic Movies Philip Marlowe
is grimacing at the slinky beauty
of the woman who will become
the wife of the actor playing him.
The man playing me, up at three this morning,
worrying about the cost of private school,
health insurance, and the slow grinding
away of his savings, is wearing
bleaching molds because a stain chart
listed his smile as second to worst.
On CNN quaint dioramas of Baghdad,
the Sudan, and Gaza depict recent forms
of human misery. Is there a chart
that measures our ignorance and vanity?
On PBS philosophers are debating what
Nietzsche meant by our desire to create
beyond ourselves the purest will.
The sexual fire in the amber eyes
of the woman Lauren Bacall is playing,
perhaps? On the Western Channel
the whiteness of Joel McCrae’s teeth
has survived dust storms, chewing tobacco,
and his character’s nostalgia for
the brutality of his tiny moment. Some believe
we’ve consumed our originality,
that our diorama will depict nothing.
On the Disney Channel all fifty-six signers
of the Declaration of Independence
are shouting about the indignity of domination
for everyone except perhaps those
tending their fields and children.
Did the man playing Nietzsche grow weary
of trying to grow happiness out of pure will?
Hat over heart, the man playing my father
stood perpendicular to his exhausted,
uneducated, immigrant shadow, weeping
to our national anthem. A man stood for something,
he said. Did the actor playing Marlowe
understand that Marlowe stood for nothing?
On the History Channel men and beasts
are being slaughtered by machetes, explosions,
and hangings, their swollen, mystified bodies
falling into ravines, dropping to their knees
screaming for their mothers and God save them.
It’s three in the morning and everywhere
around me the silence stands for nothing
and even the god playing God wants to sleep.
Philip Schultz
TS Eliot Quote
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion;
it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from
personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and
emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
TS Eliot Quote
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS Eliot
Untitled
In the eyes of a stranger
I see you pass by
Now that my name is foreign to your ears once more
From the flight of birds in the sky above
I felt your freedom from within my locked doors
You flew away from me
As if I’m something deadly
What I would’ve given to forget this pain
But what more would I now give
Just to know the stranger again
But even more I’d be willing to one day give
Only to call you my friend
T.Phan
The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
Mary Oliver
Sunday Night
Make use of the things around you.
This light rain
outside the window, for one.
This cigarette between my fingers,
these feet on the couch.
The faint sound of rock-and-roll,
the red Ferrari in my head.
The woman bumping
drunkenly around in the kitchen . . .
put it all in,
make use.
Raymond Carver
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou
Stay or Leave Song Link
Stay or Leave
Maybe different, but remember
Winters warm there you and I,
Kissing whiskey by the fire
With the snow outside
And when the summer comes
The river swims at midnight
Shiver cold
Touch the bottom, you and I,
with muddy toes
Stay or leave
I want you not to go
But you should
It was good, as good goes
Stay or leave
I want you not to go
But you did
Wake up naked drinking coffee,
Making plans to change the world
While the world is changing us…
It was good good love.
You used to laugh under the covers
Maybe not so often now
But the way I used to laugh with you
Was loud and hard
Stay or leave
I want you not to go
But you should
It was good as good goes
Stay or leave
I want you not to go
But you did
So what to do
With the rest of today’s afternoons, hey
Isn’t it strange how we change
Everything we did
Did I do all that I could
That I should’a done
Remember we used to dance
And everyone wanted to be
You and me
I want to be too
What day is this
Besides the day you left me?
What day is this
Besides the day you went?
So what to do
With the rest of the day’s afternoons, hey
Well isn’t it strange how we change
Everything we did
Did I do all that I could?
Remember we used to dance
And everyone wanted to be you and me
I want to be too
What day is this?
Besides the day you left me
What day is this?
Dave Matthews Band
Sometimes
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
Sheenagh Pugh
