06-12-2013, 10:07 AM | #541 |
Practically Lives Here
How Do You Identify?:
. Preferred Pronoun?:
. Relationship Status:
. Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: .
Posts: 11,495
Thanks: 34,694
Thanked 26,372 Times in 5,877 Posts
Rep Power: 21474861 |
Romantics by Lisel Mueller Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann The modern biographers worry "how far it went," their tender friendship. They wonder just what it means when he writes he thinks of her constantly, his guardian angel, beloved friend. The modern biographers ask the rude, irrelevant question of our age, as if the event of two bodies meshing together establishes the degree of love, forgetting how softly Eros walked in the nineteenth century, how a hand held overlong or a gaze anchored in someone's eyes could unseat a heart, and nuances of address, not known in our egalitarian language could make the redolent air tremble and shimmer with the heat of possibility. Each time I hear the Intermezzi, sad and lavish in their tenderness, I imagine the two of them sitting in a garden among late-blooming roses and dark cascades of leaves, letting the landscape speak for them, leaving nothing to overhear. |
06-12-2013, 11:58 AM | #542 |
Senior Member
How Do You Identify?:
Queer Sapiosexual Femme Relationship Status:
Mrs. Grumpy Cat Tournaments Won: 4 Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: 8,660 feet high in the Andes
Posts: 2,640
Thanks: 10,519
Thanked 11,660 Times in 2,292 Posts
Rep Power: 21474851 |
This is unfinished... the last thing Shelley ever wrote. He is one of my favorite poets, who dared to tackle political issues of his day and also describe the softer things in life. Music when Soft Voices Die (To --) BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory— Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the belovèd's bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.
__________________
Small business owners around the world use microfinance to help expand their businesses and provide for their families. You can help! Click here to learn about Kiva. |
The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to thedivahrrrself For This Useful Post: |
06-14-2013, 11:13 PM | #543 |
Practically Lives Here
How Do You Identify?:
. Preferred Pronoun?:
. Relationship Status:
. Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: .
Posts: 11,495
Thanks: 34,694
Thanked 26,372 Times in 5,877 Posts
Rep Power: 21474861 |
Bees and Morning Glories by John Ciardi Morning glories, pale as a mist drying, fade from the heat of the day, but already hunchback bees in pirate pants and with peg-leg hooks have found and are boarding them. This could do for the sack of the imaginary fleet. The raiders loot the galleons even as they one by one vanish and leave still real only what has been snatched out of the spell. I've never seen bees more purposeful except when the hive is threatened. They know the good of it must be grabbed and hauled before the whole feast wisps off. They swarm in light and, fast, dive in, then drone out, slow, their pantaloons heavy with gold and sunlight. The line of them, like thin smoke, wafts over the hedge. And back again to find the fleet gone. Well, they got this day's good of it. Off they cruise to what stays open longer. Nothing green gives honey. And by now you'd have to look twice to see more than green where all those white sails trembled when the world was misty and open and the prize was there to be taken. |
The Following User Says Thank You to Hollylane For This Useful Post: |
06-25-2013, 06:59 PM | #544 |
Senior Member
How Do You Identify?:
~ Femme ~ Join Date: May 2010
Location: A pale blue dot in a sea of red
Posts: 15,409
Thanks: 35,037
Thanked 32,586 Times in 10,200 Posts
Rep Power: 21474866 |
All The Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while. Let your senses and bodies stretch out Like a welcomed season Onto the meadows and shores and hills. Open up the roof. Make a new water-mark on your excitement And love. Like a blooming night flower, Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness And giving Upon our intimate assembly. Change rooms in your mind for a day. All the hemispheres in existence Lie beside an equator In your heart. Greet yourself In your thousand other forms As you mount the hidden tide and travel Back home. All the hemispheres in heaven Are sitting around a fire Chatting. While stitching themselves together Into the Great Circle inside of You. ~ Hafiz of Shiraz
__________________
“Voting for Kamala Harris prevents an unwanted presidency,” — Democratic slogan seen on the web. |
The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Kätzchen For This Useful Post: |
06-25-2013, 07:17 PM | #545 |
Infamous Member
How Do You Identify?:
femme Relationship Status:
attached Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: .
Posts: 6,896
Thanks: 29,046
Thanked 13,113 Times in 3,390 Posts
Rep Power: 21474857 |
Adolescence by P. K. Page
In love they wore themselves in a green embrace. A silken rain fell through the spring upon them. In the park she fed the swans and he whittled nervously with his strange hands. And white was mixed with all their colours as if they drew it from the flowering trees. At night his two finger whistle brought her down the waterfall stairs to his shy smile which like an eddy, turned her round and round lazily and slowly so her will was nowhere—as in dreams things are and aren’t. Walking along avenues in the dark street lamps sang like sopranos in their heads with a violence they never understood and all their movements when they were together had no conclusion. Only leaning into the question had they motion; after they parted were savage and swift as gulls. asking and asking the hostile emptiness they were as sharp as partly sculptured stone and all who watched, forgetting, were amazed to see them form and fade before their eyes. |
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Soon For This Useful Post: |
06-25-2013, 07:33 PM | #546 |
Senior Member
How Do You Identify?:
The Gardner Preferred Pronoun?:
Ummmm Relationship Status:
Nah Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Sunshine State, State of Sunshine
Posts: 2,616
Thanks: 1,577
Thanked 3,890 Times in 1,155 Posts
Rep Power: 21474853 |
If I could have just one wish,
I would wish to wake up everyday to the sound of your breath on my neck, the warmth of your lips on my cheek, the touch of your fingers on my skin, and the feel of your heart beating with mine... Knowing that I could never find that feeling with anyone other than you. - Courtney Kuchta - |
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to MrSunshine For This Useful Post: |
06-30-2013, 09:21 PM | #547 |
Infamous Member
How Do You Identify?:
femme Relationship Status:
attached Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: .
Posts: 6,896
Thanks: 29,046
Thanked 13,113 Times in 3,390 Posts
Rep Power: 21474857 |
The Key to Everything
Is there anything I can do or has everything been done or do you prefer somebody else to do it or don’t you trust me to do it right or is it hopeless and no one can do a thing or do you suppose I don’t really want to do it and am just saying that or don’t you hear me at all or what? You’re waiting for the right person the doctor or the nurse the father or the mother or the person with the name you keep mumbling in your sleep that no one ever heard of there’s no one named that really except yourself maybe if I knew what your name was I’d prove it’s your own name spelled backwards or twisted in some way the one you keep mumbling but you won’t tell me your name or don’t you know it yourself that’s it of course you’ve forgotten or never quite knew it or weren’t willing to believe it Then there is something I can do I can find your name for you that’s the key to everything once you’d repeat it clearly you’d come awake you’d get up and walk knowing where you’re going where you came from And you’d love me after that or would you hate me? no once you’d get there you’d remember and love me of course I’d be gone by then I’d be far away by May Swenson |
The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to Soon For This Useful Post: |
08-01-2013, 12:04 PM | #548 |
Senior Member
How Do You Identify?:
Femme Preferred Pronoun?:
She Relationship Status:
N/A Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: NY
Posts: 3,742
Thanks: 7,696
Thanked 7,092 Times in 2,321 Posts
Rep Power: 21474853 |
How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog
by Taylor Mali First of all, it’s a big responsibility, especially in a city like New York. So think long and hard before deciding on love. On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security: when you’re walking down the street late at night and you have a leash on love ain’t no one going to mess with you. Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable. Who knows what love could do in its own defense? On cold winter nights, love is warm. It lies between you and lives and breathes and makes funny noises. Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs. It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy. Love doesn’t like being left alone for long. But come home and love is always happy to see you. It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life, but you can never be mad at love for long. Is love good all the time? No! No! Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love. Love makes messes. Love leaves you little surprises here and there. Love needs lots of cleaning up after. Somethimes you just want to get love fixed. Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper and swat love on the nose, not so much to cause pain, just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again! Sometimes love just wants to go out for a nice long walk. Because love loves exercise. It will run you around the block and leave you panting, breathless. Pull you in different directions at once, or wind itself around and around you until you’re all wound up and you cannot move. But love makes you meet people wherever you go. People who have nothing in common but love stop and talk to each other on the street. Throw things away and love will bring them back, again, and again, and again. But most of all, love needs love, lots of it. And in return, love loves you and never stops. Taylor Mali |
The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to Fancy For This Useful Post: |
08-02-2013, 05:49 AM | #549 |
Member
How Do You Identify?:
Femme Relationship Status:
She's my mirror twin, my next of kin Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse
Posts: 667
Thanks: 2,047
Thanked 1,842 Times in 562 Posts
Rep Power: 21474850 |
Being This
I imagine your smallness
has been the culprit of writing unintended invitations to late night subway riders and overly confident men I worry about it if I'm being honest and if I'm being that allow me then to be this I am this boy who hears the closeness of the words worrier and warrior all the while knowing it's you who have made me both of these things I am a blade skinning a stone I am a stone afraid of water I am water boxing fire I am fire suffocating and if I am all of those allow me then to be this I am this boy kidnapping your smile and ransoming it back to you for briefcases full of unmarked hand holding come alone and no funny business I can tell the difference between a briefcase full of hand holding and one full of foot massages. ~ Shane Koyczan |
08-15-2013, 08:08 AM | #550 |
Senior Member
How Do You Identify?:
Butch Preferred Pronoun?:
she Relationship Status:
Truly Madly Deeply Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: In My Head
Posts: 2,809
Thanks: 6,328
Thanked 10,604 Times in 2,491 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852 |
I woke up around 3 and couldn't fall back to sleep so I amused myself by rereading much loved poetry. I stumbled on this long forgotten gem and saved it to post this morning:
The Drunk Is Gender-Free By Leonard Cohen This morning I woke up again I thank my Lord for that The world is such a pigpen That I have to wear a hat I love the Lord I praise the Lord I do the Lord forgive I hope I won’t be sorry For allowing Him to live I know you like to get me drunk And laugh at what I say I’m very happy that you do I’m thirsty every day I’m angry with the angel Who pinched me on the thigh And made me fall in love With every woman passing by I know they are your sisters Your daughters mothers wives If I have left a woman out Then I apologize It’s fun to run to heaven When you’re off the beaten track The Lord is such a monkey when You’ve got Him on your back The Lord is such a monkey He’s such a woman too Such a place of nothing Such a face of you May E crash into your temple And look out thru’ your eyes And make you fall in love With everybody you despise |
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Cin For This Useful Post: |
08-15-2013, 08:19 AM | #551 |
Senior Member
How Do You Identify?:
Butch Preferred Pronoun?:
she Relationship Status:
Truly Madly Deeply Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: In My Head
Posts: 2,809
Thanks: 6,328
Thanked 10,604 Times in 2,491 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852 |
Dedicated to bachelorette Desiree's choice this season, Chris Siegfried, who really should try silence over poetry.
Gift by Leonard Cohen You tell me that silence is nearer to peace than poems but if for my gift I brought you silence (for I know silence) you would say This is not silence this is another poem and you would hand it back to me |
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Cin For This Useful Post: |
08-15-2013, 08:35 AM | #552 |
Senior Member
How Do You Identify?:
Butch Preferred Pronoun?:
she Relationship Status:
Truly Madly Deeply Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: In My Head
Posts: 2,809
Thanks: 6,328
Thanked 10,604 Times in 2,491 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852 |
Introduction To Poetry
Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. |
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Cin For This Useful Post: |
08-18-2013, 09:49 AM | #553 |
Practically Lives Here
How Do You Identify?:
. Preferred Pronoun?:
. Relationship Status:
. Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: .
Posts: 11,495
Thanks: 34,694
Thanked 26,372 Times in 5,877 Posts
Rep Power: 21474861 |
One Woman by Ron Carlson Oh, the old love song again and again devotion and desire without end, a woman half dressed somewhere and being admired, or dressed and being admired. These men go off alone into their rooms and write it down: she was this and she was that. Every man says she's the woman above all, on a pedestal, though no one says pedestal, that would be crazy, and there's a thousand of these poems, and by that I mean a million declarations of this singular love of this one of a kind woman, so rare, an absolute phenomenon which many times rivals the moon or the oceans, or the wind in the trees or night or any of the furniture of night or day. You see what I mean: big unknowable things. What are we to make of it? This: it's true. Each man is telling the truth. Each woman puts all the other women second. It's the way. The strap of her gown off her shoulder, and the paradox prevails. These poems are all true. Each woman stands alone in the doorway or on the pedestal in the perfect light. |
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Hollylane For This Useful Post: |
08-18-2013, 10:08 AM | #554 |
Infamous Member
How Do You Identify?:
Dominant Stone Butch Daddy Preferred Pronoun?:
She Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: In A Healing Place
Posts: 5,371
Thanks: 18,160
Thanked 22,757 Times in 4,468 Posts
Rep Power: 21474856 |
My Favorite Poem Of All Time
i carry your heart with me
e. e. cummings 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 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) |
The Following 8 Users Say Thank You to BullDog For This Useful Post: |
08-25-2013, 01:23 AM | #555 |
Practically Lives Here
How Do You Identify?:
. Preferred Pronoun?:
. Relationship Status:
. Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: .
Posts: 11,495
Thanks: 34,694
Thanked 26,372 Times in 5,877 Posts
Rep Power: 21474861 |
Virgil's Bees by Carol Ann Duffy Bless air's gift of sweetness, honey from the bees, inspired by clover, marigold, eucalyptus, thyme, the hundred perfumes of the wind. Bless the beekeeper who chooses for her hives a site near water, violet beds, no yew, no echo. Let the light lilt, leak, green or gold, pigment for queens, and joy be inexplicable but there in harmony of willowherb and stream, of summer heat and breeze, each bee's body at its brilliant flower, lover-stunned, strumming on fragrance, smitten. |
08-25-2013, 12:42 PM | #556 |
Member
How Do You Identify?:
*dodges labels* Relationship Status:
Estranged Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Midwest
Posts: 454
Thanks: 3
Thanked 922 Times in 277 Posts
Rep Power: 10661584 |
Something I found ridiculously beautiful:
THE END by Victoria Redel At the end of the marriage they lay down on their big, exhausted bed. It was crowded with all the men and women they had ever loved. Of course their fathers and mothers were there and a boy in uniform she'd kissed on a stairwell. His first wife spooned her first husband. Ridiculous Affair held hands with Stupendous Infatuation. There was a racket of dreaming and, though both were tired from the difficult end and in need of sleep, neither could sleep, so they began telling each other the long, good story of their love. She was wearing the red dress. The white boat hitched to the wood dock filled with rainwater. The swans were again teaching the young to fly. The story went out to nice dinners, took summer holidays, and by the time they were done, the old loves rolled over in a jumble on the floor, and, because this is what they knew to do well with one another, they made love, and then without thinking it was the last time, said, I love you, and fell asleep under the heavy, blue coverlet. "The End" by Victoria Redel, from Woman Without Umbrella. © Four Way Books, 2012. Reprinted with without permission
__________________
Love is all you need. |
The Following User Says Thank You to PoeticSilence For This Useful Post: |
08-28-2013, 04:59 AM | #557 |
Member
How Do You Identify?:
*dodges labels* Relationship Status:
Estranged Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Midwest
Posts: 454
Thanks: 3
Thanked 922 Times in 277 Posts
Rep Power: 10661584 |
LEGS
LEGS
by Joseph Harker A man walks into the cafe on a Pair Of Legs. These are the kind of legs that demand metaphor: legs drifting in like the masts of capsized ships, legs like walnut saplings in the churchyard. What is it about a pair of legs that enchants a person? Or any body part: for he also has arms, knuckles, upper lip, cropped nape, but it’s the legs that get me. His legs resist like longbows. Running shorts show one bronze, fresh-mowed leg with Hebrew tracery tattooed round the thigh. What’s “nice legs” in Hebrew? How do you compliment a stranger’s legs without sounding strange? I know the legs of women are up for constant debate, the apparition of their legs traded on the commodities market by leg-men whistling as they dig the street, knowing good legs and thinking they’ve something to prove. Legs, though, have never inspired me until These Legs. I was never a vulgar leg-admirer hooting at the passerby. Can one man worship the legs of another, lay kisses on the saintly knees? And why couldn’t legs be that once-in-a-lifetime quality? Well-legged can mean marriageable. Good legs make men dependable, worldly, and these legs could be wandering monuments, sculptural as they are. I feel I am discovering legs for the first time. I’m seeing legs, legs, suddenly I am judging everyone by the curve of their legs, sitting here shaking at the injustice of subpar legs, of overgrown and shapeless legs milling about this man with Dead Sea Legs as he stands, stretches, pays for his coffee, scratches his one tattooed leg, that alphabet leg!, flexing and spinning him away like a gyroscope, out the door, his Legs gone and him gone with them. "LEGS" by Joseph Harker reprinted without permission from his blog Naming Constellations entry dated 7/19/2013 -----please see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/...3.0/deed.en_US ----- (I'll note that the writer claims he wrote this one for fun and tried to fit the word leg(s) into every line)
__________________
Love is all you need. Last edited by PoeticSilence; 08-28-2013 at 05:02 AM. Reason: edited to add author information |
09-18-2013, 12:34 PM | #558 |
Senior Member
How Do You Identify?:
Femme Preferred Pronoun?:
She Relationship Status:
N/A Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: NY
Posts: 3,742
Thanks: 7,696
Thanked 7,092 Times in 2,321 Posts
Rep Power: 21474853 |
|
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Fancy For This Useful Post: |
10-01-2013, 11:46 PM | #559 |
Member
How Do You Identify?:
*dodges labels* Relationship Status:
Estranged Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Midwest
Posts: 454
Thanks: 3
Thanked 922 Times in 277 Posts
Rep Power: 10661584 |
The Sky
The Sky
Holding the sky above our heads, separating it from the earth - it's an important job and someone has to do it. Only the most reliable and aspiring souls are given such employment. Their task to make us feel that something must be up there, beyond beyond, cloaked in white or grey or blue. Distracted by the birds, the agitation of the topmost twigs, the souls ache. Ache from the pressure of the sky reprinted without permission, poetry by Moniza Alzi This poem is taken from PN Review 141, Volume 28 Number 1, September - October 2001
__________________
Love is all you need. |
10-02-2013, 03:06 AM | #560 |
Member
How Do You Identify?:
*dodges labels* Relationship Status:
Estranged Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Midwest
Posts: 454
Thanks: 3
Thanked 922 Times in 277 Posts
Rep Power: 10661584 |
Rule 15
Rule 15
what bothers you of course beyond the smudges on your own window isn’t so much the yuppies with their walking poles walking down your street but the fact that they’re not even using them she just holds hers both in one hand and he’s sort of dragging his behind him leaving two scratched lines down the sandy springtime sidewalk here’s what I’d do pull the wine from the cupboard pour yourself a bucket and head out to the porch where you can criticize more clearly reprinted without permission, poetry by Ryan Vine This poem is taken from Paper Darts Magazine Published on DateTuesday, September 11, 2012
__________________
Love is all you need. |
|
|