02-02-2013, 08:28 AM | #501 |
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But Listen, I Am Warning You
But listen, I am warning you I'm living for the very last time. Not as a swallow, nor a maple, Not as a reed, nor as a star, Not as spring water, Nor as the toll of bells… Will I return to trouble men Nor will I vex their dreams again With my insatiable moans. Anna Akhmatova |
02-02-2013, 09:01 AM | #502 |
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Sex Without Love
How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health--just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time. by Sharon Olds |
02-02-2013, 09:06 AM | #503 |
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Beneath My Hands
Beneath my hands your small breasts are the upturned bellies of breathing fallen sparrows. Wherever you move I hear the sounds of closing wings of falling wings. I am speechless because you have fallen beside me because your eyelashes are the spines of tiny fragile animals. I dread the time when your mouth begins to call me hunter. When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want to summon the eyes and hidden mouths of stone and light and water to testify against you. I want them to surrender before you the trembling rhyme of your face from their deep caskets. When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want my body and my hands to be pools for your looking and laughing. --Leonard Cohen |
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02-03-2013, 03:12 AM | #504 |
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An Invisible Connection What is this magical bond we share? Amidst the constant circus like avalanche of words, How did you know? Once like you stable and secure, He is older, yet betrothed to your dream, Faithful to uncertainty, A spirit yearning to be free. His subtle words lodge in your thought. Why did you pick this stranger With a hunger that you can not see? A young woman's hair kisses the breeze, Her dignity conceals the distance in her gaze. Is it possible that a simple innocent radiant smile, Or a crazy serendipitous verse, Could bring two people so diverse To where we find ourselves today? Strangers once to our own lives, At ease with the depth of our own emptiness, How unlikely it is that we are here It's quiet tonight, light raindrops filter through the leaves Washing away the dust, releasing fragrances On which the gentle breeze sweetens The kind of night you wish you were with the one you love Nestled close to the open fire Watching the moon duck in and out of the white cotton clouds Caressing and holding each other gently Breath silently quivering collect; Once locked away behind iron clad doors, Feelings and emotions stir, Disguised by layers of pain and ruin Two hearts awaken. A gentle, loving, knowing kiss; Bound together forever. Jeff Demos
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02-05-2013, 10:32 PM | #505 |
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Best Read Outloud :)
Sick by Shel Silverstein
Sick "I cannot go to school today," Said little Peggy Ann McKay. "I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps. My mouth is wet, my throat is dry, I'm going blind in my right eye. My tonsils are as big as rocks, I've counted sixteen chicken pox And there's one more - that's seventeen, And don't you think my face looks green? My leg is cut, my eyes are blue - It might be instamatic flu. I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke, I'm sure that my left leg is broke - My hip hurts when I move my chin, My belly button's caving in, My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained, My 'pendix pains each time it rains. My nose is cold, my toes are numb, I have a sliver in my thumb. My neck is stiff, my spine is weak, I hardly whisper when I speak. My tongue is filling up my mouth, I think my hair is falling out. My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight, My temperature is one-o-eight. My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear, There is a hole inside my ear. I have a hangnail, and my heart is - what? What's that? What's that you say? You say today is ... Saturday? G'bye, I'm going out to play!"
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"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together." Lila Watson You say you love rain, but you use an umbrella to walk under it.
You say you love sun, but you seek shade when its shining. You say you love wind, but when its comes you close your window. So that's why I'm scared, when you say you love me. -- Bob Marley |
02-13-2013, 12:35 PM | #506 |
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The Underworld by Sharon Bryan When I lived in the foothills birds flocked to the feeder: house finches, goldfinches, skyblue lazuli buntings, impeccably dressed chickadees, sparrows in work clothes, even hummingbirds fastforwarding through the trees. Some of them disappeared after a week, headed north, I thought, with the sun. But the first cool day they were back, then gone, then back, more reliable than weathermen, and I realized they hadn't gone north at all, but up the mountain, as invisible to me as if they had flown a thousand miles, yet in reality just out of sight, out of reach— maybe at the end of our lives the world lifts that slightly away from us, and returns once or twice to see if we've refilled the feeder, if we still remember it, or if we've taken leave of our senses altogether. |
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02-13-2013, 12:53 PM | #507 |
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02-13-2013, 02:01 PM | #508 |
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Sadness causes the most wonderful growth:
There is a curious paradox that no one can explain: who understands the secrets of the reaping of the grain? Who understands why spring is born out of winter's laboring pain, or why we all must die a bit before we grow again? El Gallo from the play The Fantasticks |
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02-13-2013, 02:02 PM | #509 |
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“In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you.” ― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker |
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02-13-2013, 02:27 PM | #510 |
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She being brand new
Another e.e. cummings into the mix: One of my all time fave's:
she being Brand -new;and you know consequently a little stiff i was careful of her and(having thoroughly oiled the universal joint tested my gas felt of her radiator made sure her springs were O. K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her up,slipped the clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she kicked what the hell)next minute i was back in neutral tried and again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my lev-er Right- oh and her gears being in A 1 shape passed from low through second-in-to-high like greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity avenue i touched the accelerator and give her the juice,good (it was the first ride and believe i we was happy to see how nice she acted right up to the last minute coming back down by the Public Gardens i slammed on the internalexpanding & externalcontracting brakes Bothatonce and brought allofher tremB -ling to a:dead. stand- ;Still) -e.e. cummings
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"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together." Lila Watson You say you love rain, but you use an umbrella to walk under it.
You say you love sun, but you seek shade when its shining. You say you love wind, but when its comes you close your window. So that's why I'm scared, when you say you love me. -- Bob Marley |
02-17-2013, 10:15 PM | #511 |
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The Woodstove by Jennifer Grotz The woodstove is banked to last the night, its slim legs, like an elegant dog's, stand obediently on the tile floor while in its belly a muffled tumult cries like wind keening through the hemlocks. Human nature to sleep by fire, and human nature to be sleepless by it too. I get up to watch the blue flames finger soft chambers in the wood while the coals swell with scintillating breaths. What made Rousseau once observe that dogs will not build fires? (And further, that in the pleasing warmth of a fire already started, they will not add wood?) What is it to be human? To forge connection, to make interpretations of fire and contain them in a little iron stove? And what is it to be fire? To burn with indifference, to consume the skin of the arm as easily as the bark of a log. Sleepy warmth begins to fill the room in which life wants to live and fire wants to burn, the room which in the morning will hold a fire changed to cooling ash. Outside, smoke escapes and for an instant mirrors nature too, the way falling snow reveals the wind's mind, and change of mind, before world and mind grow inscrutable again. |
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02-17-2013, 10:21 PM | #512 |
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Odessa by Patricia Kirkpatrick I drove through Sacred Heart and Montevideo, over the Chippewa River, all the way to Madison. When I stopped, walked into grass— bluestem, wild rose, a monarch— I was afraid at first. Birds I couldn't identify might have been bobolinks, non-breeding plumage. I am always afraid of what might show up, suddenly. What might hide. At dusk I saw the start of low plateaus, plains really, even when planted. Almost to the Dakota border I was struck by the isolation and abiding loneliness yet somehow thrilled. Alone. Hardly another car on the road and in town, just a few teenagers wearing high school sweatshirts, walking and laughing, on the edge of a world they don't know. Darkness started as heaviness in the colors of fields, a tractor, cornstalks, stone. I turned back just before the Prairie Wildlife Refuge at Odessa, the place I came to see. Closed. Empty. The moon rose. Full. I was driving Highway 7, the "Sioux Trail:" I could feel the past the way I could in Mexico, Mayan tombs in the jungle at Palenque, men tearing papers from our hands. Three hours still to drive home. |
02-18-2013, 08:37 PM | #513 |
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Snippets of T.S. (Eliot)
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. (The Waste Land)
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"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together." Lila Watson You say you love rain, but you use an umbrella to walk under it.
You say you love sun, but you seek shade when its shining. You say you love wind, but when its comes you close your window. So that's why I'm scared, when you say you love me. -- Bob Marley |
02-18-2013, 09:07 PM | #514 |
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Simple and sweet:
Remember me with smiles and laughter, For that's the way I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, Then don't remember me at all. (Michael Landon, in an episode from Little House On The Prairie) |
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02-18-2013, 10:22 PM | #515 | |
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02-28-2013, 02:25 PM | #516 |
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Breakfast by Joyce Sutphen My father taught me how to eat breakfast those mornings when it was my turn to help him milk the cows. I loved rising up from the darkness and coming quietly down the stairs while the others were still sleeping. I'd take a bowl from the cupboard, a spoon from the drawer, and slip into the pantry where he was already eating spoonfuls of cornflakes covered with mashed strawberries from our own strawberry fields forever. Didn't talk much—except to mention how good the strawberries tasted or the way those clouds hung over the hay barn roof. Simple—that's how we started up the day. |
02-28-2013, 02:46 PM | #517 |
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In the Late Season by Tom Hennen At the soft place in the snowbank Warmed to dripping by the sun There is the smell of water. On the western wind the hint of glacier. A cottonwood tree warmed by the same sun On the same day, My back against its rough bark Same west wind mild in my face. A piece of spring Pierced me with love for this empty place Where a prairie creek runs Under its cover of clear ice And the sound it makes, Mysterious as a heartbeat, New as a lamb. |
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02-28-2013, 02:50 PM | #518 |
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Trombone Lesson by Paul Hostovsky The twenty minutes from half past nine to ten of ten is actually slightly longer than the twenty minutes from ten of ten to ten past ten, which is half downhill as anyone who's ever stared at the hillocky face of a clock in the 5th grade will tell you. My trombone lesson with Mr. Leister was out the classroom door and down the tessellating hallway to the band room which was full of empty chairs and music stands from ten past ten to ten-forty, which is half an hour and was actually slightly shorter than the twenty minutes that came before or after which as anyone who's ever played trombone will tell you, had to do with the length of the slide and the smell of the brass and also the mechanism of the spit-valve and the way that Mr. Leister accompanied me on his silver trumpet making the music sound so elegantly and eminently better than when I practiced it at home for hours and hours which were all much shorter than an hour actually, as anyone who's ever practiced the art of deception with a musical instrument will tell you, if he's honest and has any inkling of the spluttering, sliding, flaring, slippery nature of time, youth and trombones. |
02-28-2013, 03:53 PM | #519 |
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Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S.Eliot)
(not in its entirety...just the bits I love most) LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question…. Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
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"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together." Lila Watson You say you love rain, but you use an umbrella to walk under it.
You say you love sun, but you seek shade when its shining. You say you love wind, but when its comes you close your window. So that's why I'm scared, when you say you love me. -- Bob Marley |
03-11-2013, 10:05 PM | #520 |
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String Quartet by Carl Dennis Art and life, I wouldn't want to confuse them. But it's hard to hear this quartet Without comparing it to a conversation Of the quiet kind, where no one tries to outtalk The other participants, where each is eager instead To share in the task of moving the theme along From the opening statement to the final bar. A conversation that isn't likely to flourish When sales technicians come trolling for customers, Office-holders for votes, preachers for converts. Many good people among such talkers, But none engaged like the voices of the quartet In resisting the plots time hatches to make them unequal, To set them at odds, to pull them asunder. I love the movement where the cello is occupied With repeating a single phrase while the others Strike out on their own, three separate journeys That seem to suggest each prefers, after all, The pain and pleasure of playing solo. But no. Each near the end swerves back to the path Their friend has been plodding, and he receives them As if he never once suspected their loyalty. Would I be moved if I thought the music Belonged to a world remote from this one, If it didn't seem instead to be making the point That conversation like this is available At moments sufficiently free and self-forgetful? And at other moments, maybe there's still a chance To participate in the silence of listeners Who are glad for what they manage to bring to the music And for what they manage to take away. |
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