"Love is not a thing to understand. Love is not a thing to feel. Love is not a thing to give and receive. Love is a thing only to become And eternally be. ."
- Sri Chinmoy
This is my favorite poem. I love how the word love is repeated over and over. This poem also makes me think because all of the statements about love are true . At first i thought that the statements were false but after awhile I began to realize that the poem was right. After I experienced true love, I came to the realization that love can not be understood. Love is a confusing emotion that a person can not feel. People try to feel love, but love can not be felt. Love is merely a thought that last forever.
I couldn't choose one, so here are a few. ________________________________________________
When I Met My Muse
I glanced at her and took my glasses off--they were still singing. They buzzed like a locust on the coffee table and then ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and knew that nails up there took a new grip on whatever they touched. "I am your own way of looking at things," she said. "When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.
William Stafford
_______________________________________________
Love
Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals his heart, Without knowing it, from various ills A bird and a tree say to him: Friend. Then he wants to use himself and things So that they stand in the glow of ripeness. It doesnt matter whether he knows what he serves: Who serves best doesnt always understand.
There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side are useless as wounded pride, and much more painful.
Maya Angelou
________________________________________________
Not a poem, but I love Maya Angelou.
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. Maya Angelou
I just found this Sunday, and I think it's fun that I can sort of relate to it: Patience is a man's greatest virtue, or so the saying goes. A gymnast must have said it, for a gymnast surely knows! That in this funny sport of ours, discouragement runs high. And even the very best will find this virtue has passed us by. When hands are ripped and throbbing, when every muscle's sore, will a gymnast still have patience to limp in the gym for more? When you've lost old moves and progress seems slow, will you still have faith in better days, and not feel sad and low? Can you admit your frightened, yet not give in to fear? Can you conquer pain and frustration and often even tears? When someone else does something, you've tried so long to do... can you still be happy for her, or just self-pitty for you? And when success seems far away, your efforts all in vain, can you force yourself to wear a smile and disregaurd the pain? If despite the pain and tribulations, you can say "I won't give in" Maybe some day you'll discover that its now your time to win
Hope gives you a future whatever has passed whatever done
Hope is a light that breaks through the darkness that us surround
Hope helps us find our way through to safer loving ground
Hope fights for you when things get so very tough
Hope means keeping going when you have had enough
Hope though dims on times stays through your sorrow
Hope brings you through by dreaming of tomorrow
Hope tries to console you when your eyes glisten with tears
Hope gives you something to keep going whatever your fears
Hope is free beautiful may fade but never dies
Hope is always there even if its light seems dim on times.
- Micron
In the poem, the word hope is used to begin every sentence. This poem causes me to believe that there is hope everywhere. Many times I find myself believing that there is no hope, but I look at this poem and all negatives thoughts disappear from my mind. Hope is always existent, but you have to believe in hope to obtain hope.
Ladies and jelly spoons, hobos and tramps, Cross-eyed mosquitoes and bow-legged ants, I stand before you to sit behind you To tell you something I know nothing about. Next Thursday, which is Good Friday, There’s a Mother’s Day meeting for fathers only. Wear your best clothes if you haven’t any. Please come if you can’t; if you can, stay at home. Admission is free; pay at the door. Pull up a chair and sit on the floor. It makes no difference where you sit; The man in the gallery’s sure to spit. The show is over, but before you go, Let me tell you a story I don’t really know. ------
I love this poem because it confuses me. I honestly have no idea what this poem is trying to say. It makes absolutely no sense to me, but the confusion of people after they read this makes me laugh.
This poem is clearly not very serious. I enjoy this poem's simplicity and creativity with opposites. I had to memorize it in second grade, and I still remember it!
Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face by Jack Prelutsky
Be glad your nose is on your face, not pasted on some other place, for if it were where it is not, you might dislike your nose a lot.
Imagine if your precious nose were sandwiched in between your toes, that clearly would not be a treat, for you'd be forced to smell your feet.
Your nose would be a source of dread were it attached atop your head, it soon would drive you to despair, forever tickled by your hair.
Within your ear, your nose would be an absolute catastrophe, for when you were obliged to sneeze, your brain would rattle from the breeze.
Your nose, instead, through thick and thin, remains between your eyes and chin, not pasted on some other place-- be glad your nose is on your face!
I really like this poem because it is not serious and very silly. I think it is interesting to think about what we would be like if our noses were placed somewhere. It is a humorous poem leading to humorous thinking.
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer - Walt Whitman
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
I love this poem cause I can relate to the overwhelming nature of learning and knowledge. How sometimes you want to just look at something - a book, the sky - and appreciate it for it's aesthetic beauty. _______________________________________________ Halley's Comet, Stanley Kunitz Miss Murphy in first grade wrote its name in chalk across the board and told us it was roaring down the stormtracks of the Milky Way at frightful speed and if it wandered off its course and smashed into the earth there'd be no school tomorrow. A red-bearded preacher from the hills with a wild look in his eyes stood in the public square at the playground's edge proclaiming he was sent by God to save every one of us, even the little children. "Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted, waving his hand-lettered sign. At supper I felt sad to think that it was probably the last meal I'd share with my mother and my sisters; but I felt excited too and scarcely touched my plate. So mother scolded me and sent me early to my room. The whole family's asleep except for me. They never heard me steal into the stairwell hall and climb the ladder to the fresh night air. Look for me, Father, on the roof of the red brick building at the foot of Green Street— that's where we live, you know, on the top floor. I'm the boy in the white flannel gown sprawled on this coarse gravel bed searching the starry sky, waiting for the world to end.
One of my favorite poems by T.S. Eliot. It is the first stanza of the first installment of the four quartets.
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind. But to what purpose Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know.
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
Little Boy Blue by Eugene Field The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair; And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there.
"Now, don't you go till I come," he said, "And don't you make any noise!" So, toddling off to his trundle-bed, He dreamt of the pretty toys; And, as he was dreaming, an angel song Awakened our Little Boy Blue--- Oh! the years are many, the years are long, But the little toy friends are true!
Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand, Each in the same old place--- Awaiting the touch of a little hand, The smile of a little face; And they wonder, as waiting the long years through In the dust of that little chair, What has become of our Little Boy Blue, Since he kissed them and put them there.
Thank Heaven! the crisis- The danger is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last- And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last.
Sadly, I know I am shorn of my strength, And no muscle I move As I lie at full length- But no matter!-I feel I am better at length.
And I rest so composedly, Now, in my bed That any beholder Might fancy me dead- Might start at beholding me, Thinking me dead.
The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:-ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing!
The sickness-the nausea- The pitiless pain- Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain- With the fever called "Living" That burned in my brain.
And oh! of all tortures That torture the worst Has abated-the terrible Torture of thirst For the naphthaline river Of Passion accurst:- I have drunk of a water That quenches all thirst:-
Of a water that flows, With a lullaby sound, From a spring but a very few Feet under ground- From a cavern not very far Down under ground.
And ah! let it never Be foolishly said That my room it is gloomy And narrow my bed; For man never slept In a different bed- And, to sleep, you must slumber In just such a bed.
My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting its roses- Its old agitations Of myrtles and roses:
For now, while so quietly Lying, it fancies A holier odor About it, of pansies- A rosemary odor, Commingled with pansies- With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies.
And so it lies happily, Bathing in many A dream of the truth And the beauty of Annie- Drowned in a bath Of the tresses of Annie.
She tenderly kissed me, She fondly caressed, And then I fell gently To sleep on her breast- Deeply to sleep From the heaven of her breast.
When the light was extinguished, She covered me warm, And she prayed to the angels To keep me from harm- To the queen of the angels To shield me from harm.
And I lie so composedly, Now, in my bed, (Knowing her love) That you fancy me dead- And I rest so contentedly, Now, in my bed, (With her love at my breast) That you fancy me dead- That you shudder to look at me, Thinking me dead.
But my heart it is brighter Than all of the many Stars in the sky, For it sparkles with Annie- It glows with the light Of the love of my Annie- With the thought of the light Of the eyes of my Annie. -Edgar Allan Poe
This is for the benches and the people sitting on them, for the bus drivers driving a million broken hymns, for the men who have to hold down three jobs simply to hold up their children, for the nighttime schoolers, and for the midnight bikers who are trying to fly ...Shake the Dust... This is for the two year olds who can not be understood because they speak half English and half God, shake the dust, for the girls whose brothers are going crazy! For those gym class wall flowers and for the twelve year old kids afraid of taking public showers, for the kid whose always late to class because he forgets the combination to his locker, for a girl who loves somebody else shake the dust. This is for the hard men...the hard men who want love but know it won't come... For the ones who are forgotten, for the ones the amendments do not stand up for, for the ones who are told to speak only when spoken to and then are never spoken to. Speak every time you stand so that you do not forget yourself, never let a moment go by you that doesn't remind you that your heart beats 900 times a day... That there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean. Do not settle for letting these waves that settle and for the dust to collect in your veins. This is for the sell abate pedophile who keeps on struggling, for the poetry teachers and for the people who go on vacation alone, and for the sweat that drips off of a Mick Jaggers singing lips, and for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner's shaking hips, and for the heavens and for the hells for which Tina has lived. This! Is for the tired and for the dreamers, for those families that want to be like the Cleavers, with perfectly made dinners with songs like Wally and the Beaver. This! Is for the big its, this is for the sexists, this is for the killers, this is for the Big House; pin sentenced cats becoming redeemers, and for the springtime that always shows up right after the winters, this is... This is for you...Make sure that by the time the fishermen returns you are gone, because just like the days I burn at both ends, every time I write, every time I open my eyes I'm cutting out a part of myself to give to you. So Shake the Dust, and take me with you when you do none of this...What has this has fucking ever been for me, that pushes and pulls.. pushes and pulls for you! So grab this world by it's clothes pins and shake it out again and again and jump on top for a spin and when you hop off shake it off for this is yours. Make, Make my words worth, make it not just another poem that I write not just like another poem like another night, make it like it's heavy about us all, walk into it breath it in let it crash through the halls of your arms like the millions of years of millions poets coursing like blood pumping, pushing and making you live, shaking the dust! So when the world knocks at your front door clutch the knob and open on up, running forward into it's wide spread greeting arms with your hands before you your fingertips trembling, though they may be. -Anis Mojgani
The Art Of Drowning by Billy Collins I wonder how it all got started, this business about seeing your life flash before your eyes while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence, could startle time into such compression, crushing decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
After falling off a steamship or being swept away in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand turning the pages of an album of photographs- you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.
How about a short animated film, a slide presentation? Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph? Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash? Your whole existence going off in your face in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography- nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.
Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance here, some bolt of truth forking across the water, an ultimate Light before all the lights go out, dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage. But if something does flash before your eyes as you go under, it will probably be a fish,
a quick blur of curved silver darting away, having nothing to do with your life or your death. The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom, leaving behind what you have already forgotten, the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds. Email This Poem to a Friend
I learned this poem last year for Honors Modern Civ and it's been one of my favorites ever since:
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!
TEST.
ReplyDelete"Love is not a thing to understand.
ReplyDeleteLove is not a thing to feel.
Love is not a thing to give and receive.
Love is a thing only to become
And eternally be. ."
- Sri Chinmoy
This is my favorite poem. I love how the word love is repeated over and over. This poem also makes me think because all of the statements about love are true . At first i thought that the statements were false but after awhile I began to realize that the poem was right. After I experienced true love, I came to the realization that love can not be understood. Love is a confusing emotion that a person can not feel. People try to feel love, but love can not be felt. Love is merely a thought that last forever.
I couldn't choose one, so here are a few.
ReplyDelete________________________________________________
When I Met My Muse
I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.
William Stafford
_______________________________________________
Love
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesnt matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesnt always understand.
Czeslaw Milosz
________________________________________________
Insomniac
There are some nights when
sleep plays coy,
aloof and disdainful.
And all the wiles
that I employ to win
its service to my side
are useless as wounded pride,
and much more painful.
Maya Angelou
________________________________________________
Not a poem, but I love Maya Angelou.
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Maya Angelou
I just found this Sunday, and I think it's fun that I can sort of relate to it:
ReplyDeletePatience is a man's greatest virtue,
or so the saying goes.
A gymnast must have said it,
for a gymnast surely knows!
That in this funny sport of ours,
discouragement runs high.
And even the very best will find
this virtue has passed us by.
When hands are ripped and throbbing,
when every muscle's sore,
will a gymnast still have patience
to limp in the gym for more?
When you've lost old moves
and progress seems slow,
will you still have faith in better days,
and not feel sad and low?
Can you admit your frightened,
yet not give in to fear?
Can you conquer pain and frustration
and often even tears?
When someone else does something,
you've tried so long to do...
can you still be happy for her,
or just self-pitty for you?
And when success seems far away,
your efforts all in vain,
can you force yourself to wear a smile
and disregaurd the pain?
If despite the pain and tribulations,
you can say "I won't give in"
Maybe some day you'll discover
that its now your time to win
Hope is...
ReplyDeleteHope is a dream in the mind of what can come
Hope gives you a future whatever has passed
whatever done
Hope is a light that breaks through the darkness that us surround
Hope helps us find our way through to safer loving ground
Hope fights for you when things get so very tough
Hope means keeping going when you have had enough
Hope though dims on times stays through your sorrow
Hope brings you through by dreaming of tomorrow
Hope tries to console you when your eyes glisten with tears
Hope gives you something to keep going whatever your fears
Hope is free beautiful may fade but never dies
Hope is always there even if its light seems dim on times.
- Micron
In the poem, the word hope is used to begin every sentence. This poem causes me to believe that there is hope everywhere. Many times I find myself believing that there is no hope, but I look at this poem and all negatives thoughts disappear from my mind. Hope is always existent, but you have to believe in hope to obtain hope.
Ladies and jelly spoons, hobos and tramps,
ReplyDeleteCross-eyed mosquitoes and bow-legged ants,
I stand before you to sit behind you
To tell you something I know nothing about.
Next Thursday, which is Good Friday,
There’s a Mother’s Day meeting for fathers only.
Wear your best clothes if you haven’t any.
Please come if you can’t; if you can, stay at home.
Admission is free; pay at the door.
Pull up a chair and sit on the floor.
It makes no difference where you sit;
The man in the gallery’s sure to spit.
The show is over, but before you go,
Let me tell you a story I don’t really know.
------
I love this poem because it confuses me. I honestly have no idea what this poem is trying to say. It makes absolutely no sense to me, but the confusion of people after they read this makes me laugh.
One bright day, in the middle of the night,
ReplyDeleteTwo dead boys got up to fight,
Back to back, they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other;
A deaf policeman heard the noise ,
And went to kill the two dead boys,
And if you don't believe it's true,
Just ask the blind man; he saw it too.
This poem is clearly not very serious. I enjoy this poem's simplicity and creativity with opposites. I had to memorize it in second grade, and I still remember it!
Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face by Jack Prelutsky
ReplyDeleteBe glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.
Imagine if your precious nose
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you'd be forced to smell your feet.
Your nose would be a source of dread
were it attached atop your head,
it soon would drive you to despair,
forever tickled by your hair.
Within your ear, your nose would be
an absolute catastrophe,
for when you were obliged to sneeze,
your brain would rattle from the breeze.
Your nose, instead, through thick and thin,
remains between your eyes and chin,
not pasted on some other place--
be glad your nose is on your face!
I really like this poem because it is not serious and very silly. I think it is interesting to think about what we would be like if our noses were placed somewhere. It is a humorous poem leading to humorous thinking.
Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
ReplyDeleteI'd seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night
under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I
got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under
the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even
nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.
This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them — I swear it! —
would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like
the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,
I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray.
~ Mary Oliver ~
It's overused, but it's what motivates me when the sky is falling.
ReplyDeletePeople are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
- Mother Teresa
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer - Walt Whitman
ReplyDeleteWHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
I love this poem cause I can relate to the overwhelming nature of learning and knowledge. How sometimes you want to just look at something - a book, the sky - and appreciate it for it's aesthetic beauty.
_______________________________________________
Halley's Comet, Stanley Kunitz
Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street—
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.
One of my favorite poems by T.S. Eliot. It is the first stanza of the first installment of the four quartets.
ReplyDeleteTime present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
ReplyDeleteWhen 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
Little Boy Blue by Eugene Field
ReplyDeleteThe little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
"And don't you make any noise!"
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue---
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true!
Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place---
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there.
FOR ANNIE (1845)
ReplyDeleteThank Heaven! the crisis-
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last-
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.
Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length-
But no matter!-I feel
I am better at length.
And I rest so composedly,
Now, in my bed
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead-
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.
The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart:-ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!
The sickness-the nausea-
The pitiless pain-
Have ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain-
With the fever called "Living"
That burned in my brain.
And oh! of all tortures
That torture the worst
Has abated-the terrible
Torture of thirst
For the naphthaline river
Of Passion accurst:-
I have drunk of a water
That quenches all thirst:-
Of a water that flows,
With a lullaby sound,
From a spring but a very few
Feet under ground-
From a cavern not very far
Down under ground.
And ah! let it never
Be foolishly said
That my room it is gloomy
And narrow my bed;
For man never slept
In a different bed-
And, to sleep, you must slumber
In just such a bed.
My tantalized spirit
Here blandly reposes,
Forgetting, or never
Regretting its roses-
Its old agitations
Of myrtles and roses:
For now, while so quietly
Lying, it fancies
A holier odor
About it, of pansies-
A rosemary odor,
Commingled with pansies-
With rue and the beautiful
Puritan pansies.
And so it lies happily,
Bathing in many
A dream of the truth
And the beauty of Annie-
Drowned in a bath
Of the tresses of Annie.
She tenderly kissed me,
She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently
To sleep on her breast-
Deeply to sleep
From the heaven of her breast.
When the light was extinguished,
She covered me warm,
And she prayed to the angels
To keep me from harm-
To the queen of the angels
To shield me from harm.
And I lie so composedly,
Now, in my bed,
(Knowing her love)
That you fancy me dead-
And I rest so contentedly,
Now, in my bed,
(With her love at my breast)
That you fancy me dead-
That you shudder to look at me,
Thinking me dead.
But my heart it is brighter
Than all of the many
Stars in the sky,
For it sparkles with Annie-
It glows with the light
Of the love of my Annie-
With the thought of the light
Of the eyes of my Annie.
-Edgar Allan Poe
This is for the benches and the people sitting on them,
ReplyDeletefor the bus drivers driving a million broken hymns,
for the men who have to hold down three jobs simply to hold up their children, for the nighttime schoolers, and for the midnight bikers who are trying to fly
...Shake the Dust...
This is for the two year olds who can not be understood because they speak half English and half God, shake the dust,
for the girls whose brothers are going crazy!
For those gym class wall flowers and for the twelve year old kids afraid of taking public showers,
for the kid whose always late to class because he forgets the combination to his locker,
for a girl who loves somebody else shake the dust.
This is for the hard men...the hard men who want love but know it won't come...
For the ones who are forgotten,
for the ones the amendments do not stand up for,
for the ones who are told to speak only when spoken to and then are never spoken to.
Speak every time you stand so that you do not forget yourself,
never let a moment go by you that doesn't remind you that your heart beats 900 times a day...
That there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean.
Do not settle for letting these waves that settle and for the dust to collect in your veins.
This is for the sell abate pedophile who keeps on struggling,
for the poetry teachers and for the people who go on vacation alone, and for the sweat that drips off of a Mick Jaggers singing lips, and for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner's shaking hips,
and for the heavens and for the hells for which Tina has lived. This!
Is for the tired and for the dreamers, for those families that want to be like the Cleavers, with perfectly made dinners with songs like Wally and the Beaver. This! Is for the big its, this is for the sexists, this is for the killers, this is for the Big House; pin sentenced cats becoming redeemers, and for the springtime that always shows up right after the winters, this is... This is for you...Make sure that by the time the fishermen returns you are gone, because just like the days I burn at both ends, every time I write, every time I open my eyes I'm cutting out a part of myself to give to you. So Shake the Dust, and take me with you when you do none of this...What has this has fucking ever been for me, that pushes and pulls.. pushes and pulls for you! So grab this world by it's clothes pins and shake it out again and again and jump on top for a spin and when you hop off shake it off for this is yours. Make, Make my words worth, make it not just another poem that I write not just like another poem like another night, make it like it's heavy about us all, walk into it breath it in let it crash through the halls of your arms like the millions of years of millions poets coursing like blood pumping, pushing and making you live, shaking the dust! So when the world knocks at your front door clutch the knob and open on up, running forward into it's wide spread greeting arms with your hands before you your fingertips trembling, though they may be. -Anis Mojgani
The Art Of Drowning by Billy Collins
ReplyDeleteI wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.
How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.
Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,
a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.
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We are like butterflies
ReplyDeletewho flutter for a day
and think it is forever.
-Carl Sagan
I learned this poem last year for Honors Modern Civ and it's been one of my favorites ever since:
ReplyDeleteIF.....
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-