stay the same

the biggest thing man has ever done

proud mary

warm love

brown penny

i whispered, "i am too young,"
and then, "i am old enough";
wherefore i threw a penny
to find out if i might love.

"go and love, go and love, young man,
if the lady be young and fair."
ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
i am looped in the loops of her hair.

o love is the crooked thing,
there is nobody wise enough
to find out all that is in it,
for he would be thinking of love.

till the stars had run away
and the shadows eaten the moon.
ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
one cannot begin it too soon.

- william butler yeats

a clear midnight

this is the hour o soul, thy free flight into the worldless,
away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
night, sleep, and the stars.


- walt whitman

owachomo bridge at night, utah

for a poet

i have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
and laid them away in a box of gold;
where long will cling the lips of the moth,
i have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
i hide no hate; i am not even wroth
who found earth's breath so keen and cold;
i have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
and laid them away in a box of gold.

- countee cullen

thirteen footnotes in search of a poem

1 A reference to his first love affair.

2 Its tragic sensibility co-opted forever, it is now a part of television comedy lore and legend.

3 Another use of his iconic cedar hedge, perennially surrounded by blooming African-lilies, Goat’s beards, Bee balms and Four-o'clocks.

4 A Yiddish word meaning “lost person” or “fool.” Similar to putz or shmuck, but without the sexual/genital innuendo.

5 Thrift, thrift Horatio! the funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the wedding tables. His favorite lines from “Hamlet,” he often remarked how “contemporary” they sounded.

6 30 Pounds Sterling, and too, a reference to Judas’s 30 pieces of silver.

7 See Michael Ostroff and Lawrence Trachtenberg, “Umvelt, Mitvelt, and Eigenvelt, The Journal of Cultural Phenomenology, Vol. 12, July, (1988) 12–43. The issue is addressed again by Ronald Housman in his insightful piece: “Yehuda Amichai,” Tanach: A Journal of Ideas 31 (1996) 53–85

8 The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert. Casablanca, dir. Michael Curtiz, writ. J. Epstein, P. Epstein, H Koch, C. Robinson (uncredited), perf. Claude Rains, DVD, Warner Brothers, 1942

9 For a brilliant exegesis of this most central theme in his work see: Dr. Marjorie Saunders, “Mimesis and Family Myth,” Poetry, Image, and Id, Lon Berk Ed., Washington Universe Press, St. Louis, 1976 204–310

10 IBID. Editor’s Introduction 4–10

11 Clearly, the poetry of this his last period, (after 1970), shows little of his famous / infamous self-abnegation.

12 cf. Funeral baked meats

13 “Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” Author Unknown.


- Matthew Sisson

children playing in the rain, bangladesh

meggie

"the day that i first saw you at the gilly station, you smiled at me, then you said my name. then you touched me. and since that day, i have somehow known, though i never saw you again, that my last thought this side of the grave would be of you."

roald dahl

"we have so much time and so little to do. strike that, reverse it."

the voice project

photo of the day by arie yudhistira

the thorn birds

"the bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. at the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note."

zorbing

the wild hunt

victor hugo

"be like the bird that, halting on its flight
awhile on boughs too slight,
feels them give way beneath her,
and yet sings
knowing that she hath wings."

home

robert montgomery

"a dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest."

walt whitman

crayon pirate

"there was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. what does it mean? i said. a pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said & then he pulled his eye patch down & turned and sailed away."
- brian andreas

lewis carroll

"if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."

shirin neshat

alone, drinking with the tickfaw river

featherweight lawn chair, cooler for a footrest,
and me a squatter on the landlord's dock
where bait stealers teased a thousand times a day
until rowdy boats and summer scared them deep.
day and night i snoozed on the porch
beneath a filthy orbit of fan blades
to the opera of my neighbors fighting
and reconciling in the glow of stolen wattage.

i saw them swimming once. maybe naked,
judging from their skittish talk, but the water
smeared their bodies' pale particulars.
it was just me and the tickfaw river.
me with the taste of a tin can in my mouth,
feeling no pain, lighting a cigarette backwards,
the tickfaw tricking me closer and closer
with echoes and music out of nowhere.

is it funny that i was too lit to notice
twenty-five orange yards of extension cord
stretching from my outlet, over the driveway shells,
to feed the hungry plug of their deep freezer?
mother would have pitched a fit if she discovered
the stash of whiskey in the woodpile,
and my father wasn't laughing
if he looked down from his company of stars.

- alison pelegrin

chinese proverb

"women hold up half the sky."

john muir

"how glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains."

no loser, no weeper

"i hate to lost something," then she bent her head

"even a dime, i wish i was dead.

i can't explain it. no more to be said.

cept i hate to lose something."

"i lost a doll once and cried for a week.

she could open her eyes, and do all but speak.

i believe she was took, by some doll-snatching-sneak

i tell you, i hate to lose something."

"a watch of mine once, got up and walked away.

it had twelve numbers on it and for the time of day.

i'll never forget it and all i can say

is i really hate to lose something."

"now if i felt that way bout a watch and a toy,

what you think i feel bout my lover-boy?

i ain't threatening you madam, but he is my evening's joy.

and i mean i really hate to lose something."

- maya angelou

ralph waldo emerson

"make yourself necessary to somebody."

sylvia plath

"i want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of non-feeling, or stop questioning and criticising life and take the easy way out. to learn and to think; to think and to live, to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love."

white blank page

sparrow and the medicine

salvador dalí

"at the age of six I wanted to be a cook. at seven I wanted to be napoleon. and my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

i thank you

i thank you god for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasking touching hearing seeing

breathing any-- lifted from the no

of all nothing-- human merely being

doubt unimaginable you?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- e. e. cummings

love is a place

love is a place

& through this place of

love move

(with brightness of peace)

all places

yes is a world

& in this world of

yes live

(skillfully curved)

all worlds

- e. e. cummings

when i heard the learn'd astronomer

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 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.

- walt whitman

hymn 35

hymn 35 lyrics

i am the day
i am the dawn
i am the darkness coming on.
i am once
i am twice
i am the whole
i'm just a slice.
some call me gone
some call me here
nothing wrong
nothing near.
i am right now
i am back then
i will return
don't ask me when.
i am the disappointed kiss
i am the unexpected harvest.
i am the old kentucky home
i am the son who runs the farthest.
i have done wrong
i will do wrong
there's nothing wrong with doing wrong.
i am faith
i am belief
except for when i'm not.
i am the teeth of champions
i am the rust of water rot.
and i am sleep
i am breathing
i'm the missing of the passing season.
i am the brush
i am the strokes
i'm sickness come to the best of folks.
i am renewed
i am just made
i am unchanging.
i'm a pasture fenced about the edge
i am the coat of thunder raging.
and by my shoes and by my feet and by my soul and wonder
i am the tracks we laid above
i am the tunnel running under.

crimewave

do not go gentle into that good night

do not go gentle into that good night,
old age should burn and rage at close of day;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.

though wise men at their end know dark is right,
because their words had forked no lightning they
do not go gentle into that good night.

good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.

wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
do not go gentle into that good night.

grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
blind eyes could blaze with meteors and be gay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.

and you, my father, there on the sad height,
curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, i pray.
do not go gentle into that good night.
rage, rage against the dying of the light.

ralph waldo emerson

"i am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me."

sailing to byzantium

that is no country for old men. the young

in one another's arms, birds in the trees

- those dying generations - at their song,

the salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

caught in that sensual music all neglect

monuments of unageing intellect.

an aged man is but a paltry thing,

a tattered coat upon a stick, unless

soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

for every tatter in its mortal dress,

nor is there singing school but studying

monuments of its own magnificence;

and therefore i have sailed the seas and come

to the holy city of byzantium.

o sages standing in god's holy fire

as in the gold mosaic of a wall,

come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

and be the singing-masters of my soul.

consume my heart away; sick with desire

and fastened to a dying animal

it knows not what it is; and gather me

into the artifice of eternity.

once out of nature i shall never take

my bodily form from any natural thing,

but such a form as grecian goldsmiths make

of hammered gold and gold enamelling

to keep a drowsy emperor awake;

or set upon a golden bough to sing

to lords and ladies of byzantium

of what is past, or passing, or to come.

- william butler yeats

don't tremble

f. scott fitzgerald

"i hope she'll be a fool. that's the best thing a girl can be in this world. a beautiful little fool.

i and love and you

track one dance yrself clean

*lcd soundsystem, this is happening, 18 may 2010

approaching simplicity

"poetry can seem, as a medium, to resist simplicity. pattern loves its intricacies, and verbal patterning in particular has a tendency to intoxicate the unwary composer before and sometimes instead of its audience. part of mastery, then, must always concern restraint: when to attempt simplicity-with the attendant risk of being thought simple-and, just as crucially, when not to."

- w. n. herbert

william james

king of spain

john f. kennedy

"when politics corrupts, poetry cleanses."

the danger of lying in bed

The man in the ticket-office said:

"Have an accident insurance ticket, also?"

"No," I said, after studying the matter over a little. "No, I believe not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today. However, tomorrow I don't travel. Give me one for tomorrow."

The man looked puzzled. He said:

"But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel by rail--"

"If I am going to travel by rail I sha'n't need it. Lying at home in bed is the thing _I_ am afraid of."

I had been looking into this matter. Last year I traveled twenty thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, I traveled over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail; and the year before that I traveled in the neighborhood of ten thousand miles, exclusively by rail. I suppose if I put in all the little odd journeys here and there, I may say I have traveled sixty thousand miles during the three years I have mentioned. AND NEVER AN ACCIDENT.

For a good while I said to myself every morning: "Now I have escaped thus far, and so the chances are just that much increased that I shall catch it this time. I will be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket." And to a dead moral certainty I drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started or a bone splintered. I got tired of that sort of daily bother, and fell to buying accident tickets that were good for a month. I said to myself, "A man CAN'T buy thirty blanks in one bundle."

But I was mistaken. There was never a prize in the the lot. I could read of railway accidents every day--the newspaper atmosphere was foggy with them; but somehow they never came my way. I found I had spent a good deal of money in the accident business, and had nothing to show for it. My suspicions were aroused, and I began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery. I found plenty of people who had invested, but not an individual that had ever had an accident or made a cent. I stopped buying accident tickets and went to ciphering. The result was astounding. THE PERIL LAY NOT IN TRAVELING, BUT IN STAYING AT HOME.

I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all the glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters, less than THREE HUNDRED people had really lost their lives by those disasters in the preceding twelve months. The Erie road was set down as the most murderous in the list. It had killed forty-six-- or twenty-six, I do not exactly remember which, but I know the number was double that of any other road. But the fact straightway suggested itself that the Erie was an immensely long road, and did more business than any other line in the country; so the double number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise.

By further figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester the Erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day--16 altogether; and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. That is about a million in six months--the population of New York City. Well, the Erie kills from 13 to 23 persons of ITS million in six months; and in the same time 13,000 of New York's million die in their beds! My flesh crept, my hair stood on end. "This is appalling!" I said. "The danger isn't in traveling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds. I will never sleep in a bed again."

I had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of the Erie road. It was plain that the entire road must transport at least eleven or twelve thousand people every day. There are many short roads running out of Boston that do fully half as much; a great many such roads. There are many roads scattered about the Union that do a prodigious passenger business. Therefore it was fair to presume that an average of 2,500 passengers a day for each road in the country would be almost correct. There are 846 railway lines in our country, and 846 times 2,500 are 2,115,000. So the railways of America move more than two millions of people every day; six hundred and fifty millions of people a year, without counting the Sundays. They do that, too--there is no question about it; though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the jurisdiction of my arithmetic; for I have hunted the census through and through, and I find that there are not that many people in the United States, by a matter of six hundred and ten millions at the very least. They must use some of the same people over again, likely.

San Francisco is one-eighth as populous as New York; there are 60 deaths a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter--if they have luck. That is 3,120 deaths a year in San Francisco, and eight times as many in New York--say about 25,000 or 26,000. The health of the two places is the same. So we will let it stand as a fair presumption that this will hold good all over the country, and that consequently 25,000 out of every million of people we have must die every year. That amounts to one-fortieth of our total population. One million of us, then, die annually. Out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way, such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations, getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops, breaking through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines, or committing suicide in other forms. The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds!

You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The railroads are good enough for me.

And my advice to all people is, Don't stay at home any more than you can help; but when you have GOT to stay at home a while, buy a package of those insurance tickets and sit up nights. You cannot be too cautious.

[One can see now why I answered that ticket-agent in the manner recorded at the top of this sketch.]

The moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumble more than is fair about railroad management in the United States. When we consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen thousand railway-trains of various kinds, freighted with life and armed with death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is, NOT that they kill three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth, but that they do not kill three hundred times three hundred!

- Mark Twain

turn up the bass

john muir

"in every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

blenda studio

henry david thoreau

"i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if i could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when i came to die, discover that i had not lived. i did not wish to life what was not life, living is so dear; not did i wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. i wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live os sturdily and spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

epilogue to through the looking glass

a boat, beneath a sunny sky
lingering onward dreamily
in an evening of july --
children three that nestle near,
eager eye and willing ear
pleased a simple tale to hear --
long has paled that sunny sky:
echoes fade and memories die:
autumn frosts have slain july.
still she haunts me, phantomwise
alice moving under skies
never seen by waking eyes.
children yet, the tale to hear,
eager eye and willing ear,
lovingly shall nestle near.
in a wonderland they lie,
dreaming as the days go by.
dreaming as the summers die:
ever drifting down the stream --
lingering in the golden gleam --
life what is it but a dream?
- lewis carroll

the united states in black and white

only the lull i like

i believe in you my soul, the other i am must not abase itself to you,
and you must not be abased to the other.

loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
not words, not music or rhyme i want, not custom or lecture,
not even the best,
only the lull i like, the hum of your valved voice.

- walt whitman

ralph waldo emerson

"live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air..."

the sharpest crown

i'm so happy that you didn't sneeze

"You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, 'Are you Martin Luther King?' And I was looking down writing, and I said, 'Yes.' And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, your drowned in your own blood -- that's the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,
Dear Dr. King,

I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.
And she said,
While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.
And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.

If I had sneezed -- If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.

I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.

And they were telling me -- now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, 'We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night.'

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!"

- Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 23rd, 1968

in spite of everything

in spite of everything

which breathes and moves, since doom

(with white longest hands

neatening each crease)

will smooth entirely our minds

-before leaving my room

i turn, and(stopping

through the morning)kiss

this pillow, dear

where our heads lived and were.

- e. e. cummings

a dream within a dream

take this kiss upon the brow!

and, in parting from you now,

thus much let me avow-

you are not wrong, who deem

that my days have been a dream;

yet if hope has flown away

in a night, or in a day,

in a vision, or in none,

is it therefore the less gone?

all that we see or seem

is but a dream within a dream.

i stan amid the roar

of a surf-tormented shore,

and i hold within my hand

grains of the golden sand0-

how few! yet how they creep

through my fingers to the deep,

while i weep- while i weep!

o god! can i not grasp

them with a tighter clasp?

o god! can i not save

one from the pitiless wave?

is all that we see or seem

but a dream within a dream?

- edgar allen poe

at that hour

at that hour when all things have repose,

o lonely watcher of the skies,

do you hear the night wind and the sighs

of harps playing unto love to unclose

the pale gates of sunrise?

when all things repose, do you alone

awake to hear the sweet harps play

to love before him on his way,

and the night wind answering in antiphon

till night is overgone?

play on, invisible harps, unto love,

whose way in heaven is aglow

at that hour when soft lights come and go,

soft sweet music in the air above

and in the earth below.

- james joyce

the missing all- prevented me

the missing all- prevented me

from missing minor things.

if nothing larger than a world's

departure from a hinge-

or sun's extinction, be observed-

'twas not so large that i

could lift my forehead from my work

for curiosity.

- emily dickinson

sir walter raleigh to his son

three things there be that prosper up apace,

and flourish while they grow asunder far;

but on a day, they meet all in a place,

and when they meet, they one another mar.

and they be these: the wood, the weed, the wag:

the wood is that that makes the gallows tree;

the weed is that that strings the hangman's bag;

the way, my pretty knave, betokens thee.

now mark, dear boy- while these assemble not,

green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild;

but when they meet, it makes the timber rot,

it frets the halter, and it chokes the child.

- sir walter raleigh

san francisco

annabel lee

it was many and many a year ago,
in a kingdom by the sea,
that a maiden there lived whom you may know
by the name of annabel lee;
and this maiden she lived with no other thought
than to love and be loved by me.

i was a child and she was a child,
in this kingdom by the see;
but we loved with a love that was more than love-
i and my annabel lee;
with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
coveted her and me.

and this was the reason that, long ago,
in this kingdom by the sea
a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
my beautiful annabel lee;
so that her highborn kinsman came
and bore her away from me,
to shut her up in a sepulchre
in this kingdom by the sea.

the angels, not half so happy in heaven,
went envying her and me-
yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
in this kingdom by the sea)
that the wind came out of the cloud by night,
chilling and killing my annabel lee.

but our love it was stronger by far than the love
of those who were older than we-
of many far wiser than we-
and neither the angels in heaven above,
nor the demons down under the sea,
can ever dissever my soul from the soul
of the beautiful annabel lee.

for the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
of the beautiful annabel lee;
and the stars never rise but i feel the bright eyes
of the beautiful annabel lee;
and so, all the night-tide, i lie down by the side
of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
in the sepulchre there by the sea.

- edgar allen poe

i am satisfied

i am satisfied - i see, dance, laugh, sing;

as the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread

- walt whitman

anywhere i go

not so sure

the breakfast club

dear mr. vernon,

we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. what we did was wrong. but we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. you see us as you want to see us... in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. but what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. does that answer your question?

sincerely yours,

the breakfast club

LIFE

tom baker

"there's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."

martin luther king, jr.

"we are not makers of history, we are made by history."

mimi khalvati

"i'm drawn to the fluidity of connections, the fragility of boundaries."

the lake isle of innisfree

i will arise and go now, and go to innisfree,

and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

nine bean-rows will i have there, a hive for the honeybee,

and live alone in the bee-loud glade.

and i shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

there midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

and evening full of the linnet's wings.

i will arise and go now, for always night and day

i hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

while i stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

i hear it in the deep heart's core.

- william butler yeats

he wishes for the cloths of heaven

had i the heavens' embroidered cloths,

enwrought with golden and silver light,

the blue and the dim and the dark cloths

of night and light and the half-light,

i would spread the cloths under your feet:

but i, being poor, have only my dreams;

i have spread my dreams under your feet;

tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

- william butler yeats

boots of spanish leather

you really got a hold on me

i like for you to be still/me gustas cuando callas

i like for you to be still, and you seem far away.

it sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.

and you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:

let me come be still in your silence.

- pablo neruda

el tango de roxanne

the snowman

the giving tree

Once there was a tree..... and she loved a little boy. And every day the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest. He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples. And they would play hide-and-go-seek. And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade. And the boy loved the tree.......very much. And the tree was happy.

But time went by. And the boy grew older. And the tree was often alone. Then one day the boy came to the tree and the tree said "Come, Boy, come and climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and eat apples and play in my shade and be happy."

"I am too big to climb and play", said the boy. "I want to buy things and have fun. I want some money. Can you give me some money?" "I'm sorry," said the tree, "but I have no money, I have only leaves and apples. Take my apples, Boy, and sell them in the city. Then you will have money and you will be happy." And so the boy climbed up the tree and gathered her apples and carried them away. And the tree was happy.
But the boy stayed away for a long time.. and the tree was sad. And then one day the boy came back and the tree shook with joy and she said, "Come, Boy, climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and be happy." "I am too busy to climb trees," said the boy. "I want a house to keep me warm," he said. "I want a wife and I want children, and so I need a house. Can you give me a house?" "I have no house," said the tree. "The forest is my house, but you may cut off my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy." And the boy cut off her branches and carried them away to build his house. And the tree was happy.

But the boy stayed away for a long time. And when he came back, the tree was so happy she could hardly speak. "Come, Boy," she whispered, "come and play." "I am too old and sad to play," said the boy. "I want a boat that take me far away from here. Can you give me a boat?" "Cut down my trunk and make a boat," said the tree. "Then you can sail away...... and be happy." And so the boy cut down her trunk and made a boat and sailed away. And the tree was happy....

but not really. And after a long time the boy came back again. "I am sorry, Boy," said the tree,

"but I have nothing left to give you----" "My apples are gone." "My teeth are too weak for apples," said the boy. "My branches are gone," said the tree. "You cannot swing on them------" "I am too old to swing on branches," said the boy. "My trunk is gone," said the tree. "You cannot climb--------" "I am too tired to climb," said the boy. "I am sorry," sighed the tree. "I wish that I could give you something------ but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump." "I don't need very much now," said the boy. "just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired." "Well," said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could, "well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest." And the boy did. And the tree was happy.

- Shel Silverstein

parks (benchers and sitters)

alice in wonderland

"But I don't want to go among mad people," said Alice. "Oh, you can't help that," said the cat. "We're all mad here."

frankenstein

"My spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy."

pygmalion

"Would the world ever had been made if it's maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble."

santorini

no need to worry/redcave

you shall above all things be glad and young

you shall above all things be glad and young.

for if you're young, whatever life you wear

it will become you; and if you are glad

whatever's living will yourself become

girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:

i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's

flesh put space on; and his mind take off time

that you should ever think, may god forbid

and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:

for that way knowledge lies, the foetal grave

called progress, and negation's dead undoom.

i'd rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

- e.e. cummings

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, 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

ain't no sunshine