Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Monday, January 19, 2015

Exhale



• Exhale • 


Going through it 


The long duration of dark 


The cold winter night 


The silent day 


When will I know my reason 


When can I enter into peaceful solitude 


Life is but a blink of the eye 


A bat of the lash 


If you want to know 


I'm chasing the wind 


And will soon be mown down 


By the sharp blade 


Come on spring 


Make me new again 


I set and wait for both 


Anonymous

Monday, December 8, 2014

the creator's glory


Should guilty seek asylum here, 

Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin. 

Should a sinner make his way to this mansion, 

All his past sins are to be washed away. 

The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs; 

And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes. 

In this world this edifice has been made; 

To display thereby the creator's glory.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

die well



Then out spake brave Horatius,


The Captain of the gate:


"To every man upon this earth


Death cometh soon or late.


And how can man die better


Than facing fearful odds


For the ashes of his fathers


And the temples of his gods."


Monday, August 25, 2014

For Whom the Bell Tolls



No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.


Monday, August 18, 2014

we burn



"Time is the school in which we learn, 


Time is the fire in which we burn."


Delmore Schwartz

mooncake

Sunday, August 3, 2014

In Flanders fields


In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

calmly we walk through this april's day



Time is the school in which we learn,


Time is the fire in which we burn.



Sunday, December 8, 2013

Saturday, November 9, 2013

trivialities


"We're all going to die, 

all of us, 

what a circus ! 

That alone should make us love each other 

but it doesn't. 

We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, 

we are eaten up by nothing." 


Thursday, November 7, 2013

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot



Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Jabberwocky


'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

make believe



' Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange;

Stranger than fiction; if it could be told,

How much would novels gain by the exchange!

How differently the world would men behold!

How oft would vice and virtue places change!

The new world would be nothing to the old,

If some Columbus of the moral seas

Would show mankind their souls' antipodes.

Lord Byron, in the satirical poem Don Juan, 1823.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Walk a Mile with Me

Blessings Everyone:

Someone once said something about walking a mile in another person's shoes to learn empathy. 
Do you have 8 min. to walk a mile with me? 
You can still wear your own shoes.
your humble servant, 
ancient clown

Saturday, March 2, 2013

love with unconfined wings


When Love with unconfinèd wings
   Hovers within my Gates,
And my divine Althea brings
   To whisper at the Grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
   And fettered to her eye,
The Gods that wanton in the Air,
   Know no such Liberty.


When flowing Cups run swiftly round
   With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with Roses bound,
   Our hearts with Loyal Flames;
When thirsty grief in Wine we steep,
   When Healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the Deep
   Know no such Liberty.


When (like committed linnets) I
   With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, Mercy, Majesty,
   And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
   He is, how Great should be,
Enlargèd Winds, that curl the Flood,
   Know no such Liberty.


Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
   Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
   That for an Hermitage.
If I have freedom in my Love,
   And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above,
   Enjoy such Liberty.

Richard Lovelace
 

Friday, February 22, 2013

with silent lifting mind




"High Flight"

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
  
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

 Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth

 of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things

 You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung

 High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

 I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung

 My eager craft through footless halls of air.


 Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

 I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.

 Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

 And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

 The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

 Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Thursday, June 28, 2012