December 2011
1 post
Buddy Wakefield - Convenience Stores
We both know the smell of a convenience store at 4 am like the backs of a lotta hands. She sells me trucker crack Mini-Thins like Vivarin. Doesn’t make me feel awkward about it. She can tell it’s been a long drive, and it’s only gonna get longer. Offers me a free cup of coffee, but I never touch the stuff. Besides, I’m gonna need more speed than that. We notice each other’s smiles immediately....
October 2011
8 posts
e.e. cummings - open his head,baby
open his head,baby & you’ll find a heart in it (cracked)
open that heart,mabel & you’ll find a bed in it (fact)
open this bed,sibyl & you’ll find a tart in it (wed)
open the tart,lady & you’ll find his mind in it (dead)
William Ernest Henley - Invictus
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me...
T.S Eliot - Little Gidding (IV)
The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre— To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot...
Edna St Vincent Millay - Mariposa
Butterflies are white and blue In this field we wander through. Suffer me to take your hand. Death comes in a day or two. All the things we ever knew Will be ashes in that hour, Mark the transient butterfly, How he hangs upon the flower. Suffer me to take your hand. Suffer me to cherish you Till the dawn is in the sky. Whether I be false or true, Death comes in a day or two.
Edna St Vincent Millay - First Fig
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light.
Edna St Vincent Millay - Not So Far as the Forest
That chill is in the air Which the wise know well, and even have learned to bear. This joy, I know, Will soon be under snow. The sun sets in a cloud And is not seen. Beauty, that spoke aloud, Addresses now only the remembering ear. The heart begins here To feed on what has been. Night falls fast. Today is in the past. Blown from the dark hill hither to my door Three flakes, then four Arrive, then...
Christina Rossetti - Mirage
THE hope I dreamed of was a dream, Was but a dream; and now I wake Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old, For a dream’s sake.
I hang my harp upon a tree, A weeping willow in a lake; I hang my silenced harp there, wrung and snapt For a dream’s sake.
Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart; My silent heart, lie still and break: Life, and the world, and mine own self, are...
William Butler Yeats - The Stolen Child
WHERE dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats, Full of berrys And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wave of moonlight...
September 2011
18 posts
Sylvia Plath - I Am Vertical
But I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam into leaf, Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, Unknowing I must soon unpetal. Compared with me, a tree is immortal And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, And I want the one’s...
1 tag
Anne Sexton - For My Lover, Returning To His Wife
She is all there. She was melted carefully down for you and cast up from your childhood, cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling. She is, in fact, exquisite. Fireworks in the dull middle of February and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let’s face it, I have been momentary. A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor. My hair rising like smoke from...
5 tags
Shakespeare - Hamlet
To be, or not to be—that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep— No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be...
1 tag
Shakespeare - Macbeth
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1 tag
Alfred Lord Tenneyson - The Lady of Shalott
On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro’ the field the road runs by To many-tower’d Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Through the wave that runs for ever ...
Edgar Allen Poe - The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.’ Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak...
Carl Dennis - Drugstore
Don’t be ashamed that your parents
Didn’t happen to meet at an art exhibit
Or at a protest against a foreign policy
Based on fear of negotiation,
But in an aisle of a discount drugstore,
Near the antihistamine section,
Seeking relief from the common cold.
You ought to be proud that even there,
Amid coughs and sneezes,
They were able to peer beneath
The veil of pointless happenstance.
...
Sylvia Plath - Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see, I swallow immediately. Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike I am not cruel, only truthful – The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and...
Andrew Marvell - The Definition of Love
My love is of a birth as rare As ‘tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive Where my extended soul is fixed But Fate does iron wedges drive, And always crowds itself...
William Blake - Europe A Prophesy
How know you this said I small Sir? where did you learn this song? Seeing himself in my possession thus he answered me: My master, I am yours. command me, for I must obey. Then tell me, what is the material world, and is it dead? He laughing answer’d: I will write a book on leaves of flowers, If you will feed me on love-thoughts, & give me now and then A cup of sparkling poetic...
William Blake - America A Prophesy
The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations; The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up; The bones of death, the cov’ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry’d. Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening! Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;
Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field: ...
1 tag
Edgar Allen Poe - 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 sea: But we loved with a love that was more than love - I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of...
1 tag
Christina Rossetti - Goblin Market (selection)
Pricking up her golden head: “We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?”
EE Cummings - anyone lived in a pretty how town
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by...
1 tag
William Butler Yeats - When You Are Old And Grey
When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the...
1 tag
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Christabel
Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain. And thus it chanced, as I divine, With Roland and Sir Leoline. Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart’s best brother: They parted- ne’er to meet...
Theodore Roethke - Dolor
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight, All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage, Desolation in immaculate public places, Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard, The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher, Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma, Endless duplicaton of lives and objects. And I have seen dust from the walls of...
Wallace Stevens - The Idea of Order at Key West
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she...
August 2011
18 posts
Ogden Nash - The Adventures of Isabel
Isabel met an enormous bear, Isabel, Isabel, didn’t care; The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous, The bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous. The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you, How do, Isabel, now I’ll eat you! Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry. Isabel didn’t scream or scurry. She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up, Then Isabel quietly ate the...
John Keats - Ode to a Nightingale
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness, - That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In...
A. E. Housman - Terence, This is Stupid Stuff...
Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill , And while the sun and moon endure Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure, I’d face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good. ‘Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary...
T.S Eliot - The Long Song of J. Alfred Prufrock...
In the room the women come and go 35 Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40 (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—...
Stephen Crane - In the desert
In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said: “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter-bitter,” he answered; “But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”
Rumi - Go back to sleep.
Go back to sleep. Yes, you are allowed. You have no Love in your heart, go back to sleep. His Love and his sorrow are exclusive to us, you go back to sleep. I have been burnt by the fire of the sorrow of Love. You have no such yearning in your heart, go back to sleep. The path of Love, has seventy-two folds and countless facets. Your love and religion is all about deceit and hypocrisy, go back to...
Rumi - Don't go back to sleep.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.
Ani DiFranco - Pulse *
You crawled into my bed
like some sort of giant insect and i found myself spellbound that night at the sight of you there beautiful and grotesque and all the rest of that bug stuff bluffing your way into my mouth behind my teeth, reaching for my scars that night we got kicked out of two bars and laughed our way home that night you leaned over and threw up into your hair and i held you there...
Sylvia Plath - Elm
I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there. Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse. All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, Till your head...
1 tag
William Carlos Williams - This Is Just To Say
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox
and which you were probably saving for breakfast
Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
1 tag
Walt Whitman - Song of Myself (VI)
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark,...
Dylan Thomas - Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good...
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...
TE Lawrence - Seven Pillars of Wisdom
I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars.
Sylvia Plath - Lady Lazarus (selection)
These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
- - -
Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call.
- - -
Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.
1 tag
Sylvia Plath - The Rabbit Catcher (selection)
I felt a still busyness, an intent. I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt, Ringing the white china. How they awaited him, those little deaths! They waited like sweethearts. They excited him.
And we, too, had a relationship— Tight wires between us, Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring Sliding shut on some quick thing, The constriction killing me also.
Emily Bronte - I'm Happiest When Most Away
I’m happiest when most away
I can bear my soul from its home of clay
On a windy night when the moon is bright
And the eye can wander through worlds of light—
When I am not and none beside—
Nor earth nor sea nor cloudless sky—
But only spirit wandering wide
Through infinite immensity.
1 tag
William Carlos Williams - The Descent
The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned. Memory is a kind of accomplishment, a sort of renewal even an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new places inhabited by hordes heretofore unrealized, of new kinds— since their movements are toward new objectives (even though formerly they were abandoned).
No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since the...
Sylvia Plath - Mad Girl's Love Song
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from...