What Poetry Moved You?

[Guest bitchy_witchy]

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. It chills my bone every time I read it.

 

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 December,

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -

Nameless here for evermore.

 

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -

This it is, and nothing more,'

 

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -

Darkness there, and nothing more.

 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before

But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'

Merely this and nothing more.

 

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -

'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

 

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.

Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

 

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -

Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as `Nevermore.'

 

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -

Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -

On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'

Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -

Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore

Of "Never-nevermore."'

 

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -

What this grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

 

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

 

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee

Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

 

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -

Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -

On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -

Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

 

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

 

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -

`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

 

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted - nevermore!

[Mobius Stripper]

http://www.haikuworld.org/gary/arizona.haiku.jpg

[iwalkalone]

Sonnet 132: Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me

William Shakespeare

 

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,

Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,

Have put on black, and loving mourners be,

Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.

And truly not the morning sun of heaven

Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,

Nor that full star that ushers in the even

Doth half that glory to the sober west

As those two mourning eyes become thy face.

O, let it then as well beseem thy heart

To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,

And suit thy pity like in every part.

Then will I swear beauty herself is black,

And all they foul that thy complexion lack.

[Karma Policeman]

Howl

 

by Allen Ginsberg

 

I

 

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats

floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- ment roofs

illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the

scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn- ing their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror

through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al- cohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada &

Paterson, illuminating all the mo- tionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront

boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks

of Brook- lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of

wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of

brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer after noon in desolate

Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook- lyn Bridge,

lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State

out of the moon,

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of

hospitals and jails and wars,

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on

the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind- ings and migraines of China under junk-with- drawal in

Newark's bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no

broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grand- father night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep- athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in- stinctively

vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis- ionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla- homa on the impulse of winter midnight street light smalltown

rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard

to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and

ash of poetry scattered in fire place Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their

dark skin passing out incom- prehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos

wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild

cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu- scripts,

who let themselves be f#&ked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering

their semen freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond

& naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed

shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual

golden threads of the craftsman's loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can- dle and fell off

the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt

and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared

to sweeten the snatch of the sun rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and

Adonis of Denver-joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'

rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet- ticoat upliftings &

especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up

out of basements hung over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-

ment offices,

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open

to a room full of steamheat and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of

the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates

of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of

gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their

heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess- fully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where

they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up

clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of

sinis- ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap- pened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the

ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas- saic, leaped on

negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic

European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears

and the blast of colossal steam whistles,

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or

Birmingham jazz incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find

out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver

& brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul

illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in

their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific

to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp notism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung

jury,

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of

the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in- stantaneous lobotomy,

and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho- therapy

occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad man doom of the

wards of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock- ing and rolling in

the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night- mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the

moon,

with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at

4. A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur- nished room emptied down to the last

piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing

but a hopeful little bit of hallucination

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the

catalog the meter & the vibrat- ing plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the

soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together

jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intel- ligent and shaking

with shame, rejected yet con- fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come

after death,

and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of

America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to

the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

 

II

 

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi- nation?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob tainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys

sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose

buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun- ned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies!

Moloch whose breast is a canni- bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless

Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac- tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the

cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the

specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and

manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me

out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral

nations! invincible mad houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave- ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which

exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! De- spairs! Ten years'

animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the

roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

 

III

 

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland where you're madder than I am

I'm with you in Rockland where you must feel very strange

I'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my mother

I'm with you in Rockland where you've murdered your twelve secretaries

I'm with you in Rockland where you laugh at this invisible humor

I'm with you in Rockland where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

I'm with you in Rockland where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio

I'm with you in Rockland where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses

I'm with you in Rockland where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica

I'm with you in Rockland where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx

I'm with you in Rockland where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of the actual pingpong of

the abyss

I'm with you in Rockland where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die

ungodly in an armed madhouse

I'm with you in Rockland where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a

cross in the void

I'm with you in Rockland where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against

the fascist national Golgotha

I'm with you in Rockland where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from

the superhuman tomb

I'm with you in Rockland where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com- rades all together singing the final stanzas

of the Internationale

I'm with you in Rockland where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs

all night and won't let us sleep

I'm with you in Rockland where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the

roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col- lapse O skinny legions run

outside O starry spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we're free

I'm with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea- journey on the highway across America in tears

to the door of my cottage in the Western night

Edited October 31, 2006 by Karma Policeman

[iwalkalone]

lifeless living

tenacious poetress

 

 

Your heart beats wildly,

as we both lie awake.

Hugging me to you,

afraid to let go.

 

Keep your grasp, love

I might slip away

silence is your response

and i accept it fully

 

i love you,

can you hear me?

No answer as you stare

at the ceiling.

 

I get up and walk about the room

you lay there quietly

my favorite mug serves as a companion

on our deck filled with hot tea

 

A deer walks silently across the lawn

and I wish you cared about life enough

to take joy in this

but you dont

 

Pieces of the puzzles fell away

and you are a stranger who I live with

your hugs and kisses have faded

and you laughter is just an echo

 

My mug shatters on the deck

and i startle the deer as well as myself

I try to pick up the pieces and

my hand bleeds

 

I cry for my hands, my favorite mug,

but most of all for you.

You can not hear my sobbing

and if you do you are immune to compassion

 

I wrap my hand with a dish towel

and I hear you stir

So i hide in the pantry.

and watch you go on to the deck.

 

You call my name

and see the blood.

I see the fear in your eyes

and I realize you still care.

 

I walk outside and you

hug me tightly to you

my blood staining your tee shirt

but you dont care

 

you smooth my hair

and whisper and apology

and the pain in my hand is melted away

and a smile curves my lips

 

I look to the stars,

and thank God for this night

because tomorrow could have been lost

to lifeless living.

 

but today we take our chances

and share a long awaited kiss

love has found us again

and i'm glad that you want to live again

[Mobius Stripper]

http://static.flickr.com/62/172352652_d6f9f73976_o.jpg

[ghostsap]

Deep in Earth

(Edgar Allan Poe)

 

deep in earth my love is lying

and I must weep alone

[mason_rod]

A Cruel Black Dragon Lurks in the Wood by Joel Radcliffe

 

On this day the Wise agree

That a wild beast walks in the forest;

It is quite black all over.

When its head is cut off

The blackness will disappear completely

Changing to snow white.

 

Understood correctly,

The blackness is called the head of the Raven;

But as soon as the blackness disappears,

And the whiteness shows;

It is called "robbed of its head."

 

I believe the Wise

Are heartily glad;

When the black smoke finally dissipates.

 

Yet they keep this secret closely guarded

That no foolish man may know it;

Only allowing it to be written about

for the benefit of their Sons.

 

What is given of God

Becomes reserved.

 

Therefore one should say nothing about it

While God would have it concealed.

 

My son, be it quickly understood,

A cruel black dragon lurks in the wood.

 

^o^

 

[iwalkalone]

Water and I would be one,

how my heart fell from its cushion.

Words remain life everlasting. I know I will read it again.

I am here now, I return to its faceless culture,

this place a string on my heart,

like a fish I am pulled from the water’s of extravagance,

it is here that I twist for my freedom, the air that I need for life,

polluted and dry.

My thoughts like my sugar on my coffee

froth disappear to sweeten me later again.

[TNT Hsia]

Once upon a time you dressed so fine

You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?

People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"

You thought they were all kiddin' you

You used to laugh about

Everybody that was hangin' out

Now you don't talk so loud

Now you don't seem so proud

About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

 

How does it feel

How does it feel

To be without a home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone?

 

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely

But you know you only used to get juiced in it

And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street

And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it

You said you'd never compromise

With the mystery tramp, but now you realize

He's not selling any alibis

As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes

And ask him do you want to make a deal?

 

How does it feel

How does it feel

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone?

 

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns

When they all come down and did tricks for you

You never understood that it ain't no good

You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you

You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat

Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat

Ain't it hard when you discover that

He really wasn't where it's at

After he took from you everything he could steal.

 

How does it feel

How does it feel

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone?

 

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people

They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made

Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things

But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe

You used to be so amused

At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used

Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose

You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

 

How does it feel

How does it feel

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone?

 

http://www.hot97.com/pics/morningShowPage/whitney.jpg

Edited November 3, 2006 by TNT Hsia

[mason_rod]

Voyage to Cythera

by Charles Baudelaire

 

Free as a bird and joyfully my heart

Soared up among the rigging, in and out;

Under a cloudless sky the ship rolled on

Like an angel drunk with brilliant sun.

 

"That dark, grim island there--which would that be?"

"Cythera," we're told, "the legendary isle

Old bachelors tell stories of and smile.

There's really not much to it, you can see."

 

O place of many a mystic sacrament!

Archaic Aphrodite's splendid shade

Lingers above your waters like a scent

Infusing spirits with an amorous mood.

 

Worshipped from of old by every nation,

Myrtle-green isle, where each new bud discloses

Sighs of souls in loving adoration

Breathing like incense from a bank of roses

 

Or like a dove roo-cooing endlessly . . .

No; Cythera was a poor infertile rock,

A stony desert harrowed by the shriek

Of gulls. And yet there was something to see:

 

This was no temple deep in flowers and trees

With a young priestess moving to and fro,

Her body heated by a secret glow,

Her robe half-opening to every breeze;

 

But coasting nearer, close enough to land

To scatter flocks of birds as we passed by,

We saw a tall cypress-shaped thing at hand--

A triple gibbet black against the sky.

 

Ferocious birds, each perched on its own meal,

Were madly tearing at the thing that hung

And ripened; each, its filthy beak a drill,

Made little bleeding holes to root among.

 

The eyes were hollowed. Heavy guts cascading

Flowed like water halfway down the thighs;

The torturers, though gorged on these vile joys,

Had also put their beaks to use castrating

 

The corpse. A pack of dogs beneath its feet,

Their muzzles lifted, whirled and snapped and gnawed;

One bigger beast amidst this jealous lot

Looked like an executioner with his guard.

 

O Cytherean, child of this fair clime,

Silently you suffered these attacks,

Paying the penalty for whatever acts

Of infamy had kept you from a tomb.

 

Grotesquely dangling, somehow you brought on--

Violent as vomit rising from the chest,

Strong as a river bilious to taste--

A flow of sufferings I'd thought long gone.

 

Confronted with such dear remembered freight,

Poor devil, now it was my turn to feel

A panther's slavering jaws, a beak's cruel drill--

Once it was my flesh they loved to eat.

 

The sky was lovely, and the sea divine,

but something thick and binding like a shroud

Wrapped my heart in layers of black and blood;

Henceforth this allegory would be mine.

 

O Venus! On your isle what did I see

But my own image on the gallows tree?

O God, give me the strength to contemplate

My own heart, my own body without hate!

 

^o^

[Mobius Stripper]

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~ig206/sappho.png

 

Rather poorly translated:

 

You must be as one of the gods who, seated in your presence,

hears your sweet voice and divine laughter.

 

My heart pounds in my breast;

the very sight of you deprives me of the power of speech.

 

A thin fire races through my veins;

I cannot see and I cannot hear.

 

I sweat and my whole body trembles;

I am paler than the dried grass and in my madness I am as good as dead.

 

I must dare all ...

[mason_rod]

Drunk

by Baudelaire

 

You have to be always drunk…

That's all there is to it… It's the only way…

So as not to feel the horrible burden of time;

That breaks your back and bends you to the earth.

You have to be continually drunk…

But on what?

Wine, poetry or virtue as you wish.

But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace…

Or the green grass of a ditch…

In the mournful solitude of your room;

You wake again…

Drunkenness already diminishing or gone.

Ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock…

Everything that is flying…

Everything that is groaning…

Everything that is rolling…

Everything that is singing…

Everything that is speaking…

Ask what time it is;

And the wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you:

“ It’s time to be drunk! “

So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk.

Be continually drunk!

On wine, on poetry, or on virtue as you wish."

 

[lemon]

lassare il velo o per sole o per ombra

 

i have not seen you, lady,

leave off your veil in sun or shadow,

since you knew that great desire in myself

that all other wishes in the heart desert me.

 

while i held the lovely thoughts concealed,

that make the mind desire death,

i saw your face adorned with pity:

but when love made you wary of me,

 

then blonde hair was veiled,

and loving glances gathered to themselves.

that which I most desired in you is taken from me:

 

the veil so governs me

that to my death, and by heat and cold,

the sweet light of your lovely eyes is shadowed.

 

11, the canzoniere. just a passing thought.

[naked_angel]

when i'm feeling like there's no love coming to me

 

and i have no love to give

 

when i'm feeling separated from the world

 

and cut off from myself

 

when i'm feeling annoyed by every little thing

 

because i'm not getting what i want

 

i'll remember that there is an infinite amount of love available to me.

 

and i'll see it in you.

 

i'll remember that i am complete within myself

 

so i'll never have to look to you to complete me.

 

and most of all, i'll remember that everything i really need i already have, and whatever i don't have will come to me when

 

i'm ready to receive it...

 

¿para quien es tu poema?

¿para mí o para ellos?

esto es para ti, yo pienso.

o para mí también