Man -- > Poem

[Man]

Poem



Awakening

That morning whisper
A gentle kiss
A suspended moment
Of perfect bliss

That precious feeling
As eyes first meet
Bodies entwined
In sleepy heat

Fingers touching
Breath as one
Hearts in rhythm
We greet the sun

Content, in truth
Just to be
Simply enjoying
You and me





-- -- --



~ By - Jamie Vogel -



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



One Fateful Day

No river's span is quite as vast
No mountain's reach so high.
No rose's scent is quite as sweet
As the love I hold inside.

Every time I see your face and
Every time you smile,
Every time I kiss your lips,
My love grows all the while

I’m the luckiest man to walk the earth
To know a love like yours
Loving is so easy now
You’ve opened my heart’s doors.

And I'll love you 'til my life has ceased
And still more with my soul
Because that fateful day we met,
My heart you forever stole.




-- -- --



~ By - Ryan Brennan -




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



When a Woman Loves a Man



When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.

When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"

When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.

Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?

When he says, "Ours is a transitional era,"
"that's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the martini he is sipping.

They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been ****ed without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an English accent.

One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.

When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.

When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.

When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.






-- -- --



~ By - David Lehman




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Married You



I married you
for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your
dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging
like hidden weapons
under your shirt,
by your naive ties, the colors
of painted scraps of sunset.

I was charmed too
by your assumptions
about me: my serenity—
that mirror waiting to be cracked,
my flashy acrobatics with knives
in the kitchen.
How wrong we both were
about each other,
and how happy we have been.








-- -- --



~ By Linda Pastan




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Kiss



She pressed her lips to mind.
—a typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.









-- -- --



~ By Stephen Dunn




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Love in a Life


Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her,
Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,—
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.

Yet the day wears,
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortune—
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest,—who cares?
But 'tis twilight, you see,—with such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!







-- -- --



~ By Robert Browning





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



In a Boat



See the stars, love,
In the water much clearer and brighter
Than those above us, and whiter,
Like nenuphars.

Star-shadows shine, love,
How many stars in your bowl?
How many shadows in your soul,
Only mine, love, mine?

When I move the oars, love,
See how the stars are tossed,
Distorted, the brightest lost.
—So that bright one of yours, love.

The poor waters spill
The stars, waters broken, forsaken.
—The heavens are not shaken, you say, love,
Its stars stand still.

There, did you see
That spark fly up at us; even
Stars are not safe in heaven.
—What of yours, then, love, yours?

What then, love, if soon
Your light be tossed over a wave?
Will you count the darkness a grave,
And swoon, love, swoon?





-- -- --



~ By D. H. Lawrence





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Love



All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o'er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruin'd tower.

The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene,
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!

She lean'd against the armèd man,
The statue of the armèd Knight;
She stood and listen'd to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best whene'er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.

I play'd a soft and doleful air;
I sang an old and moving story—
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.

She listen'd with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
For well she knew I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he woo'd
The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another's love,
Interpreted my own.

She listen'd with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
And she forgave me, that I gazed
Too fondly on her face!

But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he cross'd the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade—

There came and look'd him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!

And that, unknowing what he did,
He leap'd amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land;—

And how she wept and clasp'd his knees;
And how she tended him in vain—
And ever strove to expiate
The scorn that crazed his brain;—

And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest leaves
A dying man he lay;—

His dying words—but when I reach'd
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturb'd her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherish'd long!

She wept with pity and delight,
She blush'd with love and virgin shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved—she stepp'd aside,
As conscious of my look she stept—
Then suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,
She press'd me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, look'd up,
And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.

I calm'd her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous Bride.




-- -- --



~ By Samuel Taylor Coleridge





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Love


We cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of life: and when we bear
Our virtue onward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes, there
We live most life, whoever breathes most air
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both make
mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole
And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,
As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.




-- -- --



~ By Elizabeth Barrett Browning






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I loved you first...

-- from Monna Innominata


I loved you first: but afterwards your love,
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? My love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you contrued me
And loved me for what might or might not be—
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not 'mine' or 'thine';
With separate 'I' and 'thou' free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of 'thine that is not mine';
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.






-- -- --



~ By Christina Rossetti






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



She Walks in Beauty



She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!








-- -- --



~ By George Gordon Byron






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I wish I could remember...

-- from Monna Innominata



I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or Winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand—Did one but know!




-- -- --



~ By Christina Rossetti






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Buried Life



Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there ’s a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne;
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal’d
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reprov’d;
I knew they liv’d and mov’d
Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!—doth a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices?—must we too be dumb?

Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain’d;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain’d!

Fate, which foresaw
How frivolous a baby man would be—
By what distractions he would be possess’d,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity—
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey
Even in his own despite his being’s law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us—to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.

And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves—
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress’d.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well—but ’t is not true!
And then we will no more be rack’d
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.

Only—but this is rare—
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen’d ear
Is by the tones of a lov’d voice caress’d—
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,
And hears its winding murmur, and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
The flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.



-- -- --



~ By Matthew Arnold






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



No, Love Is Not Dead



No, love is not dead in this heart these eyes and this mouth
that announced the start of its own funeral.
Listen, I've had enough of the picturesque, the colorful
and the charming.
I love love, its tenderness and cruelty.
My love has only one name, one form.
Everything disappears. All mouths cling to that one.
My love has just one name, one form.
And if someday you remember
O you, form and name of my love,
One day on the ocean between America and Europe,
At the hour when the last ray of light sparkles
on the undulating surface of the waves, or else a stormy night
beneath a tree in the countryside or in a speeding car,
A spring morning on the boulevard Malesherbes,
A rainy day,
Just before going to bed at dawn,
Tell yourself-I order your familiar spirit-that
I alone loved you more and it's a shame
you didn't know it.
Tell yourself there's no need to regret: Ronsard
and Baudelaire before me sang the sorrows
of women old or dead who scorned the purest love.
When you are dead
You will still be lovely and desirable.
I'll be dead already, completely enclosed in your immortal body,
in your astounding image forever there among the endless marvels
of life and eternity, but if I'm alive,
The sound of your voice, your radiant looks,
Your smell the smell of your hair and many other things
will live on inside me.
In me and I'm not Ronsard or Baudelaire

I'm Robert Desnos who, because I knew
and loved you,
Is as good as they are.
I'm Robert Desnos who wants to be remembered
On this vile earth for nothing but his love of you.

A la mysterieuse




-- -- --



~ By Robert Desnos






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Meeting at Night


The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low:
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!






-- -- --



~ By Robert Browning







--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Love's Philosophy




The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle—
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?




-- -- --



~ By Percy Bysshe Shelley







--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Passionate Shepherd to His Love



Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.





-- -- --



~ By Christopher Marlowe







--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The White Rose



The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.






-- -- --



~ By John Boyle O'Reilly







--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Look



Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.








-- -- --



~ By Sara Teasdale






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Red, Red Rose



O my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
O I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve,
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.





-- -- --



~ By Robert Burns






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Wooing Song



Love is the blossom where there blows
Every thing that lives or grows:
Love doth make the Heav'ns to move,
And the Sun doth burn in love:
Love the strong and weak doth yoke,
And makes the ivy climb the oak,
Under whose shadows lions wild,
Soften'd by love, grow tame and mild:
Love no med'cine can appease,
He burns the fishes in the seas:
Not all the skill his wounds can stench,
Not all the sea his fire can quench.
Love did make the bloody spear
Once a leavy coat to wear,
While in his leaves there shrouded lay
Sweet birds, for love that sing and play
And of all love's joyful flame
I the bud and blossom am.
Only bend thy knee to me,
Thy wooing shall thy winning be!

See, see the flowers that below
Now as fresh as morning blow;
And of all the virgin rose
That as bright Aurora shows;
How they all unleavèd die,
Losing their virginity!
Like unto a summer shade,
But now born, and now they fade.
Every thing doth pass away;
There is danger in delay:
Come, come, gather then the rose,
Gather it, or it you lose!
All the sand of Tagus' shore
Into my bosom casts his ore:
All the valleys' swimming corn
To my house is yearly borne:
Every grape of every vine
Is gladly bruised to make me wine:
While ten thousand kings, as proud,
To carry up my train have bow'd,
And a world of ladies send me
In my chambers to attend me:
All the stars in Heav'n that shine,
And ten thousand more, are mine:
Only bend thy knee to me,
Thy wooing shall thy winning be!



-- -- --



~ By Giles Fletcher






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Wildflower



Some--the ones with fish names--grow so north
they last a month, six weeks at most.
Some others, named for the fields they look like,
last longer, smaller.

And these, in particular, whether trout or corn lily,
onion or bellwort, just cut
this morning and standing open in tapwater in the kitchen,
will close with the sun.

It is June, wildflowers on the table.
They are fresh an hour ago, like sliced lemons,
with the whole day ahead of them.
They could be common mayflower lilies of the valley,

day lilies, or the clustering Canada, large, gold,
long-stemmed as pasture roses, belled out over the vase--
or maybe Solomon's seal, the petals
ranged in small toy pairs

or starry, tipped at the head like weeds.
They could be anonymous as weeds.
They are, in fact, the several names of the same thing,
lilies of the field, butter-and-eggs,

toadflax almost, the way the whites and yellows juxtapose,
and have "the look of flowers that are looked at,"
rooted as they are in water, glass, and air.
I remember the summer I picked everything,

flower and wildflower, singled them out in jars
with a name attached. And when they had dried as stubborn
as paper I put them on pages and named them again.
They were all lilies, even the hyacinth,

even the great pale flower in the hand of the dead.
I picked it, kept it in the book for years
before I knew who she was,
her face lily-white, kissed and dry and cold.





-- -- --



~ By Stanley Plumly






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Wildwood Flower



I hoe thawed ground
with a vengeance. Winter has left
my house empty of dried beans
and meat. I am hungry

and now that a few buds appear
on the sycamore, I watch the road
winding down this dark mountain
not even the mule can climb
without a struggle. Long daylight

and nobody comes while my husband
traps rabbits, chops firewood, or
walks away into the thicket. Abandoned
to hoot owls and copperheads,

I begin to fear sickness. I wait
for pneumonia and lockjaw. Each month
I brew squaw tea for pain.
In the stream where I scrub my own blood
from rags, I see all things flow
down from me into the valley.

Once I climbed the ridge
to the place where the sky
comes. Beyond me the mountains continued
like God. Is there no place to hide
from His silence? A woman must work

else she thinks too much. I hoe
this earth until I think of nothing
but the beans I will string,
the sweet corn I will grind into meal.

We must eat. I will learn
to be grateful for whatever comes to me.





-- -- --



~ By Kathryn Stripling Byer






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Without a Philosophy



. . . like a dog between 4 trees . . .
—

Toward the end of this summer,
this long labyrinth,
I thought of you in a clearing
green and sunlit, bordered by four
tall trees and the dusky spaces
between them where barely
discernible rhododendron
start the process of shadows.

Light moves on your turning
shoulders and on the four tall trees:
the black walnut, the copper beech,
two sycamores peeling to bonewhite
the sun loves most.

It's not only the trees but more
than your fabled dog's choices;
it's those darknesses between
that like me you are lured to choose.

But you are arrested there—
watching the swallowtails
feed on the aster, then go in
and disappear.





-- -- --



~ By Elizabeth Morgan






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Woman Had Placed



after jorge luis borges

a yellow rose
in a hotel glass
the man had kissed her
on the neck
had kissed her
on the mouth

but these kisses belonged to yesterday
there would be no moment
of revernalization

yellow roses came from china
open in may before our hybrids
unfold pink rugosities and baroque scent
expose dusty fissured yellow pearls






-- -- --



~ By Anne Blonstein






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Red, Red Rose



O my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
O I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve,
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.






-- -- --



~ By Robert Burns






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Blur




Storms of perfume lift from honeysuckle,
lilac, clover—and drift across the threshold,
outside reclaiming inside as its home.
Warm days whirl in a bright unnumberable blur,
a cup—a grail brimmed with delirium
and humbling boredom both. I was a boy,
I thought I'd always be a boy, pell—mell,
mean, and gaily murderous one moment
as I decapitated daises with a stick,
then overcome with summer's opium,
numb—slumberous. I thought I'd always be a boy,
each day its own millennium, each
one thousand years of daylight ending in
the night watch, summer's pervigilium,
which I could never keep because by sunset
I was an old man. I was Methuselah,
the oldest man in the holy book. I drowsed.
I nodded, slept—and without my watching, the world,
whose permanence I doubted, returned again,
bluebell and blue jay, speedwell and cardinal
still there when the light swept back,
and so was I, which I had also doubted.
I understood with horror then with joy,
dubious and luminous joy: it simply spins.
It doesn't need my feet to make it turn.
It doesn't even need my eyes to watch it,
and I, though a latecomer to its surface, I'd
be leaving early. It was my duty to stay awake
and sing if I could keep my mind on singing,
not extinction, as blurred green summer, lifted
to its apex, succumbed to gravity and fell
to autumn, Ilium, and ashes. In joy
we are our own uncomprehending mourners,
and more than joy I longed for understanding
and more than understanding I longed for joy.








-- -- --



~ By Andrew Hudgins





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



At Baia


I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."

Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:

"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"

or

"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."









-- -- --



~ By Hilda Doolittle.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Botanica



They are everywhere--those sunflowers with the coal heart center. They riot
without speaking, huge, wet mouths caught at half-gasp, half-kiss.
Flowers she promises I’ll grow into, sweet gardener,
long luminous braids I’d climb like ladders, freckles scattered
across our shoulders in a spell of pollen. She’s sleeping there--on that table
with its veneer slick as a glass coffin. She’s fed us fiddleheads, the tine fists
of Brussels sprouts, cupcakes, even the broken song of the deer’s neck. Singing.
Flowers everywhere. In my bedroom chaste daisies and the vigilance
of chrysanthemums. Dirt under my nails, pressing my cheek to the shag rug
with its million fingers. You could lose anything: a tooth, Barbie’s shoe,
this prayer. She loves me. She loves me not. I stare at my reflection,
a posy of wishes. Morning glory, nightshade, tulip, rhododendron.
In this poem I would be the Wicked Witch and she Snow White. Waiting.
My father talks to me about their lovemaking. My mouth empty
as a lily. I try to remember the diagram. Which is the pistil?
Which is the stamen? Roads of desire circle our house: Lost Nation Severance,
Poor Farm. Branches catch the wings of my nightgown.
There is a crow and the smell of blackberries.











-- -- --



~ By Eve Alexandra





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



From me to you

Mother's Day

I searched everywhere
from the little shop in the corner of the street
to the big mall in the middle of the city
searching for what was in my mind

a special thing that would be the best choice
for this occasion
a little something that would say what i wanted to say

countless hours of search invain
i couldnt find it
maybe no one else understood it the same way
as i did
maybe they all felt it to be too hard
and too good to be true

i try to write it down
but words that once gushed down
now merely trickled down to nothing
how i wish i could pen down
what i wanted to say

i close my eyes and think about
the stuff that i thought about buying
comparing them to what you once said you wanted

then i realized
there is nothing that can compare
to your sweet smile,
to the love and caring nature
that you so easily emoted at all scenarios

the loving gestures
during the highs and lows
and the gentle words
with the power to calm a beast

i struggle to find the perfect thing
yet the ones i saw
couldnt match up with
all the things that make you "you"

after much struggle,
here it is
from me to you

"Happy Mothers Day"







-- -- --



~ By S P K100





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Look what you have done

look what you have done
Sitting down in the middle of the bed
i look up
i look down
i look to the right
to the left

waking up in the middle of the night
sweating all over
i tiptoe to the other room
trying to make sense of this new "fear"

fear that i once thought
has been conquered
fear that i remembered banishing from my kingdom
has once again come to stalk me

leaving me breathless
leaving me blushing
sleeplessness is the new mantra
carefully weighing my words every time
just to make sure i dont blabber

i dwell in this new found misery
like shakespeare's - to be or not to be
i weigh my options
should i or should i not

just 2 choices
either this or that
but with the power of 1000 elephants in each
i wake up everyday wondering if my castle will come breaking down
or if my castle will have a new occupant

i pick up the phone,
trying to get rid of this once and for all
i dial the number
hoping to get an answer

suddenly i wonder what if?
will i be able to?
why again?
while its no fault of mine
i wish i could put that out of my mind

i put the phone down
crawl back to the bed
whisper to the invisible person infront me
and say "look what you have done"


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

note: a simple no nonsense piece of writing that has absolutely only one meaning :)


-- -- --



~ By S P K100





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Enjoy the silence


A gun shot, a child's cry and a little laughter
a small talk, a big argument and crazy fight
standing patiently
you watch it with amazement
silently wishing for it to stop
yet amazed how stupid everyone can be when
chaos, commotion, violence
take over their sanity

words are violence
the more you talk
the more "insane" you become
the more you try to understand
the less you make out of it

life is one big canvas
with brushes aplenty
we all wait to paint the masterpiece
with the colors we want
amidst all this confusion
we look to standout
by standing on someone else

when you think you had enough
step back from this insane world
move into this darkness
take your time
enjoy the beauty
enjoy the silence


and when the time is right
for you to step back in this psychedelic world
you have a million reasons to rejoice
for you have a life full of rainbows
at every step


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


according to dictionary.com, psychedelic is defined as: (of a mental state) characterized by intense and distorted perceptions and hallucinations and feelings of euphoria or sometimes despair
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=psychedelic

of or causing extreme changes in the conscious mind, as hallucinations, delusions, intensification of awareness and sensory perception, etc. -



-- -- --



~ By S P K100





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Her Kisses, Hugs and Long Good-Byes

Moms and daughters healing touch “Mother’s Day”





“Mom's, the best because…”



She is a smile that chases all the blues

The love that understands my tears,

The care that sooths my failures

A hug, that eliminates my fears.



She is the faith that helps me life’s way

An inspiration, that kindles the spark

The confidence, I need day to day

A prayer that illuminates when dark



She is a sacrifice that teaches me love

A hand that gives me a lift

A tear that redeems me from a struggle

A healing touch that mends my wound



She is a rainbow when dark clouds circle

A special gift, that heavens gave me

The warmth that spreads a comfort

The eyes a source of compassion



Her kisses, hugs and long good-byes,

When I was leaving home to a far away land

The tears that filled her eyes
Only moms and daughters understand



Yet she smiles, to make me feel good

She turns to the other side and wipes her tears
Our love grows with passing years

For nothing can destroy or take that love away



The happiness that I derive,

Knowing that she is there...

To care, to appreciate, to listen or brace,

And to rejoice in the memoirs we share.




-- -- --



~ By Sophizz




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Miss My Innocence

Sophie's my thoughts inspired by reality


I might own a BMW,
But what’s the use, if it’s for boasting


I might have more than a dozen branded shoes,
But what’s the use, when I am not able to walk


I might wear an imported watch,
But what’s the use, when I can’t stop time


I might have hundred branded suits,
But what’s the use, when I am sick on bed

I might own a posh bungalow,
But what’s the use, if I have no space in my heart

I might have lots of money,
But what’s the use, if I have it locked up

I might have travelled many countries,
But what’s the use, if I have not accepted change

I might have an attractive voice
But what’s the use, if it doesn’t spread the cheer

I might speak a foreign language in a stylish accent,
But what’s the use, if I have no good words

I might look drop dead gorgeous/ handsome
But what’s the use, if I have ugliness inside

I might have beautiful/handsome mate,
But what’s the use, if I have no respect for someone else’s partner

I might have lots of people called friends
But what’s the use, if in trouble there are none

I might eat in a plush restaurant,
But what’s the use, if I have not shared my bread with the meek

I might have a luxurious, big cot,
But what’s the use, if I have a craving sleep

I might be a doctor, engineer, scientist,
But what’s the use, if I have nothing to give to the society

I might be a counsellor
But what’s the use, if I am confused about myself

I might be an adventure lover
But what’s the use, if I don’t have the courage to talk my mind out

I might be a scholarly person,
But what’s the use, if I have not learnt life’s lessons

I might have life’s everything,
But what’s the use, if I miss the fizz

I might be grown up now
Buts what’s the use, I miss my innocence


-- -- --



~ By Sophizz




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




The day's work was over

Fagged and wacked, I walked out of that multistoried posh tower

Dark clouds suddenly covered the sky and a lightning struck

And then there was this roaring thunder

A wind rushed blowing the sand

Those big drops of rain started falling from heaven

The leaves of those roadside plants, started blushing in joy

I spread my hands wide on either sides of my body

Raised it to keep it in line with my shoulders

My palms were facing upwards

I stretched them as though to capture all the rain drops

A deep breath escaped my nostrils

The damp air around cuddled my body, burning pinions of passion…
As I inhaled the intoxicating smell of the moist earth

Just receiving those big drops of water under my feet

The fresh wet n warm earthly aroma filled the air


I inhaled the alluring scent inside

It released a freshness that traversed to every cell of my body

I was taken to a mysterious state

I drew a line with my foot into the wet mud, curled my toes inwards

Taking mud between my toes

My eyes saw tantalizing beauty encapsulating me

There was so much to see, so much to feel and so much to enjoy

I closed my eyes, looked up and let out a breath

At that very moment, I felt the drops of rain on my face

Trickling down my skin onto my neck
My palm instantly wanted to capture the drops of water

I tried to hold them, but they trickled down between my fingers.

My clothes stuck to my body as if they were my skin

My wet body ran desires high, kindling intoxication

I could take no more,

It was magically euphoric moment


I opened my eyes a few minutes later,

There were more than a dozen people gaping at me from the parking lot

I kick started my two-wheeler and drove my way, bindas!

The rain had almost stopped when I reached home

I parked my two-wheeler and walked to a tree

Held its low lying branches strongly with my hands

And shook it to feel the remaining drops of the rain!!

It was again a magically euphoric moment



-- -- --



~ By Sophizz




--> Man

Click On The Picture To Enlarge

[Man]

Poem




MY GUIDING STAR

Mother's day “Mother’s Day”


“Mom, you’re the best because…”



Whenever I needed you, you were there,

Whether or not I asked for your hand.

You have always been the Guiding Star,

Shining on me from wherever you are.



Always urging me to go that extra mile,

To ensure my future would be wrapped in a smile.

Whatever I am today is because you were there.

Always pushing me, though my mind wasn’t there.



After often pushing me right over the top,

You ensured you were there to cushion my fall.

If it was not for your propelling hand,

An Oyster, I might have remained in my shell.



You always said – one’s work is what would count.

Beauty and fashion could well be done without.

Never neglect your duty is what you always said to me.

Good things will then come to you automatically.



Whenever in life’s race I could not carry on,

Holding my hand you alongside ran along.

Sometimes when the baton in exertion I dropped,

Picking it up you ensured I just did not stop.



Bravery, strength and values are what you inculcated in me.

A sense of duty, confidence and discipline never to leave.

Whenever in life’s journey I may begin to slip,

Your teachings once again mentally I will flip.



All your efforts mother may they not go in vain,

My success in life is what then will be your gain.

Truly fortunate in life I have always been,

An excellent coach and role model in you to have seen




-- -- --



~ By Shuvashree




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




A DISTANT LOVE

embrace tomorrow aching heart beautiful garden humming bird iron gates

Tomorrow by now you will go away,

Today is all there is for us to embrace.

Knowing that you may never return again,

We make the most of what there is today.



Driving in through the iron gates,

A beautiful garden in front, we gaze.

Bluebells swaying on either side.

The humming bird chirping to my right.



Waiting in the car for you to check us in,

My heart in my mouth I sadly think.

A great job opportunity though it is,

Can our love survive this long distance stint?



The Daisies, Tulips, Carnations, all

Are mute spectators to my aching heart.

How do I just let you go away?

Why can’t we together, forever stay?



Quietly we sit by the fire place.

My grieving heart why can’t it just wait?

Let me enjoy the warmth of your embrace

Tomorrow is as yet far away.



My heart knows you will find someone new.

Long distant love is probably just not true.

In your absence I too may find someone new,

Is this the kind of love we are married to ?




-- -- --



~ By Shuvashree




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




TOGETHER FOR A DAY

private thoughts perfect couple sea shore inhibitions clutches

As we stood there by the sea shore,

Lost in our private thoughts galore.

The waves crashing loudly on the shore.

Reminding us that we were together, no more.



Tomorrow will decide our love’s destiny,

A love that once was, but can now never be,

We have come a long way now,

Leaving our love behind somehow.



As the judge unties our marriage vows,

Setting us free from the clutches of doubt.

No longer will we be together now.

Can we just not remain friends somehow?



Tomorrow is still a day, one more.

Today is what we have for sure.

Deciding to be the perfect couple for a day,

In the hope that this memory will forever stay.



Leaving our inhibitions behind for a day,

We drive away to that far away place.

For one last time we defy our fate,

To change what has now become hate.



The room is cozy warm and true.

It’s our passion that rings untrue.

Just one time can we not honestly be,

Happy like we once used to be?





-- -- --



~ By Shuvashree




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




A NEW BEGINNING

Love Reviving the Romance

As we drive up the mountain steep.

The clear blue sky to the left and right we peek.

The moist cool breeze caressing our cheeks

The smell of the mountains enveloping us deep.



Gradually reclining my head on your shoulder,

What makes you quiver- is it the cold I wonder?

As we look out into the vast expanse of brown and green,

A picturesque cottage at the edge of the mountain we see.



Hand in hand glancing excitedly we alight,

Upon the daffodils swaying in the fading sunlight.

The chilly wind sending shivers up my spine.

My long tresses flying, over your tender smile.



As we step into the cottage serene,

The rustic smell of the mountains we leave.

The warmth of the fireplace setting our hearts aglow,

Our passion igniting and bringing, to the fore.



Sipping Champagne slowly by the fireside,

We lovingly look into each others eyes.

In your deep brown eyes I see the light.

Knowing for sure you will always be by my side.



Having just taken our vows the day before,

It’s our honeymoon that brought us to this cottage door.

I know for sure we will forever be.

In love with each other, always tenderly.



It’s been ages since we are together now.

Where is the romance gone I wonder somehow.

Do you think we can again rekindle the burning glow?

By going away to the cottage in the hills once more?







-- -- --



~ By Shuvashree




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




A Splash of Time

time distance romance random musings





“I am on the boulevard of broken dreams.”

The night sky, the faraway glittering lights, the occasional puffs of the killing white stick, the distant barks of a street dog, the skyscrapers, the Meg Ryan smiling from my lappy, a trance on late night [V] . Every thing, literally everything is hugged by your thoughts and memories.



All the stars have fallen from the skies. Fallen, disgraced, speculations galore. Even the skies are quantified these days, even they have borders. Digitized – artificial – they hardly evolve anymore emotions, they hardly make you feel fly high.



It has been so many days that I didn’t call you angel eyes…

It has been so many days that came to work for that sunshine smile of yours…

It has been so many days that I didn’t long for the darkness of your kohl eyes!



“It’s hard to hold a candle in the cold November rains.”

Rains! Soothing, drops, nostalgia, my first love, my solitude and solace, my tears from heaven, the freedom to roam out of school books, the watery eyes, my bread and butter for life. Everything, literally everything is hugged by your thoughts and the words.



All the waves have died from the seas. They won’t be the same for me ever again. The seas will hardly bring back the happiness I gave away, that evening. The thin line where the two blues merge – the seas and the skies will won’t glitter for me as the sunshine dwells in that neverland. They won’t evolve anymore poetry.



It has been so many days that I didn’t make you stop breathing…

It has been so many days that I didn’t open the scribbled papers…

It has been so many days that you made me feel my tears haven’t dried up yet!



“Kuch is tarah teri palkein meri palkon se mila de.”

Angel eyes, dream peddler, the soft whispers, the psychic seductions, the kiss that can bear infinite amount of pains in an inexhaustible space of time, the “home” I built for you with the red sands of Kovalam. Everything, almost everything is hugged by your thoughts and small dreams.



All the love has faded, shattered by time. Time is too unreal an entity to be pursued, to be given a thought to. It’s too much like the seas, the pendulum swings, as life twists, turns, curls and curves for me.

The crimson tide always gave me the slip. They won’t let me change even if I wanted to. They will kill me every time I wanted to live. After all my life is not only about “my” life. Some decisions.



It has been so many days that I didn’t smell your tears…

It has been so many days that I didn’t dream for you…

It has been so many days that I have been high on life!



Distance is such a beautiful thing isn’t it? You told me once, but I didn’t realize the hidden meaning in it. Now I feel it, as it sears through every vein of mine. Live sweetheart, live. Live without me.






-- -- --



~ By Dream Pedlar




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




From Ego to Silence!


silence ego random thoughts


Pieces of solidified blood,

Boiling in my ego flame,

To fight, to retaliate, to reciprocate!

Blood diffused, dilated;

Eyes blunted, blinded;

How can I open my mind, to all these insanities?

To eat, to decay, to disease!



Zillions of red atoms,

Forcing to freed of the melting pot,

How can I stab, myself, so that I can never run again?

To climb, to kill, to win!

Un-greened, vacant canvas;

Ego-ed, echoing darkness;

How can I seduce myself to this world of blatant illusions?

To suffer, to hate, to suffocate!



Cold, humiliated and a death dream,

Flaring in a can of dead worms,

How can I forget, to defend myself?

To bruise, to torture, to tribalism!

Self immune with life;

Vaccinated by the alter ego;

How can I let myself hurt so easily- fragile emotions?

To dream-catch, to self destruct, to cocoon!



Sliding voices, the final threshold,

Blind alleys of the silent backwaters,



Screams, sarcasms, hells!

Voices, blood, burns, bells!



Narrow, blind, diseased!

Pure, white, deceased!



Silence, blues, torn!

Hate, love, born!



Seed, ash!

Weed, rash!

Drip, strip!

Peep, deep!

Pearls!

Curls!

Done!

One!




-- -- --



~ By Dream Pedlar




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Pigmy seraphs—gone astray


138

Pigmy seraphs—gone astray—
Velvet people from Vevay—
Balles from some lost summer day—
Bees exclusive Coterie—
Paris could not lay the fold
Belted down with Emerald—
Venice could not show a check
Of a tint so lustrous meek—
Never such an Ambuscade
As of briar and leaf displayed
For my little damask maid—

I had rather wear her grace
Than an Earl's distinguished face—
I had rather dwell like her
Than be "Duke of Exeter"—
Royalty enough for me
To subdue the Bumblebee.







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Poor little Heart!


192

Poor little Heart!
Did they forget thee?
Then dinna care! Then dinna care!

Proud little Heart!
Did they forsake thee?
Be debonnaire! Be debonnaire!

Frail little Heart!
I would not break thee—
Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me?

Gay little Heart—
Like Morning Glory!
Wind and Sun—wilt thee array!








-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Portraits are to daily faces


170

Portraits are to daily faces
As an Evening West,
To a fine, pedantic sunshine—
In a satin Vest!









-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Prayer is the little implement


437

Prayer is the little implement
Through which Men reach
Where Presence—is denied them.
They fling their Speech

By means of it—in God's Ear—
If then He hear—
This sums the Apparatus
Comprised in Prayer—




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Precious to Me—She still shall be


727

Precious to Me—She still shall be—
Though She forget the name I bear—
The fashion of the Gown I wear—
The very Color of My Hair—

So like the Meadows—now—
I dared to show a Tress of Theirs
If haply—She might not despise
A Buttercup's Array—

I know the Whole—obscures the Part—
The fraction—that appeased the Heart
Till Number's Empery—
Remembered—as the Millner's flower

When Summer's Everlasting Dower—
Confronts the dazzled Bee.






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn


Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Promise This—When You be Dying


648

Promise This—When You be Dying—
Some shall summon Me—
Mine belong Your latest Sighing—
Mine—to Belt Your Eye—

Not with Coins—though they be Minted
From an Emperor's Hand—
Be my lips—the only Buckle
Your low Eyes—demand—

Mine to stay—when all have wandered—
To devise once more
If the Life be too surrendered—
Life of Mine—restore—

Poured like this—My Whole Libation—
Just that You should see
Bliss of Death—Life's Bliss extol thro'
Imitating You—

Mine—to guard Your Narrow Precinct—
To seduce the Sun
Longest on Your South, to linger,
Largest Dews of Morn

To demand, in Your low favor
Lest the Jealous Grass
Greener lean—Or fonder cluster
Round some other face—

Mine to supplicate Madonna—
If Madonna be
Could behold so far a Creature—
Christ—omitted—Me—

Just to follow Your dear future—
Ne'er so far behind—
For My Heaven—
Had I not been
Most enough—denied?







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Publication


Publication -- is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man --
Poverty -- be justifying
For so foul a thing

Possibly -- but We -- would rather
From Our Garret go
White -- Unto the White Creator --
Than invest -- Our Snow --

Thought belong to Him who gave it --
Then -- to Him Who bear
Its Corporeal illustration -- Sell
The Royal Air --

In the Parcel -- Be the Merchant
Of the Heavenly Grace --
But reduce no Human Spirit
To Disgrace of Price --







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Publication—is the Auction


Publication—is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man—
Poverty—be justifying
For so foul a thing

Possibly—but We—would rather
From Our Garret go
White—Unto the White Creator—
Than invest—Our Snow—

Thought belong to Him who gave it—
Then—to Him Who bear
Its Corporeal illustration—Sell
The Royal Air—

In the Parcel—Be the Merchant
Of the Heavenly Grace—
But reduce no Human Spirit
To Disgrace of Price—









-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Purple—is fashionable twice


980

Purple—is fashionable twice—
This season of the year,
And when a soul perceives itself
To be an Emperor.







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Put up my lute!


261

Put up my lute!
What of—my Music!
Since the sole ear I cared to charm—
Passive—as Granite—laps My Music—
Sobbing—will suit—as well as psalm!

Would but the "Memnon" of the Desert—
Teach me the strain
That vanquished Him—
When He—surrendered to the Sunrise—
Maybe—that—would awaken—them!




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Rehearsal to Ourselves


379

Rehearsal to Ourselves
Of a Withdrawn Delight—
Affords a Bliss like Murder—
Omnipotent—Acute—

We will not drop the Dirk—
Because We love the Wound
The Dirk Commemorate—Itself
Remind Us that we died.




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Remorse


Remorse -- is Memory -- awake --
Her Parties all astir --
A Presence of Departed Acts --
At window -- and at Door --

Its Past -- set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match --
Perusal -- to facilitate --
And help Belief to stretch --

Remorse is cureless -- the Disease
Not even God -- can heal --
For 'tis His institution -- and
The Adequate of Hell --




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Remorse—is Memory—awake


744

Remorse—is Memory—awake—
Her Parties all astir—
A Presence of Departed Acts—
At window—and at Door—

Its Past—set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match—
Perusal—to facilitate—
And help Belief to stretch—

Remorse is cureless—the Disease
Not even God—can heal—
For 'tis His institution—and
The Adequate of Hell—




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Removed from Accident of Loss


424

Removed from Accident of Loss
By Accident of Gain
Befalling not my simple Days—
Myself had just to earn—

Of Riches—as unconscious
As is the Brown Malay
Of Pearls in Eastern Waters,
Marked His—What Holiday
Would stir his slow conception—
Had he the power to dream
That put the Dower's fraction—
Awaited even—Him—






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Renunciation


Renunciation -- is a piercing Virtue --
The letting go
A Presence -- for an Expectation --
Not now --
The putting out of Eyes --
Just Sunrise --
Lest Day --
Day's Great Progenitor --
Outvie
Renunciation -- is the Choosing
Against itself --
Itself to justify
Unto itself --
When larger function --
Make that appear --
Smaller -- that Covered Vision -- Here --





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue


745

Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—
The letting go
A Presence—for an Expectation—
Not now—
The putting out of Eyes—
Just Sunrise—
Lest Day—
Day's Great Progenitor—
Outvie
Renunciation—is the Choosing
Against itself—
Itself to justify
Unto itself—
When larger function—
Make that appear—
Smaller—that Covered Vision—Here—






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Rest at Night


714

Rest at Night
The Sun from shining,
Nature—and some Men—
Rest at Noon—some Men—
While Nature
And the Sun—go on—







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Reverse cannot befall


395

Reverse cannot befall
That fine Prosperity
Whose Sources are interior—
As soon—Adversity

A Diamond—overtake
In far—Bolivian Ground—
Misfortune hath no implement
Could mar it—if it found—




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Ribbons of the Year


873

Ribbons of the Year—
Multitude Brocade—
Worn to Nature's Party once

Then, as flung aside
As a faded Bead
Or a Wrinkled Pearl
Who shall charge the Vanity
Of the Maker's Girl?




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Robbed by Death—but that was easy


971

Robbed by Death—but that was easy—
To the failing Eye
I could hold the latest Glowing—
Robbed by Liberty

For Her Jugular Defences—
This, too, I endured—
Hint of Glory—it afforded—
For the Brave Beloved—

Fraud of Distance—Fraud of Danger,
Fraud of Death—to bear—
It is Bounty—to Suspense's
Vague Calamity—

Stalking our entire Possession
On a Hair's result—
Then—seesawing—coolly—on it—
Trying if it split—




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Safe in their alabaster chambers,


Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadences, --
Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Savior! I've no one else to tell


217

Savior! I've no one else to tell—
And so I trouble thee.
I am the one forgot thee so—
Dost thou remember me?
Nor, for myself, I came so far—
That were the little load—
I brought thee the imperial Heart
I had not strength to hold—
The Heart I carried in my own—
Till mine too heavy grew—
Yet—strangest—heavier since it went—
Is it too large for you?




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Severer Service of myself


786

Severer Service of myself
I—hastened to demand
To fill the awful Vacuum
Your life had left behind—

I worried Nature with my Wheels
When Hers had ceased to run—
When she had put away Her Work
My own had just begun.

I strove to weary Brain and Bone—
To harass to fatigue
The glittering Retinue of nerves—
Vitality to clog

To some dull comfort Those obtain
Who put a Head away
They knew the Hair to—
And forget the color of the Day—

Affliction would not be appeased—
The Darkness braced as firm
As all my stratagem had been
The Midnight to confirm—

No Drug for Consciousness—can be—
Alternative to die
Is Nature's only Pharmacy
For Being's Malady—





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Sexton! My Master's sleeping here


96

Sexton! My Master's sleeping here.
Pray lead me to his bed!
I came to build the Bird's nest,
And sow the Early seed—

That when the snow creeps slowly
From off his chamber door—
Daisies point the way there—
And the Troubadour.





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Man -- > Poems
Poem





She bore it till the simple veins


144

She bore it till the simple veins
Traced azure on her hand—
Til pleading, round her quiet eyes
The purple Crayons stand.

Till Daffodils had come and gone
I cannot tell the sum,
And then she ceased to bear it—
And with the Saints sat down.

No more her patient figure
At twilight soft to meet—
No more her timid bonnet
Upon the village street—

But Crowns instead, and Courtiers—
And in the midst so fair,
Whose but her shy—immortal face
Of whom we're whispering here?








-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





She dealt her pretty words like Blades


479

She dealt her pretty words like Blades—
How glittering they shone—
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone—

She never deemed—she hurt—
That—is not Steel's Affair—
A vulgar grimace in the Flesh—
How ill the Creatures bear—

To Ache is human—not polite—
The Film upon the eye
Mortality's old Custom—
Just locking up—to Die.






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





She died at play


75

She died at play,
Gambolled away
Her lease of spotted hours,
Then sank as gaily as a Turn
Upon a Couch of flowers.

Her ghost strolled softly o'er the hill
Yesterday, and Today,
Her vestments as the silver fleece—
Her countenance as spray.



-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She died—this was the way she died


150

She died—this was the way she died.
And when her breath was done
Took up her simple wardrobe
And started for the sun.
Her little figure at the gate
The Angels must have spied,
Since I could never find her
Upon the mortal side.






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She dwelleth in the Ground


671

She dwelleth in the Ground—
Where Daffodils—abide—
Her Maker—Her Metropolis—
The Universe—Her Maid—

To fetch Her Grace—and Hue—
And Fairness—and Renown—
The Firmament's—To Pluck Her—
And fetch Her Thee—be mine—







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She hideth Her the last


557

She hideth Her the last—
And is the first, to rise—
Her Night doth hardly recompense
The Closing of Her eyes—

She doth Her Purple Work—
And putteth Her away
In low Apartments in the Sod -
As worthily as We.

To imitate her life
As impotent would be
As make of Our imperfect Mints,
The Julep—of the Bee—





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She lay as if at play


369

She lay as if at play
Her life had leaped away—
Intending to return—
But not so soon—

Her merry Arms, half dropt—
As if for lull of sport—
An instant had forgot—
The Trick to start—

Her dancing Eyes—ajar—
As if their Owner were
Still sparkling through
For fun—at you—

Her Morning at the door—
Devising, I am sure—
To force her sleep—
So light—so deep—




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She rose to His Requirement


732

She rose to His Requirement—dropt
The Playthings of Her Life
To take the honorable Work
Of Woman, and of Wife—

If ought She missed in Her new Day,
Of Amplitude, or Awe—
Or first Prospective—Or the Gold
In using, wear away,

It lay unmentioned—as the Sea
Develop Pearl, and Weed,
But only to Himself—be known
The Fathoms they abide—





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She rose to His Requirement - dropt


She rose to His Requirement - dropt
The playthings of her Life
To take the honorable Work
Of Woman, and of Wife -

If aught She missed in Her new Day,
Of Amplitude or Awe -
Or first Prospective - Or the Gold
In using, wear away,

It lay unmentioned - as the Sea
Develop Pearl, and Weed,
But only to Himself - be known
The Fathoms they abide -





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She rose to his requirement, dropped


She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife.

If aught she missed in her new day
Of amplitude, or awe,
Or first prospective, or the gold
In using wore away,

It lay unmentioned, as the sea
Develops pearl and weed,
But only to himself is known
The fathoms they abide.








-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She slept beneath a tree


25

She slept beneath a tree—
Remembered but by me.
I touched her Cradle mute—
She recognized the foot—
Put on her carmine suit
And see!






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She sped as Petals of a Rose


991

She sped as Petals of a Rose
Offended by the Wind—
A frail Aristocrat of Time
Indemnity to find—
Leaving on nature—a Default
As Cricket or as Bee—
But Andes in the Bosoms where
She had begun to lie—






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She staked her Feathers—Gained an Arc


798

She staked her Feathers—Gained an Arc—
Debated—Rose again—
This time—beyond the estimate
Of Envy, or of Men—

And now, among Circumference—
Her steady Boat be seen—
At home—among the Billows—As
The Bough where she was born—





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She sweeps with many-colored brooms,


She sweeps with many-colored brooms,
And leaves the shreds behind;
Oh, housewife in the evening west,
Come back, and dust the pond!

You dropped a purple ravelling in,
You dropped an amber thread;
And now you've littered all the East
With duds of emerald!

And still she plies her spotted brooms,
And still the aprons fly,
Till brooms fade softly into stars --
And then I come away.




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She went as quiet as the Dew


149

She went as quiet as the Dew
From an Accustomed flower.
Not like the Dew, did she return
At the Accustomed hour!

She dropt as softly as a star
From out my summer's Eve—
Less skillful than Le Verriere
It's sorer to believe!








-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Shells from the Coast mistaking


693

Shells from the Coast mistaking—
I cherished them for All—
Happening in After Ages
To entertain a Pearl—

Wherefore so late—I murmured—
My need of Thee—be done—
Therefore—the Pearl responded—
My Period begin





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




She's happy, with a new Content


535

She's happy, with a new Content—
That feels to her—like Sacrament—
She's busy—with an altered Care—
As just apprenticed to the Air—

She's tearful—if she weep at all—
For blissful Causes—Most of all
That Heaven permit so meek as her—
To such a Fate—to Minister.





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Should you but fail at—Sea


226

Should you but fail at—Sea—
In sight of me—
Or doomed lie—
Next Sun—to die—
Or rap—at Paradise—unheard
I'd harass God
Until he let you in!





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Sic transit gloria mundi


3

"Sic transit gloria mundi,"
"How doth the busy bee,"
"Dum vivimus vivamus,"
I stay mine enemy!

Oh "veni, vidi, vici!"
Oh caput cap-a-pie!
And oh "memento mori"
When I am far from thee!

Hurrah for Peter Parley!
Hurrah for Daniel Boone!
Three cheers, sir, for the gentleman
Who first observed the moon!

Peter, put up the sunshine;
Patti, arrange the stars;
Tell Luna, tea is waiting,
And call your brother Mars!

Put down the apple, Adam,
And come away with me,
So shalt thou have a pippin
From off my father's tree!

I climb the "Hill of Science,"
I "view the landscape o'er;"
Such transcendental prospect,
I ne'er beheld before!

Unto the Legislature
My country bids me go;
I'll take my india rubbers,
In case the wind should blow!

During my education,
It was announced to me
That gravitation, stumbling,
Fell from an apple tree!

The earth upon an axis
Was once supposed to turn,
By way of a gymnastic
In honor of the sun!

It was the brave Columbus,
A sailing o'er the tide,
Who notified the nations
Of where I would reside!

Mortality is fatal—
Gentility is fine,
Rascality, heroic,
Insolvency, sublime!

Our Fathers being weary,
Laid down on Bunker Hill;
And tho' full many a morning,
Yet they are sleeping still,—

The trumpet, sir, shall wake them,
In dreams I see them rise,
Each with a solemn musket
A marching to the skies!

A coward will remain, Sir,
Until the fight is done;
But an immortal hero
Will take his hat, and run!

Good bye, Sir, I am going;
My country calleth me;
Allow me, Sir, at parting,
To wipe my weeping e'e.

In token of our friendship
Accept this "Bonnie Doon,"
And when the hand that plucked it
Hath passed beyond the moon,

The memory of my ashes
Will consolation be;
Then, farewell, Tuscarora,
And farewell, Sir, to thee!







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Size circumscribes—it has no room


641

Size circumscribes—it has no room
For petty furniture—
The Giant tolerates no Gnat
For Ease of Gianture—

Repudiates it, all the more—
Because intrinsic size
Ignores the possibility
Of Calumnies—or Flies.






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Sleep is supposed to be


13

Sleep is supposed to be
By souls of sanity
The shutting of the eye.

Sleep is the station grand
Down which, on either hand
The hosts of witness stand!

Morn is supposed to be
By people of degree
The breaking of the Day.

Morning has not occurred!

That shall Aurora be—
East of Eternity—
One with the banner gay—
One in the red array—
That is the break of Day!









-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Smiling back from Coronation


385

Smiling back from Coronation
May be Luxury—
On the Heads that started with us—
Being's Peasantry—

Recognizing in Procession
Ones We former knew—
When Ourselves were also dusty—
Centuries ago—

Had the Triumph no Conviction
Of how many be—
Stimulated—by the Contrast—
Unto Misery—



-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Snow beneath whose chilly softness


942

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Read—Sweet—how others—strove


260

Read—Sweet—how others—strove—
Till we—are stouter—
What they—renounced—
Till we—are less afraid—
How many times they—bore the faithful witness—
Till we—are helped—
As if a Kingdom—cared!

Read then—of faith—
That shone above the fagot—
Clear strains of Hymn
The River could not drown—
Brave names of Men—
And Celestial Women—
Passed out—of Record
Into—Renown!






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Birches



When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.






-- -- --



~ By Robert Frost




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Crossings



Between forest and field, a threshold
like stepping from a cathedral into the street—
the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts,

boundlessness opens, earth itself retextured
into weeds where woods once were.
Even planes of motion shift from vertical

navigation to horizontal quiescence:
there’s a standing invitation to lie back
as sky’s unpredictable theater proceeds.

Suspended in this ephemeral moment
after leaving a forest, before entering
a field, the nature of reality is revealed








-- -- --



~ By Ravi Shankar




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Butterfly Catcher



In the Sixties
Nabokov switched

from ink to eraser-
topped pencil

on index cards a box
of cards for Ada a box

of cards for dreams
whose "curious features"

include "erotic tenderness
and heart-rending enchantment"

in one draft
he traded "stillness and heat"

for "silence, a burning"
so picture:

Vladimir seated
at the trunk of a tree

a spring day
at Wellesley where

he marvels at his students
and their cable-knit socks

the way each elastic
grips without binding

just below
the knee so exquisite

an application of pressure
that when said sock

is slowly
peeled off

the skin shows
no trace at all






-- -- --



~ By Tina Cane




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





There is a pain – so utter –
It swallows substance up –
Then covers the Abyss with Trance –
So Memory can step
Around – across – opon it –
As one within a Swoon –
Goes safely – where an open eye –
Would drop Him – Bone by Bone.



-- -- --



~ By from “599” by Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





To know just how He suffered – would be dear –
To know if any Human eyes were near
To whom He could entrust His wavering gaze


-- -- --



~ By from “688” by Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





I felt my life with both my hands
To see if it was there—
I held my spirit to the Glass,
To prove it possibler—


-- -- --



~ By from “351” by Emily Dickinson




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





...birds build -- but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.




-- -- --



~ By / From " Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord" by Gerard Manley Hopkins




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Even such is time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave
When we have wandered all our ways
Shuts up the story of our days,
And from which earth, and grave, and dust
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.



-- -- --



~ By Sir Walter Raleigh





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Shout



We went out
into the school yard together, me and the boy
whose name and face

I don't remember. We were testing the range
of the human voice:
he had to shout for all he was worth,

I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.

He called from over the park—I lifted an arm.
Out of bounds,
he yelled from the end of the road,

from the foot of the hill,
from beyond the look-out post of Fretwell's Farm—
I lifted an arm.

He left town, went to be twenty years dead
with a gunshot hole
in the roof of his mouth, in Western Australia.

Boy with the name and face I don't remember,
you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.





-- -- --



~ By Simon Armitage




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Problems with Hurricanes



A campesino looked at the air
And told me:
With hurricanes it's not the wind
or the noise or the water.
I'll tell you he said:
it's the mangoes, avocados
Green plantains and bananas
flying into town like projectiles.

How would your family
feel if they had to tell
The generations that you
got killed by a flying
Banana.

Death by drowning has honor
If the wind picked you up
and slammed you
Against a mountain boulder
This would not carry shame
But
to suffer a mango smashing
Your skull
or a plantain hitting your
Temple at 70 miles per hour
is the ultimate disgrace.

The campesino takes off his hat—
As a sign of respect
toward the fury of the wind
And says:
Don't worry about the noise
Don't worry about the water
Don't worry about the wind—
If you are going out
beware of mangoes
And all such beautiful
sweet things.


-- -- --



~ By Victor Hernández Cruz




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Seeing All the Vermeers



Met Museum, 1965, the first
I'll see, his Young Woman Sleeping.
Stage right, bright-threaded carpet flung over the table
where a plate of apples, crumpled napkin
and drained wineglass abut the recapped pitcher.
Propped by one hand, her leaning drowse,
behind which, a door opens on the dream, dim, bare
but for a console and framed mirror—or a painting
too shadowed to make out. Next to it,
(certitude) one window, shuttered for the duration....

That dream also timed me out, a lull in the boomeranging
hubbub of the staggering city I'd just moved to.

*

Continued :


-- -- --



~ By Alfred Corn




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Seeing All the Vermeers


Continuation


In the Frick's Officer and Laughing Girl, spring sunshine
entered left, partly blocked by the noncom suitor's hat-brim,
wide, dark as seduction, conquest. A map dotted with schooners
backed her fresh elations, the glass winking at them both.... He'd see
why, in a later day, crewcut recruits were shipping out to Nam;
and she, why the student left was up in arms against the war.

*

In '67, Ann and I spent a graduate year in Paris;
and lived in the Louvre, too, along with The Lacemaker—
self-effacing, monumental, an artisan
whose patience matched the painter's, inscribed
in tangling skeins of scarlet oil against an indigo
silk cushion. Silent excruciation
among toy spools framed the bald paradox
termed "women's work," disgracing anything less
than entire devotion to labor entered into. (That May,
a million demonstrators marched up the Champs Elysées.)




*

Continued :


-- -- --



~ By Alfred Corn




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Seeing All the Vermeers


Continuation




From there to Amsterdam and The Little Street,
where innate civility distilled a local cordial, free
from upheaval, from dearth and opulence, each brick
distinct, their collectivity made credible
by a chalky varicosis that riddled foreground façades.
A century's successive mortars filled those cracks,
nor will the figures down on hands and knees in the foreground
stand up again till they've replaced that broken tile.

The Woman in Blue Reading a Letter calmed misgivings
with the global trust that swelled her body, a soft counterweight
to expeditions tracked across the weathered map behind.
A new-found Eden, festooned with portents, history
piloting ship and cargo across the wrinkling sea.

The Maidservant Pouring Milk's power to see
in threadbare clothes and plain features a meek radiance
made of caritas, doesn't need words... But since I do,
call her a velvet motet developed in blue, in scaled-down
yellow-green that I could hear, the resonant stillness
centered on movement's figment, cream paint paying out
a corded rivulet at the cruse's lip. Crusty loaves, nail-holes
in plaster, and knuckles roughened by scalds and scrubs
witnessed to the daily immolation, performed as first light
tolled matins from a dutch-gold vessel hooked to the wall.

*




*

Continued :


-- -- --



~ By Alfred Corn




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Seeing All the Vermeers


Continuation




By train to Den Haag, to see the View of Delft's ink-black
medieval walls and bridge, barges anchored on a satin
water more pensive than the clouded blue above,
where one tall steeple took its accolade of sun.
(Proust's "patch of yellow wall" I couldn't find, though.)

The Girl in a Turban looked like Anne Wiazemsky,
Godard's new partner, whom we'd seen in his latest film.
Liquid eyes, half-parted lips, a brushstroke ancillary
to fable highlighting the weighty pearl at her earlobe,
her "Turkish" costume stage-worthy, if she ever chose to act.





*

Continued :


-- -- --



~ By Alfred Corn




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Seeing All the Vermeers


Continuation





By then it was set: No matter how many years or flights
it took, I'd see all of Vermeer—which helps explain
the Vienna stop we made that spring, and our instant beeline
to An Artist in His Studio (called, today, The Allegory of Fame).
What to make of the Artist's bloomers, outmoded even then—

and why would his model hold book and clarion, standing
before the mapped Low Countries? If that anesthetized mask
on the table near her denied the chandelier its candles,
then who hung a tapestried curtain in the left foreground?

Vermeer; but his meaning subverts comment, always
less hypnotic than the surface itself, a luminous
glaze adhering to receding frames in series,
chromatic theaters for featured roles that also kindle
fervor in their supporting actor, the secret soul.





*

Continued :


-- -- --



~ By Alfred Corn




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Seeing All the Vermeers


Continuation




Strike me dumb on first seeing The Astronomer
in Guy de Rothschild's study—well, a photograph of it
in an '80s coffee-table book, The Great Houses
of Paris. Not long after, thanks to philanthropy
and the tax structure, it devolved upon the state.
Semester break that winter, McC. and I jetted to France,
entered the Louvre's new glass pyramid and fought
dense crowds to where he hung, The Lacemaker's late consort.
In a brown studio, his fingers reading the globe,
he sat, immovably dutiful to calculations
devised ad hoc to safecrack the star-studded zodiac.

*

I was one of the visitors tiptoeing
through Isabella Gardner's house in Boston
decades before the heist, which to this day
remains unsolved. But balance one instance
of good luck against a trip made to Ireland
in '86, missing by only a few months
the Beit Collection's Lady Writing a Letter.
Paid so often now, the compliment of theft
puts a keen edge on our art pilgrimages:
The icon may be gone when you arrive.

That fall, I lived in London's Camden Town,
writing on... call them stateside topics; and soon
tubed up to Kenwood House, relieved to find
their prime collectible unstolen—its potential
as ecphrastic plunder not apparent at the time.
(A sonnet, no less, completed earlier in New Haven,
qualified me for that satire on the Connecticut bard
besotted with Vermeer. Still, subjects could be barred
in advance only if they and poems were the same gadget.
Disbelief, you're suspended, even for the standard
gloat over shots knocked back at the Cedar Tavern,
ca. 1950, with Pollock and de Kooning.)

Here then was Kenwood's Lady with Guitar, in corkscrew
curls, lemon jacket trimmed with ermine, lounging
like some hippie denizen of Washington Square,
strumming for the nth time his secondhand Dylan...
Maybe they heard her, too, the National Gallery's
paired women portraits, each playing a virginal,
both in silk dresses, one seated, one standing—
Profane and Sacred Love, if the old allegory fits.

A trip from London to Edinburgh produced, beyond
the classic-Gothic limestone city grimed with soot,
an early Christ in the House of Mary and Martha,
conceived before the painter's parables began unfolding
at home in Delft. Still, Martha's proffered pannier is as real
as the bread it holds, and Jesus' open hand, rendered
against clean table linen, as strong and solid as Vermeer's.

*

Continued :


-- -- --



~ By Alfred Corn




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Seeing All the Vermeers


Continuation


*

A chill, damp March in Dresden with Chris.
We'd begun with the Berlin State Museum's holdings
and then trained down on our way to Prague.
The Gemäldegalerie, quiet as a church, listened
while beads of tarnished rain pelted the skylights.
Works known from reproductions offered themselves
to the gray ambient, visibly conscious
of having survived Allied firebombs fifty years
earlier and a postwar Ice Age that slammed home,
then froze every bolt in the Eastern sector.
Young Vermeer's The Procuress makes love for sale
push beyond the sour analogue
of art-as-commerce into distinct portraits,
comedic types you have and haven't seen before
caught up in cheerful barter while wine flows
at a balustrade draped with carpet and a fur cape.
The client's left hand could have been mine,
weighing down a pretty shoulder (and the bodice),
but not the right, poised to let fall a coin
into her open palm. Men's hunger for sex
and poverty's for comforts—an old story,
mean or tragic, and never finally resolved.



*

Continued :


-- -- --



~ By Alfred Corn




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Seeing All the Vermeers


Continuation


*

Having missed Her Majesty's The Music Lesson, lent
over the years to several exhibitions, guess who danced
when told that it would grace the show to end all shows
scheduled in Washington, the fall of '95.
And other hard-to-sees from Brunswick and Frankfurt—
jubilation—were included also, plus
apprentice works on pagan or religious themes.
Long caterpillar of a line, composed of hundreds
come to worship art and its obsessive love of life.
An hour's wait on aching legs, and in we go:
The Geographer, taking his place by The Astronomer;
Ireland's letter-writer, look, recaptured, and now restored
to the public; a View of Delft, cleaned so thoroughly
you couldn't miss that patch of yellow—not a wall,
Proust got it wrong, instead, a roof... Sheltering involuntary
memories of countless choked-up viewers,
whose gazes added one more laminate of homage
to a surface charged with how many hundred thousands now.

From the permanent collection—why?—I saw as though
I never had the Woman Weighing Gold, some twenty years
(gone, and still here) since that first visit (Walter with me)
to the National Gallery. By word-origin Galilees,
international through their holdings, these cathedrals
of art draw in the faithful that faith in art has summoned
for mutual appraisal, what we are seen in what we see.

Hence the scales at center canvas Vermeer suspended
from her fine-boned hand, the face all understanding
and, so, forgiving all. Nevertheless, the great maternal
judge weighs one gold (a ring? a coin?) against a smaller gold,
in gloom as dark as the Day of Wrath, whose millennial
trumpet tears away a final veil.
So human error
will yield, her calm demeanor says, to Pax caelestis
and dawn break forth in perpetual light transforming
breath, strife, treasure, theft, love, and the end of love,
into its own substance—strong, bright beam of Libra rising
step by step up the scale to Eden and a countenance
the soul, made visible, is now accorded grace to see.

Around us, heads bent toward a morning vintaged
more than three hundred years ago. Manifold delight
wearing Nikes, Levi's, parkas; students, grizzled veterans,
young mothers, teachers, painters—awestruck, whispering
Heavens! Just look at that!—his New World public.



-- -- --



~ By Alfred Corn




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Words from the Front



We don’t look as young
as we used to
except in the dim light
especially in
the soft warmth of candlelight
when we say
in all sincerity
You’re so cute
and
You’re my cutie.
Imagine
two old people
behaving like this.
It’s enough
to make you happy.



-- -- --



~ By Ron Padgett




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Role of Elegy


The role of elegy is
To put a death mask on tragedy,
A drape on the mirror.
To bow to the cultural

Debate over the aesthetization of sorrow,
Of loss, of the unbearable
Afterimage of the once material.
To look for an imagined

Consolidation of grief
So we can all be finished
Once and for all and genuinely shut up
The cabinet of genuine particulars.

Instead there's the endless refrain
One hears replayed repeatedly
Through the just ajar door:
Some terrible mistake has been made.

What is elegy but the attempt
To rebreathe life
Into what the gone one once was
Before he grew to enormity.

Come on stage and be yourself,
The elegist says to the dead. Show them
Now—after the fact —
What you were meant to be:

The performer of a live song.
A shoe. Now bow.
What is left but this:
The compulsion to tell.

The transient distraction of ink on cloth
One scrubbed and scrubbed
But couldn't make less.
Not then, not soon.

Each day, a new caption on the cartoon
Ending that simply cannot be.
One hears repeatedly, the role of elegy is.




-- -- --



~ By Mary Jo Bang





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Healing Improvisation of Hair



If you undo your do you wóuld
be strange. Hair has been on my mind.
I used to lean in the doorway
and watch my stony woman wind
the copper through the black, and play
with my understanding, show me she cóuld
take a cup of river water,
and watch it shimmy, watch it change,
turn around and become ash bone.
Wind in the cottonwoods wakes me
to a day so thin its breastbone
shows, so paid out it shakes me free
of its blue dust. I will arrange
that river water, bottom juice.
I conjure my head in the stream
and ride with the silk feel of it
as my woman bathes me, and shaves
away the scorn, sponges the grit
of solitude from my skin, laves
the salt water of self-esteem
over my feathering body.
How like joy to come upon me
in remembering a head of hair
and the way water would caress
it, and stress beauty in the flair
and cut of the only witness
to my dance under sorrow's tree.
This swift darkness is spring's first hour.

I carried my life, like a stone,
in a ragged pocket, but I
had a true weaving song, a sly
way with rhythm, a healing tone.



-- -- --



~ By Jay Wright




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Seventeen Questions About KING KONG



The most amazing thing I know about Jane Cooper
is that she's the niece of King Kong.
—JAMES WRIGHT

Is it a myth? And if so, what does it tell us about ourselves?

Is Kong a giant ape, or is he an African, beating his chest like a responsive gong?

Fay Wray lies in the hand of Kong as in the hand of God the Destroyer. She gives the famous scream. Is the final conflict (as Merian C. Cooper maintained) really between man and the forces of nature, or is it a struggle for the soul and body of the white woman?

Who was more afraid of the dark, Uncle Merian or his older sister? She was always ready to venture downstairs whenever he heard a burglar.

When he was six his Confederate uncle gave him EXPLORATIONS AND ADVENTURES IN EQUATORIAL AFRICA by Paul du Chaillu, 1861. Does that island of prehistoric life forms still rise somewhere off the coast of the Dark Continent, or is it lost in preconscious memory?

Is fear of the dark the same as fear of sexuality? Mary Coldwell his mother would have destroyed herself had she not been bound by a thread to the wrist of her wakeful nurse. What nights theirs must have been!

Why was I too first called after Mary (or Merian) Coldwell, till my mother, on the morning of the christening, decided it was a hard-luck name?

How does our rising terror at so much violence, as Kong drops the sailors one by one into the void or rips them with his fangs, resolve itself into shame at Kong's betrayal?

Is Kong's violence finally justified, because he was in chains?

Is King Kong our Christ?

Watch him overturn the el-train, rampage through the streets! But why is New York, the technological marvel, so distrusted, when technologically the film was unsurpassed for its time?

Must the anthropologist always dream animal dreams? Must we?

Kong clings to the thread of the Empire State Building. He wavers. Why did Uncle Merian and his partner Schoedsack choose to play the airmen who over and over exult to shoot Kong down?

He said: Why did I ever leave Africa?—and then as if someone had just passed a washcloth over his face: But I've had a very good marriage.




-- -- --



~ By Jane Cooper




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Saint Francis and the Sow



The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.






-- -- --



~ By Galway Kinnell




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Rape of Proserpina



" 'Vigorous Sicily sprawled across the gigantic body
of one who had dared aspire to rule in the heavens;
the island's weight held Typhoeus firmly beneath it.
Often exerting himself, he strives yet again to rise up,
but there in the north, his right hand is held down by Pelorus,
his left hand by you, Pachynus; off in the west, Lilybaeum
weighs on his legs, while Mount Etna presses his head, as
under it, raging Typhoeus coughs ashes and vomits up fire.
Often he struggles, attempting to shake off the earth's weight
and roll its cities and mountains away from his body.
" 'This causes tremors and panics the Lord of the Silent,
who fears that the earth's crust will crack and break open,
and daylight, let in, will frighten the trembling phantoms;
dreading disaster, the tyrant left his tenebrous kingdom;
borne in his chariot drawn by its team of black horses,
he crisscrossed Sicily, checking the island's foundation.
" 'After his explorations had left him persuaded
that none of its parts were in imminent danger of falling,
his fears were forgotten, and Venus, there on Mount Eryx,
observed him relaxing, and said, as she drew Cupid near her,
"My son, my sword, my strong right arm and source of my power,
take up that weapon by which all your victims are vanquished
and send your swift arrows into the breast of the deity
to whom the last part of the threefold realm was allotted.
" '"You govern the gods and their ruler; you rule the defeated
gods of the ocean and govern the one who rules them, too;
why give up on the dead, when we can extend our empire
into their realm? A third part of the world is involved here!
And yet the celestial gods spurn our forbearance,
and the prestige of Love is diminished, even as mine is.
Do you not see how Athena and huntress Diana
have both taken leave of me? The virgin daughter of Ceres
desires to do likewise—and will, if we let her!
But if you take pride in our alliance, advance it
by joining her to her uncle!"
" 'Venus ceased speaking and Cupid
loosened his quiver, and, just as his mother had ordered,
selected, from thousands of missiles, the one that was sharpest
and surest and paid his bow the closest attention,
and using one knee to bend its horn back almost double,
he pierces the heart of Dis with his barb-tipped arrow.
" 'Near Henna's walls stands a deep pool of water, called Pergus:
not even the river Cayster, flowing serenely,
hears more songs from its swans; this pool is completely surrounded
by a ring of tall trees, whose foliage, just like an awning,
keeps out the sun and preserves the water's refreshing coolness;
the moist ground is covered with flowers of Tyrian purple;
here it is springtime forever. And here Proserpina
was playfully picking its white lilies and violets,
and, while competing to gather up more than her playmates,
filling her basket and stuffing the rest in her bosom,
Dis saw her, was smitten, seized her and carried her off;
his love was that hasty. The terrified goddess cried out
for her mother, her playmates—but for her mother most often,
since she had torn the uppermost seam of her garment,
and the gathered flowers rained down from her negligent tunic;
because of her tender years and her childish simplicity,
even this loss could move her to maidenly sorrow.
" 'Her abductor rushed off in his chariot, urging his horses,
calling each one by its name and flicking the somber,
rust-colored reins over their backs as they galloped
through the deep lakes and the sulphurous pools of Palike
that boil up through the ruptured earth, and where the Bacchiadae,
a race sprung from Corinth, that city between the two seas,
had raised their own walls between two unequal harbors.
" 'There is a bay that is landlocked almost completely
between the two pools of Cyane and Pisaean Arethusa,
the residence of the most famous nymph in all Sicily,
Cyane, who gave her very own name to the fountain.
She showed herself now, emerged from her pool at waist level,
and recognizing the goddess, told Dis, "Go no further!
You cannot become the son-in-law of great Ceres
against her will: you should have asked and not taken!
If it is right for me to compare lesser with greater,
I accepted Anapis when he desired to have me,
yielding to pleas and not—as in this case—to terror."
She spoke, and stretching her arms out in either direction,
kept him from passing. That son of Saturn could scarcely
hold back his anger; he urged on his frightening horses,
and then, with his strong right arm, he hurled his scepter
directly into the very base of the fountain;
the stricken earth opened a path to the underworld
and took in the chariot rushing down into its crater.
" 'Cyane, lamenting not just the goddess abducted,
but also the disrespect shown for her rights as a fountain,
tacitly nursed in her heart an inconsolable sorrow;
and she who had once been its presiding spirit,
reduced to tears, dissolved right into its substance.
You would have seen her members beginning to soften,
her bones and her fingertips starting to lose their old firmness;
her slenderest parts were the first to be turned into fluid:
her feet, her legs, her sea-dark tresses, her fingers
(for the parts with least flesh turn into liquid most quickly);
and after these, her shoulders and back and her bosom
and flanks completely vanished in trickling liquid;
and lastly the living blood in her veins is replaced by
springwater, and nothing remains that you could have seized on.
" 'Meanwhile, the terrified mother was pointlessly seeking
her daughter all over the earth and deep in the ocean.
Neither Aurora, appearing with dew-dampened tresses,
nor Hesperus knew her to quit; igniting two torches
of pine from the fires of Etna, the care-ridden goddess
used them to illumine the wintery shadows of nighttime;
and when the dear day had once more dimmed out the bright stars,
she searched again for her daughter from sunrise to sunset.









-- -- --



~ By Ovid And Translated by Charles Martin




--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Persephone, Falling



One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled,
stooped to pull harder—
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished. No one heard her.
No one! She had strayed from the herd.

(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don't answer to strangers. Stick
with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground.









-- -- --



~ By Rita Dove



--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Hades' Pitch



If I could just touch your ankle, he whispers, there
on the inside, above the bone—leans closer,
breath of lime and pepper—I know I could
make love to you. She considers
this, secretly thrilled, though she wasn’t quite
sure what he meant. He was good
with words, words that went straight to the liver.
Was she falling for him out of sheer boredom—
cooped up in this anything-but-humble dive, stone
gargoyles leering and brocade drapes licked with fire?
Her ankle burns where he described it. She sighs
just as her mother aboveground stumbles, is caught
by the fetlock—bereft in an instant—
while the Great Man drives home his desire.








-- -- --



~ By Rita Dove



--> Man

[Man]

Poem





We Real Cool




THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.



We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.









-- -- --



~ By Gwendolyn Brooks



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



All the World's a Stage



All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.






-- -- --



~ By William Shakespeare



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



"What Do Women Want?"




I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.





-- -- --



~ By Kim Addonizio



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Blessing



Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.






-- -- --



~ By James Wright



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



One Art



The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.



-- -- --



~ By Elizabeth Bishop



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Daddy



You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you baddy I'm through.







-- -- --



~ By Sylvia Plath



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Writer



In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.






-- -- --



~ By Richard Wilbur



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Safe Sex



If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident
they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;

if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire
only the tribute of another’s cry; if they employ each other

as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—
then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,

no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,
no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeated

apparition of a body floating face-down at the pond’s edge



-- -- --



~ By Donald Hall



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Credo



I believe there is something else

entirely going on but no single
person can ever know it,
so we fall in love.

It could also be true that what we use
everyday to open cans was something
much nobler, that we'll never recognize.

I believe the woman sleeping beside me
doesn't care about what's going on
outside, and her body is warm
with trust
which is a great beginning.





-- -- --



~ By Matthew Rohrer


--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Diving into the Wreck



First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.





-- -- --



~ By Adrienne Rich




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Book Of Music



Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.






-- -- --



~ By Jack Spicer




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio



In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.






-- -- --



~ By James Wright




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Her Kind




I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.




-- -- --



~ By Anne Sexton




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



When a Woman Loves a Man



When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.

When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"

When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.

Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?

When he says, "Ours is a transitional era,"
"that's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the martini he is sipping.

They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been ****ed without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an English accent.

One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.

When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.

When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.

When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.





-- -- --



~ By David Lehman



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Composed Upon Westminster Bridge


Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent , bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

-- -- --



~ By William Wordsworth


--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Lines Written In Early Spring


I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?





-- -- --



~ By William Wordsworth




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



London, 1802


Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.





-- -- --



~ By William Wordsworth




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Resolution And Independence


I

There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

II

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;--on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

III

I was a Traveller then upon the moor,
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:
The pleasant season did my heart employ:
My old remembrances went from me wholly;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

IV

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might
Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low;
To me that morning did it happen so;
And fears and fancies thick upon me came;
Dim sadness--and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name.

V

I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy Child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me--
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.

VI

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

VII

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain-side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

VIII

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,
A leading from above, a something given,
Yet it befell, that, in this lonely place,
When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
I saw a Man before me unawares:
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.

IX

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence;
Wonder to all who do the same espy,
By what means it could thither come, and whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense:
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;

X

Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep--in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life's pilgrimage;
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,
A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.

XI

Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face,
Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood:
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood
Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call
And moveth all together, if it move at all.

XII

At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conned,
As if he had been reading in a book:
And now a stranger's privilege I took;
And, drawing to his side, to him did say,
"This morning gives us promise of a glorious day."

XIII

A gentle answer did the old Man make,
In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew:
And him with further words I thus bespake,
"What occupation do you there pursue?
This is a lonesome place for one like you."
Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes,

XIV

His words came feebly, from a feeble chest,
But each in solemn order followed each,
With something of a lofty utterance drest--
Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach
Of ordinary men; a stately speech;
Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use,
Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.

XV

He told, that to these waters he had come
To gather leeches, being old and poor:
Employment hazardous and wearisome!
And he had many hardships to endure:
From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor;
Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance,
And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.

XVI

The old Man still stood talking by my side;
But now his voice to me was like a stream
Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide;
And the whole body of the Man did seem
Like one whom I had met with in a dream;
Or like a man from some far region sent,
To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.

XVII

My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty Poets in their misery dead.
--Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,
My question eagerly did I renew,
"How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"

XVIII

He with a smile did then his words repeat;
And said, that, gathering leeches, far and wide
He travelled; stirring thus about his feet
The waters of the pools where they abide.
"Once I could meet with them on every side;
But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may."

XIX

While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The old Man's shape, and speech--all troubled me:
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently.
While I these thoughts within myself pursued,
He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.

XX

And soon with this he other matter blended,
Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind,
But stately in the main; and when he ended,
I could have laughed myself to scorn to find
In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.
"God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;
I'll think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor!"




-- -- --



~ By William Wordsworth




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



You Fit Into Me


You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
A fish hook
An open eye




-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Siren Song


This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don'y enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two faethery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.



-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



This Is A Photograph Of Me


It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)



-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Spelling


My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

*

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

*

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.

*

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

*

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

*

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.


-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Night Poem


There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father the thunder
your mother the rain

In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,

your true parents disappear
when the curtain covers your door.
We are the others,
the ones from under the lake
who stand silently beside your bed
with our heads of darkness.
We have come to cover you
with red wool,
with our tears and distant whispers.

You rock in the rain's arms,
the chilly ark of your sleep,
while we wait, your night
father and mother,
with our cold hands and dead flashlight,
knowing we are only
the wavering shadows thrown
by one candle, in this echo
you will hear twenty years later.





-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



You Begin


You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
this is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand



-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Bored


All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
distances between things, or pounded
stakes into the ground for rows and rows
of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)
weeded. Or sat in the back
of the car, or sat still in boats,
sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
he drove, steered, paddled. It
wasn't even boredom, it was looking,
looking hard and up close at the small
details. Myopia. The worn gunwales,
the intricate twill of the seat
cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular
pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans
of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying
bristles on the back of his neck.
Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes
I would. The boring rhythm of doing
things over and over, carrying
the wood, drying
the dishes. Such minutiae. It's what
the animals spend most of their time at,
ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels,
shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed
such things out, and I would look
at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under
the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier
all the time then, although it more often
rained, and more birdsong?
I could hardly wait to get
the hell out of there to
anywhere else. Perhaps though
boredom is happier. It is for dogs or
groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored.
Now I would know too much.
Now I would know.




-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



You Take My Hand


You take my hand and
I'm suddenly in a bad movie,
it goes on and on and
why am I fascinated

We waltz in slow motion
through an air stale with aphrodisms
we meet behind the endless ptted palms
you climb through the wrong windows

Other people are leaving
but I always stay till the end
I paid my money, I
want to see what happens.

In chance bathtubs I have to
peel you off me
in the form of smoke and melted
celluloid
Have to face it I'm
finally an addict,
the smell of popcorn and worn plush
lingers for weeks



-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Visit


Gone are the days
when you could walk on water.
When you could walk.

The days are gone.
Only one day remains,
the one you're in.

The memory is no friend.
It can only tell you
what you no longer have:

a left hand you can use,
two feet that walk.
All the brain's gadgets.

Hello, hello.
The one hand that still works
grips, won't let go.

That is not a train.
There is no cricket.
Let's not panic.

Let's talk about axes,
which kinds are good,
the many names of wood.

This is how to build
a house, a boat, a tent.
No use; the toolbox

refuses to reveal its verbs;
the rasp, the plane, the awl,
revert to sullen metal.

Do you recognize anything? I said.
Anything familiar?
Yes, you said. The bed.

Better to watch the stream
that flows across the floor
and is made of sunlight,

the forest made of shadows;
better to watch the fireplace
which is now a beach.




-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Habitation


Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire


-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Variation On The Word Sleep


I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.




-- -- --



~ By Margaret Atwood




--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Snow beneath whose chilly softness


942

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Snow flakes


36

Snow flakes.

I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town,
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down.
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig,
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





So bashful when I spied her!


91

So bashful when I spied her!
So pretty—so ashamed!
So hidden in her leaflets
Lest anybody find—

So breathless till I passed here—
So helpless when I turned
And bore her struggling, blushing,
Her simple haunts beyond!

For whom I robbed the Dingle—
For whom I betrayed the Dell—
Many, will doubtless ask me,
But I shall never tell!







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





So from the mould


66

So from the mould
Scarlet and Gold
Many a Bulb will rise—
Hidden away, cunningly, From sagacious eyes.

So from Cocoon
Many a Worm
Leap so Highland gay,
Peasants like me,
Peasants like Thee
Gaze perplexedly!






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





So glad we are—a Stranger'd deem


329

So glad we are—a Stranger'd deem
'Twas sorry, that we were—
For where the Holiday should be
There publishes a Tear—
Nor how Ourselves be justified—
Since Grief and Joy are done
So similar—An Optizan
Could not decide between—




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





So has a Daisy vanished


28

So has a Daisy vanished
From the fields today—
So tiptoed many a slipper
To Paradise away—

Oozed so in crimson bubbles
Day's departing tide—
Blooming—tripping—flowing
Are ye then with God?




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





So much Summer


651

So much Summer
Me for showing
Illegitimate—
Would a Smile's minute bestowing
Too exorbitant

To the Lady
With the Guinea
Look—if She should know
Crumb of Mine
A Robin's Larder
Would suffice to stow—




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





So proud she was to die


So proud she was to die
It made us all ashamed
That what we cherished, so unknown
To her desire seemed.

So satisfied to go
Where none of us should be,
Immediately, that anguish stooped
Almost to jealousy.




-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






So set its Sun in Thee


808

So set its Sun in Thee
What Day be dark to me—
What Distance—far—
So I the Ships may see
That touch—how seldomly—
Thy Shore?






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






So the Eyes accost—and sunder


752

So the Eyes accost—and sunder
In an Audience—
Stamped—occasionally—forever—
So may Countenance

Entertain—without addressing
Countenance of One
In a Neighboring Horizon—
Gone—as soon as known—







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






So well that I can live without


456

So well that I can live without—
I love thee—then How well is that?
As well as Jesus?
Prove it me
That He—loved Men—
As I—love thee—






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Soil of Flint, if steady tilled


681

Soil of Flint, if steady tilled—
Will refund by Hand—
Seed of Palm, by Libyan Sun
Fructified in Sand—








-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church


Some keep the Sabbath going to Church --
I keep it, staying at Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome --

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice --
I just wear my Wings --
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman --
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at least --
I'm going, all along.








-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Some Rainbow—coming from the Fair!


64

Some Rainbow—coming from the Fair!
Some Vision of the World Cashmere—
I confidently see!
Or else a Peacock's purple Train
Feather by feather—on the plain
Fritters itself away!

The dreamy Butterflies bestir!
Lethargic pools resume the whir
Of last year's sundered tune!
From some old Fortress on the sun
Baronial Bees—march—one by one—
In murmuring platoon!

The Robins stand as thick today
As flakes of snow stood yesterday—
On fence—and Roof—and Twig!
The Orchis binds her feather on
For her old lover - Don the Sun!
Revisiting the Bog!

Without Commander! Countless! Still!
The Regiments of Wood and Hill
In bright detachment stand!
Behold! Whose Multitudes are these?
The children of whose turbaned seas—
Or what Circassian Land?







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Some such Butterfly be seen


541

Some such Butterfly be seen
On Brazilian Pampas—
Just at noon—no later—Sweet—
Then—the License closes—

Some such Spice—express and pass—
Subject to Your Plucking—
As the Stars—You knew last Night—
Foreigners—This Morning—





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem







Some—Work for Immortality


406

Some—Work for Immortality—
The Chiefer part, for Time—
He—Compensates—immediately—
The former—Checks—on Fame—

Slow Gold—but Everlasting—
The Bullion of Today—
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality—

A Beggar—Here and There—
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight—
One's—Money—One's—the Mine—





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Some things that fly there be

89

Some things that fly there be—
Birds—Hours—the Bumblebee—
Of these no Elegy.

Some things that stay there be—
Grief—Hills—Eternity—
Nor this behooveth me.

There are that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the Riddle lies!







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Some—Work for Immortality


406

Some—Work for Immortality—
The Chiefer part, for Time—
He—Compensates—immediately—
The former—Checks—on Fame—

Slow Gold—but Everlasting—
The Bullion of Today—
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality—

A Beggar—Here and There—
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight—
One's—Money—One's—the Mine—





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Some, too fragile for winter winds


141

Some, too fragile for winter winds
The thoughtful grave encloses—
Tenderly tucking them in from frost
Before their feet are cold.

Never the treasures in her nest
The cautious grave exposes,
Building where schoolboy dare not look,
And sportsman is not bold.

This covert have all the children
Early aged, and often cold,
Sparrow, unnoticed by the Father—
Lambs for whom time had not a fold.






-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Some—Work for Immortality


406

Some—Work for Immortality—
The Chiefer part, for Time—
He—Compensates—immediately—
The former—Checks—on Fame—

Slow Gold—but Everlasting—
The Bullion of Today—
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality—

A Beggar—Here and There—
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight—
One's—Money—One's—the Mine—







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Soto! Explore thyself!


832

Soto! Explore thyself!
Therein thyself shalt find
The "Undiscovered Continent"—
No Settler had the Mind.







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Soul, Wilt thou toss again?


139

Soul, Wilt thou toss again?
By just such a hazard
Hundreds have lost indeed—
But tens have won an all—

Angel's breathless ballot
Lingers to record thee—
Imps in eager Caucus
Raffle for my Soul!





-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






South Winds jostle them


86

South Winds jostle them—
Bumblebees come—
Hover—hesitate—
Drink, and are gone—

Butterflies pause
On their passage Cashmere—
I—softly plucking,
Present them here!







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Sown In Dishonor


62

"Sown in dishonor"!
Ah! Indeed!
May this "dishonor" be?
If I were half so fine myself
I'd notice nobody!

"Sown in corruption"!
Not so fast!
Apostle is askew!
Corinthians 1. 15. narrates
A Circumstance or two!








-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Speech—is a prank of Parliament—


"Speech"—is a prank of Parliament—
"Tears"—is a trick of the nerve—
But the Heart with the heaviest freight on—
Doesn't—always—move—









-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Split the Lark—and you'll find the Music


861

Split the Lark—and you'll find the Music—
Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled—
Scantilly dealt to the Summer Morning
Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

Loose the Flood—you shall find it patent—
Gush after Gush, reserved for you—
Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!
Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?













-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Spring is the Period


844

Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.









-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Strong Draughts of Their Refreshing Minds


711

Strong Draughts of Their Refreshing Minds
To drink—enables Mine
Through Desert or the Wilderness
As bore it Sealed Wine—

To go elastic—Or as One
The Camel's trait—attained—
How powerful the Stimulus
Of an Hermetic Mind—







-- -- --



~ By Emily Dickinson





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





My Mum


I have a wonderful mother
She gave me three sisters and a brother

There are five offspring
This makes seven in my family

My mum as a nurse she works
Together with all the perks

Late and early shifts she goes
She is always on her toes

My mum is so cool
She helps us all at homeschool

And so in conclusion I would like to say
A big huge thankyou in every way.




-- -- --



~ By Piglet84





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Sweets


I really like sweets
they are such yummy treats
but they make your teeth go rotten
and that's a thing that can't be forgotten.
So eat them with due care
or else you'll be a gummy bear.


-- -- --



~ By Froggy42





--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Goodnight to My Children


Close your eyes, don't you peep,
Have lovely thoughts as you go to sleep,
I'll give you a kiss,
Hold it tight,
As I say I love you and wish you goodnight.


-- -- --



~ By Enash





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Until We Meet Again



With smooth wrinkle-less skin belying her true age
Looking more like forty something
Than her mature seventy something
She lay there quietly and uncomplaining

Silver streaked hair wafting in the gentle breeze
While dappled sunlight cascaded across her still body
Arms lying limply by her sides
Eyes closed against the bright light

With an ageless smile upon her full still lips
She lay there looking calm and serene
As if a huge weight had suddenly been lifted off her shoulders
Peace at last

As I bent down to kiss her goodbye
Her eyes opened and she whispered
“Don’t worry I will always be with you
Out of sight, but never out of mind.”

And she was right
She is out of my sight, but never out of my mi


-- -- --



~ By Joncil





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Transition


At my window, I see rain.
Like tears of heaven falling
I somehow feel the pain
And my sorrow comes calling.

Chill in the air,
Cold and unwelcoming.
Strange people every where
Distant and uninviting.

But then the rain stops,
And the air becomes warm,
My sorrow drops
And peace begins to form.

Sounds of Spring
Fill me with calm
Bells of life ring
New life has begun.


-- -- --



~ By Melanie





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



My New Daughter

To my beautiful little daughter,
The star in my sky,
A father to an angel,
The gleam in my eye.

Since the first day I knew,
That you were on the way,
To pave a path of life,
And guide you through the day.

You are my little girl,
A joy to love and hold,
You will pass the time so quickly,
Your own adventures to be told.

For now you’re my little girl,
And no matter what the fad,
You will be my darling daughter,
I forever your loving dad .


-- -- --



~ By Johnny_Damon





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Lone Tree


The bitter wind blows through the trees,
It picks the dew up off the leaves,
Continues to drain out the fog,
'Til morning, when men come to log.

The music of birds whistling clears,
And what was beautiful, disappears,
The sun goes down, the men go home,
There's one tree standing all alone,
And the wind blows 'round it in an endless drone.


-- -- --



~ By Becathon





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Motorbike Rider


The motorbike rider,
Excited and thrilled.
Adrenalin,
Pumping through his veins.

He gets on his bike,
Only fun in his eyes.
About to take off,
Another perfect start.

Racing through the forest,
Up and down hills.
Looking for more than just modest,
Everyday thrills.

With a crash and a bang,
He comes to the ground.
His friends think he’s insane,
But the rider feels no pain


-- -- --



~ By Tamara





--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Alynna's the angel I hold in my arms
Like a spirit but partially sundered from self.
Yet anchored in life by a love unrestrained,
Near ecstasy singing in sunlight sustained,
Not of earth or of heaven, she lives in the gulf
Angels call Eden for its unravished charms.


-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Angels are quite ample cause to cry,
Now, like silent movies, obsolete.
God Itself now knoweth Its demise,
Even as a plaything of the wise,
Lost to all but those that work the street,
A retiree not ready yet to die.


-- -- --



~ By William Byrd





--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Angels are quite confident,
Now they are on high.
Given whom they represent,
Each appearing Heaven sent,
Let them serve God innocent
As we live and die.


-- -- --



~ By J.S. Bach.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Angels Have No ID Bracelets on Them


Angels have no ID bracelets on them.
No features glow with heavenly delight.
Given that their wings are made of feeling,
Each flying angel's given to concealing
Love's plumage like a rainbow in the night.
Shyness cloaks the halos that surround them.


-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Alyssa


Alyssa's the angel I hold in my arms
Like a spirit but partially sundered from self.
Yet anchored in life by a love unrestrained,
Self-serving by serving that self be sustained,
She dances with grace on both sides of the gulf,
An angel whose wisdom is one of her charms.


-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Angels Just Love Weddings, Don't You Think


Angels just love weddings, don't you think?
No one sees them, but we know they're there,
Golden halos lassoing their hair,
Embodying a love beyond the brink.
Love draws them in like revelers to drink,
Alive in love, breathing love like air,
Amorous in ways we could not bear,
Needing us to be love's earthly link.
Do, then, with an angel's ecstasy,
Make your lives an amorous delight,
Intimate in ways both sure and sly,
Chaste but in the chamber of your love.
Heaven is not quite a fantasy;
Angels hover near, awaiting night.
Eden was a place where none was shy,
Loving as the naked lust might move.


-- -- --



~ By Claude Debussy





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Angels Just Love Weddings, Don't You Think


Could there be angels waiting in the wings,
How might we call upon their ecstasy?
Rainbows are mere garnish on the days
In which we are the glory and the light.
So may we hear the songs our sunshine sings,
The words which will the wonder of our ways;
May we know how good it is to be
As we celebrate the holidays,
So much in love we weep as angels might.


-- -- --



~ By Domenico Scarlatti




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Each Angel Has a Voice Its Own


Each angel has a voice its own,
Vocally distinct,
Even as it longs for home,
Lured to Being's brink.
Yet billions, billions sing as one,
Nearer than they think.



-- -- --



~ By Curtis Clark




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Even Angels Feel the Pangs of Love


Even angels feel the pangs of love.
(Vicariously, of course - their love is pure.)
Each finds a human love to serenade,
Leaving its perfection in the shade,
Yearning for the pain it must endure,
Near ecstasy with what it knows not of.


-- -- --



~ By Marco Cara.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Even Angels Tire of Ecstasy

Even angels tire of ecstasy.
Very few can stare at God with pleasure
Eons upon eons, as the sea
Lies featureless across its teeming treasure.
Yet we have grace to look and then recover.
No joy but fades, to give way to another.


-- -- --



~ By Marco Cara.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Traveler's Tale
Step over here a moment, if you please;
I'll tell you a tale which may your fancy seize
Or, if you're old, may possibly displease.

Slipping time, of course, will kill a man,
But, think I, there is something more than time
In every natural death. Oh yes, say I,
Vibrations of the supernatural
Confound our lonely loony lives the more
For our denial of their awesome power.
Let me pluck a rich example from
The undercurrents of my memory:

The beard of wizened white swayed calmly as
The brittle ancient rocked his pensive chair
And reveried his many pasts. He knew
Somewhere within his lonesome bones the ten
Dead-looking fingers he possessed by far
Outnumbered his remaining years or months
Or--what he thought was likeliest--days.
The optimist, yes, optimist I say,
(Ten minutes would have been a closer guess)
Could not foresee his tragedy that day.
Each time he rocked he minused his remaining
Seconds by one tick, one tock, one rock.

The red clay jar stood center on the broken
Top of marble on his yearful desk.
The center of his life, this jar became,
For parent after parent of his line
Of ancestors had forwarded the myth
That supernatural forces lurked within
Its clay, some power that governed life and death.
Religiously, throughout his wifeless life,
The old man trimmed his fingernails just so,
Not too long or crookedly or short,
And dropped the trimmings carefully into
The timeless jar with utmost caution not
To let one fall outside its gaping rim.
Oh, deepest death if ever that should happen--
Time would shuffle to a sickly halt.

But now yeared eyes could plainly see that death
Was far from far away: a mound of yellowed
Fingernails was piled above the rim.
The jar with all his packing down would hold
Not many more, he knew. The time when one
Would vibrate from the pile and fall beside
The jar was near, too near to free his thoughts
From dreams of death and musings of its shape.

In silence as he rocked in silent thought
His black-haired cat traversed the soiled rug
And stopped unseen beside the desk. It gave
A weakened leap (it lived on non-existent
Rats and mice that roamed the undug basement
Of the one-floor house) and missed its mark,
Falling on its once-lithe feline ribs
With an animal thud. The old man stopped
His motioned chair and sat transfixed, wide-eyed.
The cat resumed its feet and jumped its all
And landed on the olden oaken desk.
Its thready whiskers brushed across the jar:
A fingernail end fell to the broken
Marble surface of the desk, and then
The cat fell lifeless to the rugged floor.

A wave of horror washed the old man's brain--
He felt a thrill of long-lost warmth surround
His head and stomach, bones and gasping lungs,
And down into the deepness of the rug
He fell, beside the rocking rocking chair.
As nothingness approached he thought he heard
His doorbell ringing for the first time since
The ancient inundation and the garden
With the stones and fiery wheels had come.

The aged one was thus undone, kind friend.
If this has entertained you, please be kind
Enough to drop into this hat a coin.



-- -- --



~ By Alan Harris





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Silent Exchange


Settling down to meditate
in my book-lined alcove,
I gaze at Buddha on the shelf,
sitting palms up, cross-legged, calm.
What is he? Where is his mind?

Deep oceans roll between us,
the Buddha and me,
even though his cast iron likeness
is solidly planted before my eyes
among amethysts and books.

His sloping shoulders and benign face
reveal a radiant humility
surely possible to humanity,
yet seldom found in bodily beings.

Where is your mind, Lord Buddha?

Your focus seems a thousand miles within
as you meditate here
in silent serenity.

May I somehow join your journey?
What must I do to walk your path?

A sunbeam shines now
through the nearby window
and rests on Buddha's heart.

"Look within," he whispers innerly.

"Look within for a pattern of being
that will respond to your aspirations.
Consciousness is supple and supportive
if you discover and respect its laws.

"Bliss abides in every inch of space,
and will be found hidden in the obvious.

"Master nature by obeying her perfectly.
Examine her ways, ask her secrets,
and use her for the benefit of all.
Blessings accrue to the workman
who skillfully unfolds a subtle pattern,
then shapes from it a living temple to truth.

"You live in the pattern
and the pattern lives in you,
as the flower hides a seed
and the seed hides a flower.

"Proceed now into your peace,
into your meditation.
Leave my sunlit statue here
and turn to your inner light.

"Slip softly into the shining sea
of possibilities,
releasing love into life
as life releases you into love.

"I will be here when you return."




-- -- --



~ By Alan Harris





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Sensing a Future
In this shaky world
where up and down
are definitely known
but gravitation still
poses big perplexities
we'd sometimes like
to shake off atoms
and take a guided
tour of the possible
and if such a ride
were available for
a dollar or a million
we'd buy a ticket
but since no booth
sells these tickets
we continue with
our work yet vaguely
sense this ride is
going to happen
sometime because
we see clearings and
glimpses especially
when mind and air
are perfectly quiet
and love is flowing
up and down and
all through our being
as if red lights were at
some railroad crossing
flashing to announce
an unseen movement
much grander than
anything stoppable




-- -- --



~ By Alan Harris





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Given Angel's Wings, Where Might You Fly


Given angel's wings, where might you fly?
In what sweet heaven might you find your love?
Unwilling to be bound, where might you move,
Lost between the wonder and the why?
If you were but a flame of pure desire,
A light so lovely you could not be seen,
Near mad with yearning, yet somehow serene,
And that were all, what more might you require?


-- -- --



~ By Domenico Scarlatti





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Grateful Angels Sing at Heaven's Gates


Grateful angels sing at Heaven's gates
In choirs, well, perhaps five trillion strong,
Unleashing love insatiable in song,
Love unknown to those of other fates.
In us, so far removed from such high states,
Alien even to where we belong,
Neither here nor there for very long,
A love like that retreats, and doubts, and waits.


-- -- --



~ By Domenico Scarlatti





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Habitues of Heaven Hate to Hurry


Habitues of Heaven hate to hurry,
After eons soaked in ecstasy,

Perched upon a pinhead, pink and blurry,

Passionately pleased simply to be.

Yet those of us below, who work and worry,

Send from time to time an urgent plea,

Ever hoping for a glimpse of glory

Vouchsafed from beyond what we can see.

Enter, then, O angels, in your fury,

Nether worlds no bigger than a pea,

To brush the moment with your burning beauty,

Hallowing this anniversary!


-- -- --



~ By Cyprian Bazylik.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Happy Sixth Anniversary


Happy sixth anniversary!
A marriage is a mirror window

Placed to maximize the view.

Passion turns to paradigm;

Years turn love to symbiosis.



So do lovers by osmosis

In each other dwell in time.

X-rays show that love imbues

The heart with angels, arms akimbo,

Having come from joys to be.


-- -- --



~ By Charles Henri Valentin Alkan.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Harpies Are but Angels Who Are Harried


Harpies are but angels who are harried,
Angry, disappointed in their lot,
Prone to practice bickering when married,
Perhaps because they don't get what they've got.
Yet angels nonetheless, as pure inside
As deep and drifted, soot-encrusted snow,
Near the heart of God but for their pride,
No less loved, for all their squawk below.
If you find yourself pursued by harpies,
Vengeful just because . . . well, just because,
Elevate the angle of your worries,
Remembering that there are higher laws.
So may you love all beings, bright or small,
And be what you would have them be to all,
Regardless of what they might be to you.
You are the harpist, no matter what you do.


-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Here There Are No Angels of Despair


Here there are no angels of despair.
Arrayed in choirs, they sing only of joy.
Performing for the sheer delight of being,
Poised between the act of sight and seeing,
Yet infinite, yet of this earth, they toy
Scholastically with being here nor there,
Eden's hosts, though none the worse for wear.
Come down from that sweet hilltop, anguish fleeing,
On those they light who for another care,
Now filling with their ecstasy the air,
Dear hints of bliss no evil can destroy.

-- -- --



~ By William Byrd




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Janae


Janae sees the angels spread their wings
And speaks to them of life before they died.
None of them is sad, though sadness sings
As beautifully of where they now abide,
Eternal in an ether vast and wide.



-- -- --



~ By William Byrd




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Lest Angels Prove Too Poignant in Their Pity


Lest angels prove too poignant in their pity,
Inundated by redundant tears,
Not yet inured to loss that rends and sears,
Dream with them of that celestial city
Ablaze with love not battered by the years.



-- -- --



~ By --




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Margarita


Margarita is an angel,
Awakening as life recedes,
Riding high the Lenten light.
Grace abounds both day and night,
Alive in those who know their needs,
Restoring joy to those who tremble.
In death she dons the angel's mantle,
Touching love that weeps and bleeds,
As in life she found delight..



-- -- --



~ By Erik Satie.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Natalie


Natalie believes she's been with angels.
A few brought back her mother from the dead.
Though, of course, she lives in our age,
Awash in lust, greed, cruelty, and rage,
Like her mentors, she finds inner grace
In love of all there is. Life's joy is fed
Each day by loveliness too pure to trace.



-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



On Your Engagement Let the Angels Sing


On your engagement let the angels sing!
Now let clouds of angels fill the air!
You may think your pledge a mundane thing;
One word of love and angels hover there!
Unborn children wait upon your breath,
Reaching past the hundredth generation,
Even as you touch souls wrapped in death,
Now equal sharers in your celebration.
Give yourselves to mutual delight;
All things come to being out of love.
God said love: Behold, and there was light!
Even so shall you vast spirits move.
May all spirits join you in your joy,
Each rapt in occult pleasure as you toy,
Needing your sweet love to fully be,
Though happy far beyond your ecstasy.


-- -- --



~ By Erik Satie.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Perhaps an Angel Told You Once of Love


Perhaps an angel told you once of love,
A spirit pure, not knowing fear or shame.
Until that whispered word, perhaps, you came
Less willing to the winds that some hearts move,
After which you had for them a name.


-- -- --



~ By Erik Satie.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Praise Remains the Specialty of Angels


Praise remains the specialty of angels,
A simple motivation for their song.
Unfortunately, we require angles,
Living in a world of right and wrong.
A paradise refines the call to praise.
Just being there evokes a love of being,
A perfect passion for unending days,
So beautiful it swallows up all seeing.
Our passions are, perhaps, well, more mature.
Nor are we capable of praise so pure.


-- -- --



~ By Erik Satie.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Thank You for Being Our Guardian Angel


Thank you for being our guardian angel!
Having come to our rescue in our time of need.
Angels love people as parents love children,
Nor could we a better have found of the breed,
Knowing how hard such a one is to wangle!
Yet you, with your wings and your halo half-hidden,
On us have descended with glory unbidden,
Undoing the darkness our fate had decreed.


-- -- --



~ By Francois Couperin




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



To Angels Time Is like a Movie


To angels time is like a movie
Into which they fly,
Neither real nor unengrossing
As we live and die.


-- -- --



~ By Francois Couperin




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



To Be an Angel, One Need Not Have Wings


To be an angel, one need not have wings.
In giving love there is an equal grace.
Nor need one seek the aura in the face,
As love unveils the beauty of all things.


-- -- --



~ By Francois Couperin




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Vanessa


Vanessa is an angel-no disguise,
As lovely in her looks as in her heart.
No one knows why some find joy in giving,
Embracing friends through all the pain of living,
Soothing us through something in their eyes
So genuine it is both truth and art.
All she does is generous and wise.


-- -- --



~ By Francois Couperin




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Teenage Girl's First Crush


A teenage girl's first crush is . . . well, crushing.
Her body isn't hers, nor is her mind.
She finds herself shivering, shaking, blushing,
Weak, tormented, sick, and going blind.
And why? Because some guy might look her way,
Then cast his eyes as quickly to the ground;
Some special one, for reasons she can't say,
Whose voice makes her feel faint when he's around.
But now my crush on you has been returned,
And so the two of us stand on some brink:
It can't be love so young, and yet we've learned
Love does its will, no matter what we think.
Slowly, slowly now--we mustn't rush:
Let's enjoy this first sweet teenage crush.


-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Do Not Know You Well, But What I Know



I do not know you well, but what I know
Enchants me, like a song sung far away.
I cannot hear the words, but what they say
Hangs softly on the hills where I must go.
I see you furtively and note your eyes,
Hazel and dreamy, your spirit half elsewhere;
I note the sheen of your dark, lustrous hair
And wish I knew your thoughts and shared your cries.

This love brings me sweet pain, but I want more,
Driven by a dream I can't control.
I want the truth of you, untamed and whole;
In frantic hope I haunt your open door.




-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



My Mood Is like a Cloudy Noon



My mood is like a cloudy noon
Waiting for the sun,
Or like a sailing ship that can't
Set sail without the tide.
I fidget in my emptiness,
Not knowing where to run;
Yet when you're near I can't explain
What's going on inside.

It's too bad feelings swim so deep,
Too deep for anyone
To grasp them as they squiggle through
And take them for a ride.



-- -- --



~ ByDimitri Shostakovich.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Your Eyes Won't Let My Thoughts Go Back to Sleep



Your eyes won't let my thoughts go back to sleep.
Your words draw me across 2000 miles.
I don't know you at all, and yet I know
You better than my friends of many years.
The days I spent with you are like a tape
I play, rewind, play, rewind, and play.
Whenever I remember something new,
I feel as though you touched me on the cheek.

I miss you as the grass awaits the wind,
Or as the morning sky awaits the sun.
Although I look for you in every doorway,
I find only the darkness in my heart.



-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Roll Books of the Stars



The roll books of the stars are kept
In files atom-size,
Yet just one glimpse of you or me
Would fill up all the skies.
I am a mystery to me
As you must be to you.
How could we hope to understand
The mystery of two?

So we will feel what we must feel
And find some word to fit,
Even though we look inside
And see that isn't it;

And I will think of you no matter
What I'm thinking of,
Even though I know it's much
Too soon to call it love.




-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Please Don't Spaz if I Should Ask You Out



Please don't spaz if I should ask you out.
A girl can ask a guy out on a date.
If she likes the guy, I mean, why wait?
Taking risks is what it's all about.
So we have some dinner, maybe dance,
Go out to a bar and have a drink.
You ask me this or that and what I think.
No need right away for a romance.

Why not just two people having fun,
Being with each other, nothing more.
And then, or then not, opening a door
To see what else might happen with this one.






-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Let's Go Out and Have Some Fun



Let's go out and have some fun.
It doesn't matter where or when,
Or what we say or what we do,
As long as it's just me and you.
Let's be together for a while
And get to know each other well,
Exchanging jokes and tales and chatter
Before we get to things that matter.

Let's see what happens when we dance
Across an evening sky, and glimpse
Below the stirrings of a sea
That might--or not--wind-haunted be.







-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



It's Amazing How I Feel When I'm Around You



It's amazing how I feel when I'm around you,
How my heart pounds when you come into a room.
I look at you and think: My God! How lovely!
And everything I am bursts into bloom.
I feel as though you must, you must be mine,
Not as a possession but a goal,
Something almost unimaginable:
The free devotion of another soul.

As though I were about to enter heaven
Or just within the hour condemned to die,
My mind with one fierce thought keeps running over,
With you, and only you, the reason why.






-- -- --



~ By Anonymous.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Don't Expect You Soon to Love Me


I don't expect you soon to love me,
Nor are my own feelings clear.
Passion is the ornate entrance
To a world we crave and fear.
We cannot know where this will take us,
Nor whether we will ride for long,
But pleasure is the overture
That flows into the larger song.

So come with me with open mind
And heart, and we the time will prove
With laughter and with joy unfettered,
And, perhaps, someday with love.









-- -- --



~ By Rory Dall O'Caghan.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Be Gentle: What You're Holding Is My Heart


Be gentle: What you're holding is my heart.
Remember in your honesty my pride.
If you don't want to see me, please don't hide
The truth, yet tell it with some art.
Though you may not have asked for me to call,
A single leap of hope must be allowed.
Not easily are shy songs sung out loud.
Yet now I wait alone outside your wall.






-- -- --



~ By Francois Campion.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Beautiful Eyes, Beautiful Face



Beautiful eyes, beautiful face,
I'm shy to talk to you.
You're the eagle I must watch
No matter what I do.
You're the beauty, wild and free,
The mistress of my eyes,
Rolling through exultant air,
Alone in pristine skies.

I would take you for my own
Could I but have your wings,
Could I but go where night begins
And frozen sunlight sings.

Could I but have you for my love,
How might we fly together!
But I must watch you from below
And long for you forever.
But I must be the one below
And long for you forever.




-- -- --



~ By Francois Campion.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Chrysanthemums Are Clear in Morning Air



Chrysanthemums are clear in morning air.
How can you see them now? The sun's asleep!
All my words of love must bloom in darkness.
Day cannot come because I cannot speak.

-- -- --



~ By Nishiyama Kengyo.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



How Can I Tell You What I Feel for You



How can I tell you what I feel for you?
When I think of you my feelings twist inside
As if someone's fist reached in and grabbed a few,
And turned and turned them tight and tangled. I've tried
Somehow to say: You're the sun in my sky,
The wind that takes me where I want to go,
The sweet incense that makes me feel so high
That loving you seems all I need to know.
But it all sticks in my throat! It sounds too cute,
Empty as a wrinkled paper bag.
You won't believe it! Better I stay mute
Than offer you cliches that make you gag.
And yet I wish to tell you of my love,
If only love its own locks would remove!




-- -- --



~ By Nishiyama Kengyo.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Do Not Want This Poem to Go Too Deep



I do not want this poem to go too deep.
It's premature, and love's too far away.
But there are things I feel the need to say
Rather than more days of silence keep.
I hope for you it's not too great a leap
To hear me talking to you in this way.
My fears sometimes my sentiments betray,
Telling me to put my thoughts to sleep.
Ever since we met I've thought of you
As something more than just a passing friend.
You seem so lovely, like a melody
That haunts me with the wisp of something true.
You haunt me still, and so I won't pretend:
I tell you this that you might think of me.




-- -- --



~ By Nishiyama Kengyo.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Don't Know Why My Feelings Are So Strong



I don't know why my feelings are so strong.
It's as if some giant crane jerked me aloft
And swings me through the softness of the night.
I don't blame you if you're scared, for so am I.
It's as if I'm deep beneath the sea:
Though life is vivid, I can hardly breathe.

Free me from my anguish; come with me!
The two of us can wing across our skies
Gliding where we will in joy and love.




-- -- --



~ By Nishiyama Kengyo.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Have a Monster Crush on You



I have a monster crush on you,
A super-dinosaur!
It sits upon my chest and throat
And yet I beg for more.
When you're away I miss you so
My heart is full of sand.
Yet when you're here my stupid fear
Won't let me touch your hand.

I cannot sleep, I cannot eat,
I'm so wrapped up in you.
My thoughts drift up, away from words,
And fade into the blue.

I know this crush is not your fault;
The dinosaur is mine.
Yet if you could, please rescue me,
And put your arms around me, and hold me, and say
you love me, and Oh! God! Would that be good!







-- -- --



~ By Bela Bartok






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Know I Hardly Know You



I know I hardly know you,
But I think that I may love you.
You can see the way I look at you
And know.
I know you have a girlfriend,
But I think we can be happy,
So take the time to find out
If it's so.

I know we don't have much time,
But I think it's just enough;
If you'd like to take a chance on me,
Let's go!




-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Know Well I Have No Right to Love You



I know well I have no right to love you:
I gave you up, and now you're with my friend.
But I can't stop myself from thinking of you,
Even though that's not what I intend.
I want you but I also don't want you
To hurt my friend by breaking up with her.
So things go wrong no matter what you do;
I long for what I don't want to occur.
Ah, me! I'm in a soap and can't get out!
Help me if you can by being kind.
I tell you this to banish any doubt
That I'll be waiting, if you're so inclined.
But please, please, if my friend still has your love,
Forget completely what I've spoken of.



-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Used to Be Completely Cruel and Heartless



I used to be completely cruel and heartless,
Using girls, then tossing them aside.
I used to feel an angry, bitter hunger,
Not knowing why, nor looking much inside.
I used to think the goal of life was pleasure:
My own, of course, whatever that might take.
A woman's feelings had to be her problem.
Self-sacrifice was always a mistake.

And so, with just the slightest twinge of conscience,
I hunted for my lonely ecstasy;
And even when I wanted a companion,
The only one I cared about was me.

We make our worlds, like God, in our own image:
Mine was a metropolis of stone
In which all souls were either fools or cynics,
Doomed to take their pleasure on their own.

And then I fell in love with you, and somehow
Your happiness meant more to me than mine.
The desert became green and lush with flowers,
And like a sun my heart began to shine.

And like a wind I swept across the ocean,
And like a star exploded into night,
And like a song I held love in my hands,
And like an angel knew that this was right.

All that I had thought was proven wrong,
All the lies to justify my greed.
To love was to embrace the pith of life,
To feel a joy far stronger than a need.

And if I could so love, I could be loved,
Could think someone might want me and believe it,
Could let another know me without shame,
Could give my self and know I could retrieve it.

All this I tell you that I might be known,
That all of me no longer be alone;
And if you do not love the one I am,
So be it. I will weep, but understand.






-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Want to Make Your Heart Beat Just for Me



I want to make your heart beat just for me.
I want a true love in my lonely life.
I've looked a long time, dated many men,
But none I walked with walked in step with me.
We walk together well, the best of friends.
Somehow we just fit, as if clean cut
To go together, zigzags complementary.
But now I would be something more than friends.

I know I take a chance to mention love.
I've no idea what feeling's in your heart.
But if you'd catch a burning, plunging star,
I know I'd make you happy for your love.







-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Write to Let You Know I Think About You



I write to let you know I think about you,
Lest you not decipher how I feel.
Our friendship gives me courage to reveal
Vain hopes I've long since harbored silent for you.
Even though right now we are just friends,
Your closeness to me makes me want much more,
Opening a barricaded door,
Unraveling the veil that hides my ends







-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I'm Far Too Shy to Tell You that I Love You



I'm far too shy to tell you that I love you.
You're a star far from my plain earth.
I gaze and see no woman who's above you:
To me you are the cynosure of worth.
Yet with all your beauty you're a person
Like me in need of sympathy and love.
Your thoughts of me would not, I dare hope, worsen
If I in some way tried your heart to move.
There's pleasure, surely, drawn from the reflection
That someone, somewhere, worships your sweet face,
Thinks you are the summit of perfection,
Wants nothing more of life than your embrace.
The danger is you'll think it couldn't be;
So I suggest you see yourself through me.






-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I've Dreamed of Loving You for Many Years



I've dreamed of loving you for many years,
Loving you each day and night, each hour,
Loving till you flow into my tears,
And I into the garden where you flower.
Of course I must be me, as you are you,
But just as bushes planted side by side
So intertwine one cannot tell they're two,
We will through love and time be unified.
So have I dreamed, though we have been apart
So long that I of life with you despaired,
Holding wounded hope within my heart
That through these frozen years it might be spared.
The world is a redaction of the dream.
Our greatest pain deep longings shall redeem.






-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Just Wanted You to Know: I Love You



Just wanted you to know: I love you.
Months have passed since we became close friends.
Every day I find I'm thinking of you,
Though no word from you that message sends.
And yet we share all other thoughts and feelings:
I cannot wait to tell you of my day,
And you give me the gist of all your dealings,
Which makes me hope we walk in the same way.
Telling you this is opening a door
That never can be closed again, and yet
I must, because I ache for something more,
Something that I must risk all to get.
Some night, perhaps, we'll go hang out somewhere;
I will reach for you, and you'll be there.




-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Perhaps It's Far Too Early to Reveal


Perhaps it's far too early to reveal
A feeling not yet ready to be love.
The light of dawn, though hesitant, is real;
Real as well the hopes that time will prove.
I dance across the meadows of my heart
Carrying doubts that mingle joy and fear.
I know I'm half myself when we're apart;
All I want is with me when you're near.



-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Saying What I'm Now About to Say


Saying what I'm now about to say
Is like standing poised upon a cliff.
It seems like just an ordinary day,
But my future is suspended on an if.
To me you're an extraordinary friend:
You've transformed who I am, my being's core.
I would not for my life want this to end,
But now I want to ask for something more.
I love you, and I hope that you love me;
But if you don't that way, please don't go.
Although I want to love you physically,
Your wishes will command me, once I know.
I must speak now, whatever you may do;
I do not want to lose a gift like you.



-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Some People Think that Friends Should Be Just Friends


Some people think that friends should be just friends;
To try for more might ruin what they have.
I think the closest friend is one you love,
Sharing life with words and lips and hands.
One caress unravels mysteries
Lodged behind the most elaborate mask.
The revelation's more than worth the risk.
I want with you such sweet simplicities.

I want us to be friends who now are free
To speak with all the languages of touch.
I want to share your anguish with a kiss
And feel your happiness against my cheek.




-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Sometimes People Grow Together Slowly


Sometimes people grow together slowly,
As trees reach across an old stone wall,
Entangling roots and crossing slender branches
Till one can barely tell which comes from which.
You've become part of my life slowly,
As music, often played, lives in the heart,
Shaping its surroundings to its beauty,
Mirroring the sanctum of its source.

I've come to this realization slowly,
As a deer stands at a clearing, nostrils wide,
Quivers rippling down its delicate legs,
Eyes resigned as lakes await the wind.

Say, my friend, what you must tell me slowly,
Whether my love is also yours, as the sun
Rises or sets over a tranquil valley,
Filling the heart with more than it can hold.








-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



This Is the First Time I Have Ever Loved



This is the first time I have ever loved;
Yours, the first face I can not forget.
I think you are afraid, perhaps, and moved
To wonder whether you should do this yet.
I also am afraid, and yet I know
That wonder is a thing that needs a yes;
Should you step back and let this moment go,
Both you and I will have to live with less.
Please trust my love, as I must trust in yours.
It's strong as steel, as delicate as lace,
Immovable as battered granite shores:
I feel its power and unremitting grace.
So come, my love, and try this love with me;
Let your love speak, and then you will agree.










-- -- --



~ By Dimitri Shostakovich





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



When You Said, "I Love You"



When you said, "I love you,"
I went over the moon.
My heart sang its glory,
The stars sang in tune.
As when with a word
God brought forth light,
So with these words
You ended my night.

So with these words
You made something new:
A bond of devotion
Between me and you.

How powerful words
To shape who we are!
We ponder in silence;
Our words cross a bar.

Your words crossed a threshold
And entered the past,
Yet they have created
A world that will last.










-- -- --



~ By Turlough O'Carolan.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



All I Ever Wanted Is in You



All I ever wanted is in you:
Love, laughter, a pillow for my fears.
I want to give and to be given to
So I might feel myself flow through the years
Alive in you, the wonder of my tears.







-- -- --



~ By Steve S. Kelly.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



As My Debt Grows, So My Love Does, Too



As my debt grows, so my love does, too.
What you give I cannot half repay.
Your love for me enflames my love for you.
I can't help being moody, often blue,
Irritable, anxious, sad, and yet you stay.
As my debt grows, so my love does, too.

I know I'm lucky to have someone who
Will love me through this, day by troubled day.
Your love for me enflames my love for you.

Gifts like yours to me do not accrue.
Still, it's hard when giving goes one way.
As my debt grows, so my love does, too.

Yet unlike money, love is never due.
Its return is free, in just the way
Your love for me enflames my love for you,

A natural grace, making one of two.
And so this darkness has its own bright ray:
As my debt grows, so my love does, too;
Your love for me enflames my love for you.











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~ By Steve S. Kelly.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



My Mum


I have a wonderful mother
She gave me three sisters and a brother

There are five offspring
This makes seven in my family

My mum as a nurse she works
Together with all the perks

Late and early shifts she goes
She is always on her toes

My mum is so cool
She helps us all at homeschool

And so in conclusion I would like to say
A big huge thankyou in every way.







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~ By Piglet84





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Sweets


I really like sweets
they are such yummy treats
but they make your teeth go rotten
and that's a thing that can't be forgotten.
So eat them with due care
or else you'll be a gummy bear.





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~ By Froggy42





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Goodnight to My Children


Close your eyes, don't you peep,
Have lovely thoughts as you go to sleep,
I'll give you a kiss,
Hold it tight,
As I say I love you and wish you goodnight.





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~ By E Nash





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Until We Meet Again


With smooth wrinkle-less skin belying her true age
Looking more like forty something
Than her mature seventy something
She lay there quietly and uncomplaining

Silver streaked hair wafting in the gentle breeze
While dappled sunlight cascaded across her still body
Arms lying limply by her sides
Eyes closed against the bright light

With an ageless smile upon her full still lips
She lay there looking calm and serene
As if a huge weight had suddenly been lifted off her shoulders
Peace at last

As I bent down to kiss her goodbye
Her eyes opened and she whispered
“Don’t worry I will always be with you
Out of sight, but never out of mind.”

And she was right
She is out of my sight, but never out of my mi




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~ By Joncil





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Transition


At my window, I see rain.
Like tears of heaven falling
I somehow feel the pain
And my sorrow comes calling.

Chill in the air,
Cold and unwelcoming.
Strange people every where
Distant and uninviting.

But then the rain stops,
And the air becomes warm,
My sorrow drops
And peace begins to form.

Sounds of Spring
Fill me with calm
Bells of life ring
New life has begun.



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~ By Melanie





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



My New Daughter

To my beautiful little daughter,
The star in my sky,
A father to an angel,
The gleam in my eye.

Since the first day I knew,
That you were on the way,
To pave a path of life,
And guide you through the day.

You are my little girl,
A joy to love and hold,
You will pass the time so quickly,
Your own adventures to be told.

For now you’re my little girl,
And no matter what the fad,
You will be my darling daughter,
I forever your loving dad .



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~ By Johnny_Damon





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Lone Tree


The bitter wind blows through the trees,
It picks the dew up off the leaves,
Continues to drain out the fog,
'Til morning, when men come to log.

The music of birds whistling clears,
And what was beautiful, disappears,
The sun goes down, the men go home,
There's one tree standing all alone,
And the wind blows 'round it in an endless drone.



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~ By Becathon





--> Man