Big Time . . . The place where I come from Is a small town They think so small They use small words But not me I'm smarter than that I worked it out I've been stretching my mouth To let those big words Come right out I've had enough I'm getting out To the city The big, big city I'll be a big noise With all the big boys So much stuff I will own And I will pray to a big God As I kneel in the big Church . . . Peter Gabriel
Night descends furtively over the landscape, Trees and mountains, wind and stars. Dreams echo longingly in my cavernous soul. Voices are overheard from worlds afar, Reminding me of other lifetimes. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I Never Saw a Moor by Emily Dickinson. I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea ; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven ; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given.
Hey Joe Jam me that java jive Slam a slunk slinky dive Down that ringy ding thing Fling on yo fenda flang when you sang Lawrd, gimme dat marsee. Thatsa ridgy didge, fo yo headge.
Downhearted -- Australian Crawl (aka the needle and the damage done, Oz version) I left my heart back in the Orient Down on Bali Bay It's not the way that I should feel but It's the way I'm gonna stay Downhearted Broken dreams that never really started . . . It seems all wrong back here at home There's no end in sight Should I be made to drag you through this Lover's endless fight? Downhearted . . . Sometimes I think that we should stay Happy on the farm Sometimes I think I'll give it all away this Love and all its charms . . .
The Man As I was walking down the street one day A Man came up to me and said His name was Uncle Sam He was tall, kinda goofy looking Until I saw the look That look in his eye like someone I know I watched him standing there, as I was Standing looking up at him with his Coca-Cola billboards, and signs That conned me into thinking Is he the one? The one who can win what's never been won? I looked up at him and watched how he looked down at me Not with a twinkle, I saw his eyes moving Darting in and out of various deep and meaningful things He was judging, by looking down at how I was looking up If I might be of help, or of insignificance to his lofty mission Well, looking away at last I thought I know why you like being so tall It's so nobody can kick you in the nuts
The Owl Fairy Wanders at twilight When the trees cast Gentle shadows On the mossy ground, As she steps she sings A magical chant And the forest listens with delight. By Paola Merrill, artist and poet
Length of Moon by Arna Bontemps, 1926 Then the golden hour Will tick its last And the flame will go down in the flower. A briefer length of moon Will mark the sea-line and the yellow dune. Then we may think of this, yet There will be something forgotten And something we should forget. It will be like all things we know: A stone will fail; a rose is sure to go. It will be quiet then and we may stay Long at the picket gate,― But there will be less to say. [via Poets.org↱]
"Drink deep, drink deep of quietness, And on the margins of the sea Remember not thine old distress Nor all the miseries to be. Calmer than mists, and cold As they, that fold on fold Up the dim valley are rolled, Learn thou to be.” ― Robinson Jeffers Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It's a kind of magic Watching a guitar play, the interfering tones mean I'll be Sifting through electron graveyards Looking for their bones. Unplugged there's still a universe of sound Made by lots of stuff that doesn't wait around For you to hear it. Bach pluggin in a working algorythm Made changes on a boundary sound Quite astoundary.
The Message of the Rain: By Norman H Russell When i was a child i was a squirrel a bluejay a fox and spoke with them in their tongues climbed their trees dug their dens and knew the taste of every grass and stone the meaning of the sun the message of the night now i am old and past both work and battle and know no shame to go alone into the forest to speak again to squirrel fox and bird to taste the world to find the meaning of the wind the message of the rain Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
“You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.” ― David Whyte
“Love, be mystical as the flickering blue flame of night as the fully-awoken moon beneath cobwebs of passing clouds amidst chanting high-tides fuzzy, as my blanket big enough to illuminate a hundred thousand billion galaxies and just small enough to fit into my embrace.” ― Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Unravel by Toru Kitajima, 2014 (adapted translation) Tell me, tell me this machine who is inside me?It's broken. It's broken in this world you laugh without seeing anything.I am broken hold your breath: I can't unravel I can't unravel anymore.Even the truth (¡freeze!)can be broken cannot be broken crazy not crazyI found you and trembled gradually being in a distorted world it is transparent invisibleDo not find me. Do not stare.In this world drawn by someone I don't want to hurt you. Remember me. Stay vivid.Infinite loneliness is entwined the memory of laughing innocently pierces I can't move I can't move I can't move I can't move I can't move I can't moveunraveling the world I have changed I couldn't change.Two people who are entwined are destroyed can be broken cannot be broken crazy not crazy I will not stain yougradually being in a distorted world it is transparent and invisible.Do not find me. Do not stare.In a lonely trap someone set, before the future unravels, remember me, stay vivid; don't forget don't forget.What has changed will paralyze. Paradise is filled with what cannot be changed. Remember me,tell me tell me:Who is inside me? [via YouTube↱]
The Human Condition by Stephen Spender, 1938 This I is one of The human machines So common on the gray plains― Yet being built into flesh My single pair of eyes Contain the universe they see; Their mirrored multiplicity Is packed into a hollow body Where I reflect the many, in my one. The traffic of the street Roars through my head, as in the genitals Their unborn London. And if this I were destroyed, The image shattered, My perceived, rent world would fly In an explosion of final judgment To the ends of the sky, The coulour in the iris of the eye. Opening my eyes say "Let there be light", Closing, they shut me in a coffin. [via PoetryFoundation.org↱]
generation of feeling by Marwa Helal, 2019 these growing pains though this good will hunting we fallen twigs look like bones waiting to be lit i am trying to tell you something about how rearranging words rearranges the universe [via American Life in Poetry↱]
The Rights of Woman by Anna Lætitia Barbauld, 1792 Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right! Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest; O born to rule in partial Law's despite, Resume thy native empire o'er the breast! Go forth arrayed in panoply divine; That angel pureness which admits no stain; Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign, And kiss the golden sceptre of thy reign. Go, gird thyself with grace; collect thy store Of bright artillery glancing from afar; Soft melting tones thy thundering cannon's roar, Blushes and fears thy magazine of war. Thy rights are empire: urge no meaner claim,— Felt, not defined, and if debated, lost; Like sacred mysteries, which withheld from fame, Shunning discussion, are revered the most. Try all that wit and art suggest to bend Of thy imperial foe the stubborn knee; Make treacherous Man thy subject, not thy friend; Thou mayst command, but never canst be free. Awe the licentious, and restrain the rude; Soften the sullen, clear the cloudy brow: Be, more than princes' gifts, thy favours sued;— She hazards all, who will the least allow. But hope not, courted idol of mankind, On this proud eminence secure to stay; Subduing and subdued, thou soon shalt find Thy coldness soften, and thy pride give way. Then, then, abandon each ambitious thought, Conquest or rule thy heart shall feebly move, In Nature's school, by her soft maxims taught, That separate rights are lost in mutual love. [Poetry Foundation↱]
"Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move, though really I’m traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple." Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Mary Oliver, Today
Sissieretta Jones by Tyehimba Jess, 2016 Ad libitum I sing this body ad libitum, Europe scraped raw between my teeth until, presto, "Ave Maria" floats to the surface from a Tituba tributary of "Swanee." Until I'm a legato darkling whole note, my voice shimmering up from the Atlantic's hold; until I'm a coda of sail song whipped in salted wind; until my chorus swells like a lynched tongue; until the nocturnes boiling beneath the roof of my mouth extinguish each burning cross. I sing this life in testimony to tempo rubato, to time stolen body by body by body by body from one passage to another; I sing tremolo to the opus of loss. I sing this story staccato and stretto, a fugue of blackface and blued-up arias. I sing with one hand smoldering in the steely canon, the other lento, slow, languorous: lingered in the fields of "Babylon's Falling" ... [via PoetryFoundation.org↱]
I Sit and Sew by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1918) I sit and sew―a useless task it seems, My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams― The panoply of war, the martial tred of men, Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death, Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath― But―I must sit and sew. I sit and sew―my heart aches with desire― That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things Once men. My soul in pity flings Appealing cries, yearning only to go There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe― But―I must sit and sew. The little useless seam, the idle patch; Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch, When there they lie in sodden mud and rain, Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain? You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream That beckons me―this pretty futile seam, It stifles me―God, must I sit and sew? [via PoetryFoundation.org↱]