~ Quotes ~ Prose ~ Poetry ~ Pieces ~

[ycartrob]

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think;
because although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there
was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than
when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.
                                         
A.A. Milne

[ycartrob]

If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less-

General Eric Shinseki

[red]

"I've always been afraid I was going to tap the world on the shoulder for 20 years and when it finally turned around, I was going to forget what I had to say."

Tom Waits

[tomEisenbraun]

"Sorrow is nothing but worn out joy."

[tomEisenbraun]

even if love were not what I wanted
love would make love the thing most desired

[tomEisenbraun]

can we post some of our own?

I've got a couple--I don't know if they're worth reading, but we've never had a poetry corner before---(maybe it's just angst)

ask me if I could string four words together
you'd be lucky if you got four ugly letters
when the pillars of your schooling begin to give way
to the turning of your brain rosy pink to grey
when your mind races with faces and pulls only the name
of every other third cousin...

when all's said and done do our sins get erased?
or merely crossed out so that truth leaves a trace
I'd give a hundred dollars to see the look on the face
of every last person I'd offend and disgrace
to see how much hurt I'd cause--the trouble I'd make
and then to claim my forgiveness and then hear their takes
--I bet I'd catch all hell from those who still cared enough to stay...

and would you consider it a maxim or mathematical mandate
that the love you take is equal to the love that you make?

(i want to know love so true it has taste.)

[Bam_Bam]

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Boogers are green,
and so is my throwup.

[dragonboy]

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows

The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this:

The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair

The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said: "kiss me, you're beautiful -
These are truly the last days"

You grabbed my hand and we fell into it
Like a daydream or a fever

We woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
For sure it's the valley of death

I open up my wallet
And it's full of blood

[vespachick]

ask me if I could string four words together
you'd be lucky if you got four ugly letters
when the pillars of your schooling begin to give way
to the turning of your brain rosy pink to grey
when your mind races with faces and pulls only the name
of every other third cousin...

when all's said and done do our sins get erased?
or merely crossed out so that truth leaves a trace
I'd give a hundred dollars to see the look on the face
of every last person I'd offend and disgrace
to see how much hurt I'd cause--the trouble I'd make
and then to claim my forgiveness and then hear their takes
--I bet I'd catch all hell from those who still cared enough to stay...

and would you consider it a maxim or mathematical mandate
that the love you take is equal to the love that you make?

(i want to know love so true it has taste.)

Tom, I like your poem. While I confess that I can't claim to understand it, it does make me feel like I'm watching you hover over your own funeral.  And I mean that in a good way. 8-)

[tomEisenbraun]

Tom, I like your poem. While I confess that I can't claim to understand it, it does make me feel like I'm watching you hover over your own funeral.  And I mean that in a good way. 8-)

thanks--

i was kind of gettin down about bein a sinner, i think--the bit bout forgiveness is sort of self-explanatory---it's hard to feel like other people would actually believe in it for you when you keep needing it.

thanks for the words, i've got some more that 'll put up soon

[vespachick]

When I wrote this, I thought it was so fantastic, the kind of lie-in-your-bed-and-writhe-around-because-you're-so-awesome fantastic.  Now, months (years?) later, I realize, no, I probably just had too much to drink.  But, still, I kind of like it:

I can't hang up.  I don't know what he's saying
But I know it should be good.
I go to sleep with pictures in my head
And I wake with music on my lips.

I keep on listening, thinking this is the time it'll become clear.
But when the sun rises I seem to have forgotten
Why I loved him so much.

I don't know what he's saying,
I never have.
Still it makes me move
To my pillow with my pen out and paper at hand;
The page remains blank.

Pour the wine and wait for tomorrow
It always makes me feel better.
With music on my lips.
(I still don't know what he's saying...)
The page is always blank.

[tomEisenbraun]

one early spring morning
i walked outside to find
a bear.
nine feet of brown ferocity
nibbling meekly at one of my backyard cedars.
he found me riveted,
my blood emptying into my feet
as if to scream
RUN.
but he caught first scent of the word,
and left me wondering if my fear
was anything more than instinctual ignorance.

and could i not learn a thing or two from my friend,
the bear?
to learn how not to maul, but to nibble?
to run from battles best not fought,
but otherwise easily won?
for the true measure of a man
lies not in sheer power,
but in his tact—
and if only i could learn
to use the same claws that could skin a deer
to nimbly pluck my backyard cedars clean,
then maybe i could begin to learn
why it is that i am so afraid
of bears.

[SMc55]

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain

Emily Dickinson

[TEO]

" You are only as young as the last time you changed your mind" T. Leary

[Tree]

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows

The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this:

The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair

The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said: "kiss me, you're beautiful -
These are truly the last days"

You grabbed my hand and we fell into it
Like a daydream or a fever

We woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
For sure it's the valley of death

I open up my wallet
And it's full of blood

Thanks for posting this! I love The Dead Flag Blues!

[Chills]

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows

The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this:

The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair

The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said: "kiss me, you're beautiful -
These are truly the last days"

You grabbed my hand and we fell into it
Like a daydream or a fever

We woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
For sure it's the valley of death

I open up my wallet
And it's full of blood

Thanks for posting this! I love The Dead Flag Blues!

Who wrote that?

Pretty bleak, I'd say  :)

[ycartrob]

Things that Happen

Sometimes before great events a person will try,
disguised, at his best, not to be a clown:
he feels, "a great event is coming, bow down."
And I, always looking for something anyway,
always bow down.

Once, later than dawn but early,
before the lines of the calendar fell,
one of those events turned an unseen corner
and came near, near, sounding before it
something the opposite from a leper's bell.

We were back of three mountains called
"Sisters" along the Green Lakes trail
and had crossed a ridge when that
one little puff of air touched us,
hardly felt at all.

That was the greatest event that day;
it righted all wrong.
I remember it, the way the dust moved there.
Something had come out of the ground
and moved calmly along.

No one was ahead of us, no one
in all that moon-like land.
Oh, I thought, how hard the world has tried
with its wind, its miles, its blundering
stumbling days, again and again, to find my hand.

~ William Stafford ~

[whothrewthecake]

The Summer Day
      
       Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

[dragonboy]

Thanks for posting this! I love The Dead Flag Blues!

Who wrote that?

Pretty bleak, I'd say  :)

Here you go Serg  :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aLjup934Rk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%E2%99%AFa%E2%99%AF%E2%88%9E

http://www.brainwashed.com/godspeed/deadmetheney/monologues/deadflag.htm

[dragonboy]

One of my fav poems:

After The Lunch by Wendy Cope

On Waterloo bridge, where we said our goodbyes
The weather conditions brings tears to my eyes,
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I've fallen in love.

On Waterloo bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. You're high on the charm and the drink.
But the juke-box inside me is playing a song
That says something different. And when was it wrong?

On Waterloo bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You're a fool. I don't care.
The head does it's best, but the heart is the boss-
I admit it before I'm halfway across.