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Pull up a chair...
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(2379 of 2379)
Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 21, 2009 10:19 PM
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TWO WOLVES
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.
"One is Evil - It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
"The other is Good - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 21, 2009 12:40 PM
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A prophet screamed awake from a dream
Such a gruesome separation
The mouse escaped through the corner into the dark cold
The corner through which the trembling housewife could not endure
The Prophesy
The Prophesy
He saw her stick her hand in the whole
He saw her bit
The frozen mouse awakened him,
She was thawing it in the Microwave.
© SRW
--
Edited by SpiritontheWater at 11/21/2009 10:28 AM PST
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 21, 2009 12:58 AM
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A Blessing
by James Wright
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 slender 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.
--
Edited by svengali2 at 11/20/2009 11:32 PM PST
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814
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 20, 2009 12:33 PM
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I was living in Phoenix Arizona for a short time when I was nineteen years old and became the kind of teenager there who would drink a dozen beers, drive out into the desert with a buddy and a 30-06 and blow the shit out of two or three who knows how old fifteen to twenty foot tall Sequaro cactus. One in particular I remember, we took turns until it fell.
I'd like to say that Phoenix will do that to a kid, fucking hell hole it was for sure, but I'm guessing now I must have been angry about something I had yet to put my finger on and the trigger then was doing the job. Apparently I was really the kind of kid who knew it was wrong to destroy such beauty, I certainly knew the feeling of awe standing before such magnificent life. It may even be said, truthfully, that I was the kind of kid who delighted in the splendor of a cactus blossom.
So maybe it goes without saying that I think I've been paying for the act all my life. Living with the burden of being responsible for the murder of a twenty foot Seguoro cactus, how slow do they grow? Such things take their toll over time.
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Edited by SpiritontheWater at 11/20/2009 9:54 AM PST
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 19, 2009 10:16 AM
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Solar
by Robin Becker
The desert is butch, she dismisses your illusions
about what might do to make your life
work better, she stares you down and doesn't say
a word about your past. She brings you a thousand days,
a thousand suns effortlessly each morning rising.
She lets you think what you want all afternoon.
Rain walks across her mesa, red-tailed hawks
writhe in fields of air, she lets you look at her.
She laughs at your study habits, your orderly house,
your need to name her vainest woman you've ever met.
Then she turns you toward the voluptuous valleys,
she gives you dreams of green forests,
she doesn't care who else you love.
She sings in the grass, the sagebrush, the small trees
struggling and the tiny lizards scrambling
up the walls. You find her when you're ready
in the barbed wire and fence posts, on the scrub where you walk
with your parched story, where she walks, spendthrift,
tossing up sunflowers, throwing her indifferent
shadow across the mountain. Haven't you guessed?
She's the loneliest woman alive but that's her gift;
she makes you love your own loneliness,
the gates to darkness and memory. She is your best, indifferent
teacher, she knows you don't mean what you say.
She flings aside your technical equipment,
she requires you to survive in her high country
like the patient sheep and cattle who graze and take her
into their bodies. She says lightning, and
get used to it. Her storms are great moments
in the history of American weather, her rain remakes the world,
while your emotional life is run-off from a tin roof.
Like the painted clown at Picuris Pueblo
who started up the pole and then dropped into the crowd,
anonymous, she paws the ground, she gallops past.
What can you trust? This opening, this returning,
this arroyo, this struck gong inside your chest?
She wants you to stay open like the hibiscus
that opens its orange petals for a single day.
At night, a fool, you stand on the chilly mesa,
split open like the great cleft of the Rio Grande Gorge,
trying to catch a glimpse of her, your new, long-term companion.
She gives you a sliver of moon, howl of a distant dog,
windy premonition of winter.
--
Edited by svengali2 at 11/20/2009 10:08 AM PST
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 17, 2009 1:23 AM
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Castile
by Louise Gluck
Orange blossoms blowing over Castile
children begging for coins
I met my love under an orange tree
or was it an acacia tree
or was he not my love?
I read this, then I dreamed this,
does that mean it didn't happen?
Does it have to happen in the real world to be real?
I dreamed everything, the story
became my story:
he lay beside me,
my hand grazed the skin of his shoulder
Mid-day, then early evening:
in the distance, the sound of a train
But it was not the world:
In the world a thing happens finally, absolutely,
the mind cannot reverse it.
Castile: nuns walking in pairs through the dark garden.
Outside the walls of the Holy Angels
children begging for coins
When I woke I was crying,
has that no reality?
I met my love under an orange tree:
I have forgotten
only the facts, not the inference-
there were children somewhere, crying, begging for coins
I dreamed everything, I gave myself
completely and for all time
And the train returned us
first to Madrid
then to the Basque country
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(2373 of 2379)
Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 17, 2009 1:23 AM
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from A Swimmer's Dream
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Somno mollior unda
I
Dawn is dim on the dark soft water,
Soft and passionate, dark and sweet.
Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter,
Fair and flawless from face to feet,
Hailed of all when the world was golden,
Loved of lovers whose names beholden
Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden
Days more glad than their flight was fleet.
So they sang: but for men that love her,
Souls that hear not her word in vain,
Earth beside her and heaven above her
Seem but shadows that wax and wane.
Softer than sleep's are the sea's caresses,
Kinder than love's that betrays and blesses,
Blither than spring's when her flowerful tresses
Shake forth sunlight and shine with rain.
All the strength of the waves that perish
Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs,
Sighs for love of the life they cherish,
Laughs to know that it lives and dies,
Dies for joy of its life, and lives
Thrilled with joy that its brief death gives ?
Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives
Change that bids it subside and rise.
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 14, 2009 2:15 PM
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A Color Of The Sky
by Tony Hoagland
Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn't make the road an allegory.
I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I'd rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.
Otherwise it's spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.
Last summer's song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,
which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.
Last night I dreamed of X again.
She's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I'm glad.
What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.
Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;
overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,
dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,
so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It's been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.
--
Edited by svengali2 at 11/16/2009 10:25 PM PST
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135
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 11, 2009 7:25 PM
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Annabel Lee
Edgar Allen Poe
It was many and many a year ago
In this kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee:
and this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child, and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Annabel Lee,
With a love that the winged seraphs in heaven
Coveted her and me.
And that was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee,
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven
Went enveying her and me--
Yes! that was the reason ( as all men know
in this kingdom by the sea)
That a wind blew out of a cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those that were older than we,
Of many far wiser than we,
And neither the angels in heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,
And so, all the night tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
In her sepulcher there by the sea--
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
--
Edited by SONRA43 at 11/12/2009 10:08 AM PST
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135
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 8, 2009 9:37 PM
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This Place
unknown
I dreamed you came to visit me.
To see me in this place.
You set my heart racing to look upon your face.
Eyes locked in heart felt passion.
No words were spoken now.
We knew in our hearts we belonged right here, somehow.
Tears fell, warm from joy- our hearts so overwhelmed.
To be loved so completely.
All our dreams beheld.
I placed my hands upon your face, tracing every line.
I knew at least while in this place, that you are always mine...
I reached my arms around you.
And your arms pulled me close.
I whispered words you always knew.
You know why they were chose........
And as we turned to kiss...
I saw a tear fall down.
For this was truly bliss....
The heaven we have found.
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 8, 2009 10:46 AM
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Love Song
by Rainer Maria Rilke
How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.
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814
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 7, 2009 7:28 PM
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I'd been waiting all my life for you
And ever since you came I've worried
Day and night, every night and day.
Watching you has brought fear to my door
And I only hope now
That I will not fail in that fear
To see the joy you brought with you.
I hope I die before I see
Another tear fall from your eye
I hope I will someday get the chance
To share a holy moment with you
And see the look on your face
And feel the touch
And hear the sigh that I've been waiting for.
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814
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 7, 2009 3:56 PM
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I let you go
and now you hang around my neck.
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(2366 of 2379)
Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 7, 2009 9:27 AM
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We are the time
by Jorge Luis Borges
We are the time. We are the famous
metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure.
We are the water, not the hard diamond,
the one that is lost, not the one that stands still.
We are the river and we are that Greek
that looks himself into the river. His reflection
changes into the waters of the changing mirror,
into the crystal that changes like the fire.
We are the vain predetermined river,
in his travel to his sea.
The shadows have surrounded him.
Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away.
Memory does not stamp his own coin.
However, there is something that stays
however, there is something that bemoans.
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135
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 5, 2009 11:44 AM
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Comfort of pure Thought.
Washington Irving
~ The scholar only knows how dear these silent yet eloquent companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languish into vapid civility and commonplace these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow. ~
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Edited by SONRA43 at 11/05/2009 9:28 AM PST
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