Oasis.

[Namaste]

"Aftershock"

We are not in the same place after all.
The only evidence of the disaster,
Mapping out across the bedroom wall,
Tiny cracks still fissuring the plaster –
A new cartography for us to master,
In whose legend we read where we are bound:
Terra infirma, a stranger land, and vaster.
Or have we always stood on shaky ground?
The moment keeps on happening: a sound.
The floor beneath us swings, a pendulum
That clocks the heart, the heart so tightly wound,
We fall mute, as when two lovers come
To the brink of the apology, and halt,
Each standing on the wrong side of the fault.

-- A. E. Stallings

 

[Andreina]

i can't stand "Aftershock" anymore. makes me vomit again and again. brrr bad stuff.

 

[Gusty Wind]

[No message]

 

[Namaste]

"Art And Craft"

It's a gift from the king
and the queen has dropped
and cracked it.

She's panicky.
She calls in the magic tailor
who can mend anything: he
sews up the eggshell tight,
clean.
Secrecy, she says, and pays him.
Now, disappear.

Three months later out pops a baby princess,
perfect
except for a scarlet seam down her back.
That's the mark of her royal heritage,
the queen tells the king

who loves his baby daughter.

Years pass. Everyone gets much older.
The gray-haired queen hardly thinks about her
joyous, shimmering light-shot
egg-crack days.
When, knock, knock,
and here's the tailor, the brilliant
who can mend anything, be it hard as
steel or soft as a woman's breath.
The queen panicks.
Go away.
You promised.
Gold? Silver? Rubies?

But the tailor says, no and no.
He's felt mortality's bite; he wants
artistic recognition.
I am the best, he says.
The world must know,
because life is short but art is long.

The queen sags.
Once she thought that love was long,
and now she knows,
hardly an eye-blink, hardly a cough.
Do, she tells him, what you need to do.

And that's the end of
that kingdom.

-- Diana O'Hehir

 

[Namaste]

Hi again Andreina and Gusty Wind

 

[Gusty Wind]

[No message]

 

[Andreina]

my all-time favourite poem (EVER)

When we two parted
in silence and tears,
Half broken hearted
to sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek
and cold, colder thy kiss
Truly that hour fortold
sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
sunk chill on my brow
It felt like the warning
of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken
and like is thy fame
I hear thy name spoken
and share in it's shame.

They name thee before me
a knell to mine ear
A shudder comes over me,
why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
who knew thee to well
Long, long shall I rue thee
too deeply to tell.

In secret we met,
in silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget
thy spirit decieve.
If I should meet thee
after long years
How should I greet thee,
with silence and tears.


-- Lord George Gordon Byron

 

[Gusty Wind]

[No message]

 

[Andreina]

Funeral Blues - W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

 

[Gusty Wind]

[No message]

 

[Gusty Wind]

Hey.. I this thread!!

 

[Andreina]

Composed upon Westminster Bridge -- William Wordsworth

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 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!

 

[Namaste]

"Butter"

Butter, like love,
seems common enough
yet has so many imitators.
I held a brick of it, heavy and cool,
and glimpsed what seemed like skin
beneath a corner of its wrap;
the dècolletage revealed
a most attractive fat!

And most refined.
Not milk, not cream,
not even crème de la crème.
It was a delicacy which assured me
that bliss follows agitation,
that even pasture daisies
through the alchemy of four stomachs
may grace a king's table.

We have a yellow bowl near the toaster
where summer's butter grows
soft and sentimental.
We love it better for its weeping,
its nostalgia for buckets and churns
and deep stone wells,
for the press of a wooden butter mold
shaped like a swollen heart.

-- Connie Wanek

 

[Namaste]

Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer:

11 November, 1912

Fräulein Felice!

I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well, this is it:

Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday -- for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them. For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. But for this very reason I don't want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal with life; and that's why I don't want to know that you are fond of me. If I did, how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you? Oh, there is a sad, sad reason for not doing so. To make it short: My health is only just good enough for myself alone, not good enough for marriage, let alone fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter, I feel I could overlook even what cannot possibly be overlooked.

If only I had your answer now! And how horribly I torment you, and how I compel you, in the stillness of your room, to read this letter, as nasty a letter as has ever lain on your desk! Honestly, it strikes me sometimes that I prey like a spectre on your felicitous name! If only I had mailed Saturday's letter, in which I implored you never to write to me again, and in which I gave a similar promise. Oh God, what prevented me from sending that letter? All would be well. But is a peaceful solution possible now? Would it help if we wrote to each other only once a week? No, if my suffering could be cured by such means it would not be serious. And already I foresee that I shan't be able to endure even the Sunday letters. And so, to compensate for Saturday's lost opportunity, I ask you with what energy remains to me at the end of this letter: If we value our lives, let us abandon it all.

Did I think of signing myself Dein? No, nothing could be more false. No, I am forever fettered to myself, that's what I am, and that's what I must try to live with.

Franz

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

 

[Namaste]

ooops...the place...not the band...

sigh, don't I feel like a JACKASS....

Doesn't matter

 

[Namaste]

"A Page In Your Name"

Your name can be bitten like an apple.
It smells like Manila mango and mandarin orange.
It leaves my tongue purple like chagalapolin
and the escobilla.
I crush it and breathe mint.
As I separate it a pomegranate explodes.
It grows to the height of a sugarcane flower, it's the vine
that climbs the fence or reaches to the edge of the patio,
persecutor of coral snakes, watermelons, and verdolagas.
If I shake it, I hear the water that fills it.
If I give it to the mad man of the house, he will return to the top
of the hill and make it a flute.
To free me from darkness I keep it in a jar.
With the light it makes it illuminates this page.

-- Francisco Hernandez

 

[Namaste]

"A Parting Gift"

Song birds are singing from a cave of leaves
inside a tree that I imagine there
beyond the upper story window of
the bedroom where
the lovers we no longer are
are making love.

They're singing now because I say they do,
swallow and nightingale, wren, lark and thrush,
each song a different air of deepest pleasure
all through a lush,
long night we'll never have again
with one another,

a night of bird song that won't let you sleep,
a night of hearing how each tremulous thread
of melody pulls back against the urge
to pull ahead,
how song weaves in and out of song
till all songs merge

into the sheerest billowing of air
that settles and never settles over all
the lovers do throughout that long ago
spectacular
lost night that's now forever my
last gift to you.

-- Alan Shapiro

 

[Shaft]

Have they killed each other yet?

I haven't seen the news today....

 

[Namaste]

"You"

From beyond the borders of memory, you seemed to
gaze, to unfold, clothe me,
lift me. I was held, washed,

fed. On unsprung legs I swayed and
tottered. Your smile urged me into
walking. Your words urged me out

into words. Your scowl stunned and guarded me. You taught,
scolded, attended. And now, you vanish.
What dark seas must I canvass to

undrown you? How far have you drifted,
castaway? I yearn
across pathless waterlands for

a whiff of your fragrance, a waft
of arms, the flick and murmur of
your speaking, the groan of your soft song,

the pursed kisses of your mouth.
Who could have thought you would ever so
immoderately disappear? Or imagine

that, no matter how hard I haul
on the ligaments of our fateful
connection, you

could never possibly return,
never respond, never
speak, never
know me?

-- Peter Davison

 

[Namaste]

Yellow -- Coldplay

Look at the stars; look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah, they were all yellow

I came along; I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called yellow

So then I took my turn
Oh what a thing to have done
And it was all yellow

Your skin, oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D'you know?
You know I love you so
You know I love you so

I swam across; I jumped across for you
Oh what a thing to do
'Cos you were all yellow

I drew a line; I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all yellow

And your skin, oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D'you know?
For you I'd bleed myself dry
For you I'd bleed myself dry

It's true
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for…
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine

Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And all the things that you do

 

[Namaste]

Poetry is a pack-sack of invisible keepsakes -- Carl Sandburg.

 

[Namaste]

XV

Why will you haunt me unawares,
And walk into my sleep,
Pacing its shadowy thoroughfares,
Where long-dried perfume scents the airs,
While ghosts of sorrow creep,
Where on Hope's ruined altar-stairs,
With ineffectual beams,
The Moon of Memory coldly glares
Upon the land of dreams?

My yearning eyes were fain to look
Upon your hidden face;
Their love, alas! you could not brook,
But in your own you mutely took
My hand, and for a space
You wrung it till I throbbed and shook,
And woke with wildest moan
And wet face channeled like a brook
With your tears or my own.

-- Mathilde Blind

 

[Namaste]

XXIV

AH, if you knew how soon and late
My eyes long for a sight of you
Sometimes in passing by my gate
You'd linger until fall of dew,
If you but knew!

Ah, if you knew how sick and sore
My life flags for the want of you,
Straightway you'd enter at the door
And clasp my hand between your two,
If you but knew!


Ah, if you knew how lost and lone
I watch and weep and wait for you,
You'd press my heart close to your own
Till love had healed me through and through,
If you but knew!

-- Mathilde Blind