“Most people are not really free.
They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves.
They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.”
| ~ | V.S. Naipaul |
-
-
Air here is like the waterOf an aquarium that’s been lived in for a while—clear and stillBeyond the rigorsOf glass; appearing cold (and clear) as spring streamsFed by snow and ice,But unexpectedly warm to feel, and inviting; side-lit—A vitality of shadowsOnce you come into it, and long bars of lightBurning like spots,Remarkable for the absence of dust in their sharp crossfires;Heavy, as crystalIs heavy, as if to move here would mean pushing against a forcePalpable, and strong;Yet rich with prospects of life, comfortableWith the idea of life,As if, put on its slide, every drop is stocked with wonders,Swarming, about to burst—Beautiful in a way,One element sustaining another, our message brought homeSo that the livingMight come to see. Harder to say that without themWe are nothing—Water without air; or to speak of our isolation,Or our special loneliness;Or say as they look right through us, at their plants,Pictures, books,Windows, reflections, and blank white walls,That we need them,To orient ourselves and to tell us who we are;Or that with each lookThey are swimming to within our sights; or that we are always castingWider and widerAnd that even now they are fighting to avoid our nets.Robert Polito, “What the Dead Know” from Doubles. Copyright © 1995 by Robert Polito.
Share this:
-
“The task is … not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.”
~ Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961)
Share this:
-
Christopher Marlowe …
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
O lente, lente, curite noctis equi.
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d.
I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?Share this:
-
Happy Birthday, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Born 4 August 1792, died 8 July 1822:
- Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
- Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
- What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.
- Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.
- A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.
- The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
- Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
- Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.
- War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.
- All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.
Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. He was a member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.
Share this:
-
“What people dont know about you people create. Imagination is a part of being human. They fill in the unknowns with assumptions and not facts. Every man and woman is a mystery unrevealed.”
Share this:
-
NEW POEMS : FORMER PEOPLE: A JOURNAL OF BANGS AND WHIMPERS
Bangs, Whimpers, Arts, Culture, and Commentary
THE POEMS OF OCTOBER
by R.M. ENGELHARDT
Relics
The burning smell of leaves
He dreams of
Her body stretched out
Upon the bed.Samhain
Cold October.
She wears a mask
Drunken fucking to the rhythm
Of the dance
Like a final sacrifice to
The Gods.She
She is the God
A Goddess in
Black makeup
The spell running
Thru us 7 times upon
The moonlit night’s
Frozen earth, throne
Of graveyard dustThese are the remains
Of what we once called love
Eaten by the cannibals
Down to it’s withered
Bones.R.M. Engelhardt is a veteran poet-writer currently living in Maine whose work over the years has been published in many journals both in print & upon the net including Retort, Red Fez, Sure! The Charles Bukowski Newsletter, Thunder Sandwich, Full of Crow, 2nd Ave Poetry, Rusty Truck & many others. He has also published several books including The Last Cigarette:…
View original post 28 more words
Share this:
-
MEMENTO
Better to feel
(Than be)
Blood rushes thru veins
And the heart beats,
Only one-day to complete its duty.
While eventually earth and gods shall all come
Crashing down
And kingdoms & civilizations fade.
And so please, I ask you only this;
That when I leave to let me take these
Few things with me,
The moon, the sun and the stars,
And the small traces of light which
Once reflected in your eyes
That I
Can no longer
See.
_________________
POEM TO PAST SELF IN FUTURE TENSE
Yours is a beauty of monsterous
proportions with the world
Spinning randomly into
Oblivion where all the leaves are all
Dying all the time off the trees,
Where misery makes its way into
Every small tissue stealing.
Yours is a world where
Beauty has fled and has left town
For greener pastures, has drowned its-
Self into the sea of angst & tears and
Has mixed its-self with alcohol &
Cigarettes, sad poems and
Indiscriminate men & women who
Already know that beauty has left
The scene,
(And they no longer care to find her)
And yet it is good that beautyhas
Finally found you and that beauty is not dead,
But was merely sleeping
On the sofa of your
Dreams.
______________
Poems By R.M. Engelhardt
From The Book “Nod. (moon, stars, sun … time)
Copyright © 2013.
Share this:
