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If you look at yourself as a star, you've already lost something in the portrayal of any human being.

quote by Gene Hackman
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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I wasn't good at being affable. You get beyond that and realise the attraction in any human being has more to do with what they give to someone rather than just being face candy.

quote by Alison Moyet
Added by Lucian Velea
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You all get lost

“You all get lost “I blasted the friends,
'You all have robbed me” in the ends,
'Why could I not smell your presence?
'Was that not the necessity or essence?

I was struck and dumb founded,
presence of greed, lust, hate so sounded,
that too in the form of friends rounded,
still firmly placed inside and grounded,

had I not heard your conversation?
I would have been the always in question,
was I guided by the force external?
Or was it the fight internal?

I lament and express my sorrow,
what would I leave for tomorrow?
was I here always to borrow?
Only to give love a room to grow,

'And you remained my closet mate'
you were the one who always hate,
Why didn’t I show you the gate?
Why I allowed you to shape my fate?

And you too dear o, greed,
always I fought for not so need,
created class, cast and more creed,
spread the poison like water with weed,

I may look unwise and foolish,
may leave the world without accomplish,
I will look so down with shame,
Not you all but I only to blame,

You all have done a tremendous loss,
I was master and always a boss,
I used to win without any toss,
Now I play all games but with loss,

O, dear Money you made big hole,
you were not prime but stood as pole,
why I not alarmed with lost game whole,
With all this signals I missed bug role,

Had It not been because of you all?
Would that not have been day of call/
Why should I try and prevent any fall,
Game I have lot even with new ball,

'You forgive us all for what we did?
Never we hide our presence candid,
you never got or thought in mind,
never you paid any attention of any kind,

had it been not we present in you?
You would have never remembered 'THOU'
Why then you downs us so lower,
Like you not many but find so fewer,

You are very pious and so religious,
but rest are many with greed and vicious,
It is not we who make you so down,
It is your fault by which you are drown,

We all just stayed and made you aware,
who was stopping you from taking care?
This is just alarm and ringing bell,
neither is the story nor simple tale

why did we chose not angles but man?
So rush he to God and apology can,
all money you made after great run,
all will be in vain and you not have fun

poem by Hasmukh Amathalal
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A Dog Has Died

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

Translated, from the Spanish, by Alfred Yankauer

poem by Pablo Neruda
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Taking his life - the execution of Saddam

If you think
There is any lasting meaning
Justice or fulfilment in taking the life
Of any human being, even the worst mass murderer

You have not thought
What life itself signifies
And why it is inviolable, not given out
For anyone to crush, even those most needing vengeance

Taking his life
Gives his methods just a little more validity
And treads in the first footprint of his deathly ways.
You should have trod more fitting paths of justice, even for his case.

poem by Frank Bana
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Look to yourself

Look to yourself
This much
And this is first
And last word
For you and for all.

poem by Gajanan Mishra
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Look At Yourself

I see you running
Dont know what
Youre running from
Nobodys coming
Whatd you do that was so wrong
Look back and turn back
Look at yourself
Dont be afraid, just
Look at yourself
If you need assistance
Or if all you need is love
Theres no point in hiding
Tell me what youre frightened of
Youve got a friend, just
Look at yourself
Dont be afraid, just
Look at yourself

song performed by Uriah Heep
Added by Lucian Velea
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Do you have Gods' heart?

Why do some people think only of themselves?
subserviant greed, they have their own shelves
Shelves they think they will fill in time
always drawing the proverbial line
The line that I speak of is in the sand
never forthcoming is the helping hand
The Lord gave all a heart and soul
will you ever fill a young kids' bowl?
Will it stay empty because you walked by
thinking of yourself, you never did try
It actually is; a meaningful task
or are you waiting for a young one to ask
Have you ever fed the birds in the park?
Mockingbird, Sparrow, or even a Lark?
Has there been a smile to any human being?
mouths are for talking, eyes are for seeing
Speak when you can, look if you will
The Lords' lost souls, you cannot kill
What will you do in your time of need?
first, get rid of your subserviant greed! ! !

poem by Dwayne Banks
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You Rise From The Ashes To Become A Star

i see you rise from the ashes
to become a star

up there in the skies
you glitter
in the deep black night
you are glorious in your light

the distance between us
this separation
stone am i in this garden
star you are to the heavens

there is only silence
and up there you do not see me
you do not even remember perhaps
the significance of any stone

or dust
you were once just a dust
on a leaf
you once were but a patch of me

oh, i watch you tonight
oh, you glorious star in the heavens
you have been given a place with the gods and goddesses
but in a sense
i do not envy you
in truth i may have missed you
and i may have followed you
the ways and means that i have taught you

how to be a star how to be a shining glory
but i didn't
i like it here
i love it here in this little garden of earth
where i am but a stone
for these little ants where they are building a home

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Look at yourself every once and a while and point out all the things about yourself that you like.

quote by Staci Keanan
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Collective Thought

If you take the analogy of the sea with waves
you will see we are all the same.
We are all one collective consciousness like the sea
but then singular like the wave as one human being.
It is a illusion to harm someone without harming yourself
if we realized this we would change our train of thought.
To seek revenge is like cutting off your own hand
we are One consciousness if you can understand.
The Beings of Light just see us as a sea of color
we are separate vibrations but we are still like one another.
So look for the good in everyone to change the
collective thought—
we are all in this together to help turn things about.

poem by Christina Sunrise
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The Final Insignificance

to know what is real
you must pass through a labyrinth
of doors
you will be lost
that is the first test
you must find
that key of losing
without having to feel
any emotion
be it gladness or
sadness

after passing that door
you are transformed
into another path
where other lost people
pass at you
and does not ask your
name
or what you are

you become a floor
and all their feet
step upon you
but you will not
know this
because this just happens
as a matter
of consequence

when all the strangers
pass
and there is no one left
you are granted a pair
of wings

that door in the clouds
is the next
no one sees it
except you
and you fly through
it
until you become
a little star
hanging yourself in
the corridors of
space

you have no choice
here
except to give light

you fulfill
what you are finally
one of those
that glitter
and yet no one
really minds
what you have become

for in truth
you are just one of the billions
and hence
insignificant

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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If You Wait For Better Metaphors

let go that patience
waiting for a load of metaphors
to make your poem
for today, you end up poor
with no poem to share,

are you conscious about what the lords, the gods, will say?
about your creations?
the beauty that you must exude to please these lords, these gods?

they, who left you here, they who do not feed you
crumbs, left-overs,
they, who live in the clouds, who feast among themselves
and look down upon you
as mediocre crab
running to catch the ebb and
tide of the sea,

you write, because you do not rhyme
because you cannot count
the beat of your aching heart
you write, because your mind is blank
blacked-out,
look at you,
you do not look like any human being at all?
you fear
losing your poetic sense?

damn, write, do not pray for metaphors
do not crack your head for images,
do not pray for the gods and lords

they too have problems of their own
mindless,
senseless,
quarelling among themselves on some crowded skies,

your stay is short
there is no specific duration of your stay

write and write, let them have their own shame
life has no rhyme
in fact, senseless,

why pretend you rhyme? why pretend you make sense at all?
you are never god in the first place,

you are the quiver of this universe, the hum that numbs
why bother?

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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If You Think There's Something

If you think there's something
If you think there's something
If you think there's something
I don't care what I look like
I don't care what you think
Because I know these things are not important
They're just material and ink
I like things comfortable
And I like things that look real good
I don't care about the cut, it is enough
If it's smooth and not too rough
If you think there's something
Could it be that there's not?
If you think there's something
Is there or is there not?
If you think there's something
It can be that there's not
So if you think there is something
Something that there is not
Ooh-ooh, perhaps a pair of trousers
Or a band that plays rock
If you think there's something
Could it be that there's not?
If you think there's something
Is there or is there not?
If you think there's something
If you think there's something
If you think there's something
Dodgy instrumental break....
That fine physique, that pretty face
Lights up his fantasies - puts them in place
Oh what's his stance, where is he coming from?
We try to follow but he's gone
If you think there's something
Could it be that there's not?
If you think there's something
Is there or is there not?
If you think there's something
It can be that there's not
If you think there's something
If you think there's something
If you think there's something
If you think there's something
Perhaps and maybe not
If you think there's something
Can we agree there's not?
If you think there's something
And we say that there's not
If you think there's something...

song performed by Madness
Added by Lucian Velea
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If You Couldn't Get It Right The First Time

Some say redemption is easy.
But when your hands are so bloody.
How can you just wash them clean?
Like it never happen.
Completely innocent you say.
Then where was your vigilance while it was happening?
Ignorance is a excuse without reason.
We should never accept it with a hand shake and a smile.
Bliss is only temporary.
Consequences must be faced.
Pain you must taste, before it can be truly felt.
Some say we only have to live with the hands we are dealt.
But we trade these cards for better ones all the time.
For some it requires hard work.
Others they bully people for them.
And yet even more stoop to thievery and manipulation.
A prize sits upon the highest roof top.
All you have to do is push this other guy off to get it.
Can you do it?
All for something a little easier.
Convenience sits at mans door step.
He will lie for it.
He will fight for it.
He will kill for it.
And finally he will die for it.
Effort requires energy the lazy people of the time don't have.
They envelope their minds false and half truths to only feel a little better.
Build up the broken self esteem so it can be broken again.
A repetition in tiresome lessons.
Some will just never get it.
You don't do something because you have to.
You do it because you want to.
Getting up early in the morning.
Shoving a cup of coffee into your face.
Going to work, to come back to your own home.
Seeing some one stuck in the snow, will you help them?
Or pretend you didn't see them so you don't get delayed.
Time matters to some too much when comes too money to be made.
How about if you see some women being brutally attacked.
Will risk your life to save her?
And what reasons sit behind it?
Are you so fearful you say screw her and just let her die?
Are you so desperate you'll use it as a attempt to get laid.
'Hey now that your alright lets go back to my place.'
Is that your pickup line?
Or you actually a caring person when one is need?
Pleading for just a tid bit of help.
Selfishness is not only described by things you do for yourself.
But as things you do for others that also benefits you.
You have made many trades and left most of your guilt behind.
Even with the world so you think.
All the scores have been settled in one fell swoop.
No going back in for seconds.
If you couldn't get right the first time.
Then your just wasting my time.

poem by Ace Of Black Hearts
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Meditation under Stars

What links are ours with orbs that are
So resolutely far:
The solitary asks, and they
Give radiance as from a shield:
Still at the death of day,
The seen, the unrevealed.
Implacable they shine
To us who would of Life obtain
An answer for the life we strain
To nourish with one sign.
Nor can imagination throw
The penetrative shaft: we pass
The breath of thought, who would divine
If haply they may grow
As Earth; have our desire to know;
If life comes there to grain from grass,
And flowers like ours of toil and pain;
Has passion to beat bar,
Win space from cleaving brain;
The mystic link attain,
Whereby star holds on star.

Those visible immortals beam
Allurement to the dream:
Ireful at human hungers brook
No question in the look.
For ever virgin to our sense,
Remote they wane to gaze intense:
Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite
The beating heart behind the ball of sight:
Till we conceive their heavens hoar,
Those lights they raise but sparkles frore,
And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey
To that frigidity of brainless ray.
Yet space is given for breath of thought
Beyond our bounds when musing: more
When to that musing love is brought,
And love is asked of love's wherefore.
'Tis Earth's, her gift; else have we nought:
Her gift, her secret, here our tie.
And not with her and yonder sky?
Bethink you: were it Earth alone
Breeds love, would not her region be
The sole delight and throne
Of generous Deity?

To deeper than this ball of sight
Appeal the lustrous people of the night.
Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails,
It is our ravenous that quails,
Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught.
The spirit leaps alight,
Doubts not in them is he,
The binder of his sheaves, the sane, the right:
Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought,
To feel it large of the great life they hold:
In them to come, or vaster intervolved,
The issues known in us, our unsolved solved:
That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree,
Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped.
So may we read and little find them cold:
Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide
Our eyes; no branch of Reason's growing lopped;
Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified
By day to penetrate black midnight; see,
Hear, feel, outside the senses; even that we,
The specks of dust upon a mound of mould,
We who reflect those rays, though low our place,
To them are lastingly allied.

So may we read, and little find them cold:
Not frosty lamps illumining dead space,
Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers.
The fire is in them whereof we are born;
The music of their motion may be ours.
Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced
Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced.
Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold
The love that lends her grace
Among the starry fold.
Then at new flood of customary morn,
Look at her through her showers,
Her mists, her streaming gold,
A wonder edges the familiar face:
She wears no more that robe of printed hours;
Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers.

poem by George Meredith
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Now It's My Turn

You've convinced me to deny who I am
Told me that I couldn't do it
When I figured out that I could you threw me into a pit
Of self pity and self insult, fed me your lies that my talent wasn't there
When I realized the truth that it was all you did was scare
Me into believing that my talent was destructive
Told me I could have self control
Told me I couldn't use this gift to console
But now I finally see through your lies I've seen through them

You were scared, full of fear
You were scared to the point of a dripping tear
You were scared I'd realize my calling
You were scared I'd revoke the statements of mundane
you were scared I'd actually sing
You were scared, and insane

I never once thought that all of these lies were from you
I never thought you spoke to me too
But now it's my turn
The gift you were so scared of here it is
Look now it's His
The gift that I did once spurn
I'll use to destroy your principalities
This is my secondary weapon to fight your powers
I'll draw my inspiration from my sword
I'll holster my regret and low self esteem
You can't tie up with them anymore
I don't believe I'm something to abhor
Now that I see I'm loved you can't tell me who I am
Because it doesn't matter, not because what you say is empty
No, that was me
It doesn't matter because it's not about who I am
It's about who I serve

Send your demons, send your temptations, maybe I'll even fail
Maybe I'll regret these statements, maybe even weep and wail
But it's too late, you can't put me back on your curve
I won't stray from the straight and narrow
This is the path I've chosen to follow
Now you can't touch me
Now you can't touch my poetry
Now I've realized my gift, even if just part, I've realized that part
I've realized why I have all these desires in my deepest heart

So now it's my turn, you used my gift to beat me down
Talked me into misusing it or not using it all
Well now it's your turn
Taste my sword, it's different than my peers
Taste my sword it can lead many
Taste my sword it's greater than me
You know the sting of old Proverbs and Psalms
But now it's my turn

I don't believe the lies because I know who I'm loved by
I don't believe those lies because I know my identity
I don't believe their lies because I believe in something greater
I don't believe your lies, because you're their father
I don't believe your lies, you've already lost

In trying to destroy me, He made me stronger
Now you got yourself one heck of an enemy
I never thought I'd say it, but it's me
Here's a taste of the last days
This is my worship, one day you will feel righteous burn of a billion
But until that day we'll wait
Unfortunately for you it's not passive
It's active
Active waiting
Active seeking
Active worship
Active writing

Because now it's finally my turn
I'll watch you burn
In the advanced darkness
Behind a wall of glass
Watch you, you the iconoclast
I'll expose your lies
This isn't a heart of darkness
This is a heart of light
I'll unwrite your lies
Because now I know
Because now
It's my turn

poem by David Knox
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Armageddon

Krayzie, souljah boy, mo! hart, felecia, and thug queen:thug mentality 1999
Krayzie bone
The time has come...let us unite...mo!
Thug queen
My heavenly fathers children (felecia my heavenly father) the time has come for
Judgement/ armageddon/ false prophets
Never blend in/ for we are revelation angels descending for our sins (kb my
Lordy-lord) no need to pretend
For providin me oxygen, I loved since I began/ prayin to wash away my sins/
Babylon the great, has fallen
Offsprings of the wicked one, crawlin/ fearin that their lord is callin/
Bless these seeds of the almighty.
(so much hostility installed in me) destination of the infamous (burn eternally)
Bless these seeds of the almighty
(so much hostility installed in). destination of any earth(burn eternally)
Krayzie
Oh, look what weve done, what have we brung? oh, look what weve done, what
Have we brung?
Souljah boy
Its armageddon/ pay attention/ you better recognize, the end is comin
Youll be wishin it wasnt time to die cuz I can see and I can feel it/ its
All in my bones
And aint no tellin when you livin, youre dead and gone, but strong
We come through this war/ I thought you knew its over/ we recruit, they loot
And loot
You better be prepared to shoot/ so look out boy (and its really comin) uh-oh,
Uh-oh
Krayzie
No no, not no evil system/ armageddon bring new kingdom
Hey, tell me where you runnin too, cuz when I find youyoure marked by the
Beast
So youre not a surviver/ so its time to die, kiss ourselves good-bye/ the
Whole world
Bites the dust, couldnt live; were corrupted up
Souljah boy
Enough, get up and get yourself together/ get your kids
Cuz they rebellin, got to learn em the lesson/ its tough, youre brought
Caught up in your own web/ and its your fault, got no pulse/ armageddon
bout havin you broke off, but, still you dont wanna learn, learn
(standin too) close to that fire, get burned, burned
Krayzie
Murda is comin to get us (believe it) can see it in front of your face
(you can feel it) I hear all the screamin/ the vision of killin us, swiftly
Finna get rid of
Us wicked ones/ its the end of the world/ puttin us all in a coffin/ but yall
Dont be
Feelin me now? how silly can we be? its judgement day as we speak (speak)
And there aint no other road (no!) death is the only way to go, slow
Murda is comin to get us, split us, all within time/ armageddon...
-refrain (felecia)-
Armageddon (armageddon) the end is comin(the end is comin)
You better get ready(you better get ready) oh, armageddon(armageddon)
Krayzie
Armageddon/ destruction rollin over us in murderous ways
Killin you, everybody, see? did anybody pray? but its much too late
If you have not been chose on judgement day/ bloody fate/ and you cant say
Wait! can you imagine? see, your life can end and I mean your lifes
Just flashin (poof!) gon do, gon do? you gon live the rest of your life
Or do you wan die with the rest of your life, life? somebody callin me
Tellin me, you better get up, the end is comin! its comin! they comin!
Yes!and I mean it! I know it, I know its near! look here, ha! you aint
Tryin
To be outside when the sun no longer shine, thats right, thats right
Thats right/ and look at you burn, were lost/ fallin from the ground
Law-free are, we are freedom from the po-po/ we dont need em no more
And I hope you catch the first blow
Souljah boy
Im givin much praise to the lord above me/ no one could
Change that/ Im knowin the difference between life and death and why you lie
Back?
Gimme your life and live forever/ who put you all on that level? cuz the life
Will be nice
Souljah boy will do you better/ never put anything before your children
Honor your mother or father, youre gonna live forever in the kingdom peace
The maker; he got somethin for us/ he gave us life, yall
And hes gonna have to destroy it, gotta make it right
-refrain-
Mo! hart
And there shall be great earthquakes
And the sun becomes as black as sack cloth and the moon as blood.
And the stars of heaven shall fall unto the earth, even as a fig tree
Casts her untimely figs when she is shaken of the mighty wind. and the heavens
The heavens will depart as a scroll when it is rolled together.
And every mountain and island will move out of their places.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men
And the ship captains, and the mighty men, and every bond-man
And every free man shall hide themselves in the dens and in the
Rocks of the mountains. and shall say to the mountain and the rocks,
Fall on us, fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sit
Upon the throne and from the wrath of the lamb, for the great day
Of his wrath has come and who shall be able to stand? who shall
Be able to stand? who shall be able to stand?

song performed by Krayzie Bone
Added by Lucian Velea
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Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, And You . . .

we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something in the river,
everything and nothing.
in the slaughterhouse it comes running along
the ceiling on a hook, and you swing it --
one
two
three
and then you've got it, $200 worth of dead
meat, its bones against your bones
something and nothing.
it's always early enough to die and
it's always too late,
and the drill of blood in the basin white
it tells you nothing at all
and the gravediggers playing poker over
5 a.m. coffee, waiting for the grass
to dismiss the frost . . .
they tell you nothing at all.

we have everything and we have nothing --
days with glass edges and the impossible stink
of river moss -- worse than shit;
checkerboard days of moves and countermoves,
fagged interest, with as much sense in defeat as
in victory; slow days like mules
humping it slagged and sullen and sun-glazed
up a road where a madman sits waiting among
bluejays and wrens netted in and sucked a flakey
grey.
good days too of wine and shouting, fights
in alleys, fat legs of women striving around
your bowels buried in moans,
the signs in bullrings like diamonds hollering
Mother Capri, violets coming out of the ground
telling you to forget the dead armies and the loves
that robbed you.
days when children say funny and brilliant things
like savages trying to send you a message through
their bodies while their bodies are still
alive enough to transmit and feel and run up
and down without locks and paychecks and
ideals and possessions and beetle-like
opinions.
days when you can cry all day long in
a green room with the door locked, days
when you can laugh at the breadman
because his legs are too long, days
of looking at hedges . . .

and nothing, and nothing, the days of
the bosses, yellow men
with bad breath and big feet, men
who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk
as if melody had never been invented, men
who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and
profit, men with expensive wives they possess
like 60 acres of ground to be drilled
or shown-off or to be walled away from
the incompetent, men who'd kill you
because they're crazy and justify it because
it's the law, men who stand in front of
windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,
men with luxury yachts who can sail around
the world and yet never get out of their vest
pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
like slugs, and not as good . . .
and nothing, getting your last paycheck
at a harbor, at a factory, at a hospital, at an
aircraft plant, at a penny arcade, at a
barbershop, at a job you didn't want
anyway.
income tax, sickness, servility, broken
arms, broken heads -- all the stuffing
come out like an old pillow.

we have everything and we have nothing.
some do it well enough for a while and
then give way. fame gets them or disgust
or age or lack of proper diet or ink
across the eyes or children in college
or new cars or broken backs while skiing
in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
or just natural change and decay --
the man you knew yesterday hooking
for ten rounds or drinking for three days and
three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now
just something under a sheet or a cross
or a stone or under an easy delusion,
or packing a bible or a golf bag or a
briefcase: how they go, how they go! -- all
the ones you thought would never go.

days like this. like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. what do you see today?
what is it? where are you? the best
days are sometimes the first, sometimes
the middle and even sometimes the last.
the vacant lots are not bad, churches in
Europe on postcards are not bad. people in
wax museums frozen into their best sterility
are not bad, horrible but not bad. the
cannon, think of the cannon, and toast for
breakfast the coffee hot enough you
know your tongue is still there, three
geraniums outside a window, trying to be
red and trying to be pink and trying to be
geraniums, no wonder sometimes the women
cry, no wonder the mules don't want
to go up the hill. are you in a hotel room
in Detroit looking for a cigarette? one more
good day. a little bit of it. and as
the nurses come out of the building after
their shift, having had enough, eight nurses
with different names and different places
to go -- walking across the lawn, some of them
want cocoa and a paper, some of them want a
hot bath, some of them want a man, some
of them are hardly thinking at all. enough
and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges
gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of
tissue paper.

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
sucking your tongue in a little
ah ah no no maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere.

Submitted by Dylan Skola

poem by Charles Bukowski
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Your Face Among Many, A Blossom

Your face among many, a blossom.
Let it go. Let it go. Let it go.
The sun can't understand why it can't
open the buds of the parking meters.
Some people worry they don't have talent.
Given a name, who isn't a masterpiece?
A perfect self-portrait of what they're becoming?
Talent, the worst superstition of all.
That lullaby you sing to your voodoo doll
at bedtime, to let her know she's special
when, in fact, she's blind. Talent.
That estranged mix of an eclipse and an oilslick
that isn't sure of its standing in life.
Sensible shoes wishing they had wings on their heels.
The redundant navigator of mountain streams
that would have found their own way to the river
all by themselves. You ask if I think you have talent.
To me that's like a flower asking
if I think it will ever come to bloom,
a star wondering if it's shining or not,
a sea uncertain of its own waves and weather.
And I say, your eyes do, your ears do, your mouth has,
these birch-trees, those starlings, that tree, those rocks,
these rags of last year's flowers do, but not you.
On the day of creation when God exhausted herself
using up the leftovers of her inspiration
so as not to let anything go to waste, she pinched the noses
of a few sacred clowns and instead of
breathing life into their lungs, she opened their throats
and poured a special esoteric elixir of talent,
the mother of all oceanic love potions
that ever played favourites with a select few
among everyone she'd ever given birth to,
out of her mouth into theirs, such that like her
all they had to do, they were so talented,
was give the word. Say be. And it was.
Because the moment you ask if you have something,
you've already lost it. Like space or time or mind,
talent isn't possessed. It's made manifest spontaneously.
Do you see the ruby throated hummingbirds
in a last duel with the thorns
of the locust trees in blossom,
one drawing blood, the other, first honey?
Behind every river making its way to the sea
stands the cornerstone of a mountain
buried under an avalanche
it brought down upon itself
like the winter solstice
between the dolmens of Stonehenge,
just as every dropp of water is a lost key,
the Rosetta stone of a nameless grave in the rain
that can still speak fluently
the mother-tongue of the dead language
that buried oviparous metaphors
like oxymoronic dragons in cosmic eggs,
a coincidence of contradictory birds and snakes
the highs and the lows, made whole again.
Asking me if you've got talent is like
a nebula light years across asking me if it's got stars.
Do the candles wish they were fireflies?
Do you write with your eyes or your ears?
And if you're asking me if you've got
the bit, the spit, the spurs, the stirrups
to ride a wild, white-winged horse in a rodeo
without being thrown off, I'd say
the most seasoned saddle of all
is to ride bareback along the Milky Way in summer
and see for yourself if you can make it as far
as Altair in Aquila or the Deneb in the Swan.
And then realize, if you can't, the real star
of the show all along was the rodeo clown
who rescues the riders when they're down and out
by living dangerously on the horns of a dilemma
he had to make his own to spare the hero
from any further injury that might come
from taking anything too seriously.
And don't canter as if you had talent
you can put your trust in like a reliable lie.
Risk everything on one leap of the fence.
Assume you're a genius and fly.
You sweep the stars under your prayer rug
and then come and ask me if you're a good housekeeper.
You want to know if your third eye is glass
or real crystal, something from the depression era,
and I turn it circumspectly in the light
and focus it on the sun and the moon
and few oddball stars nearby,
and I can see where you've being crying a lot
and missed a spot that makes things perfectly clear.
Talent might polish the mirror of the Hubble Telescope
to get rid of the smear of the Andromeda Galaxy,
to rub a hundred billion stars out
for the sake of appearances, but genius
sees through every dropp of rain that falls
like an eye of its own through a broken windowpane
it's just thrown the moon through like a lunatic
at the reflection of its own face
on the waterless pond of its own seeing
to make waves just to see itself as it is
warped like space and time
by the crazy wisdom of the circus mirrors
that are always in tears of laughter.
And this by the merest of inclinations
to have a good chuckle at the expense
of the straight-faced paradigms
trying to get a fix on their shining as if
they were measuring the nearest distance
the fireflies approach earth at apogee by parallax.
Talent may well be the architectural blueprint
of the underlying infrastructure of the chrysalis,
but it's the worm that crawls
into whatever house of transformation,
whatever zodiac squatting on the outskirts
of whatever shantytown gerry-mandered out of scraps,
salvage, cast offs, discarded parts of mechanical experience
looking for a new purpose in life,
and flies out the other end with mandalas
not starmaps on its wings.
Talent takes note of the traffic signs
long before it's walked the road.
Until you realize through the eyes in your blood
with a passion that won't go back the way it came,
like the fish hook of the moon
torn out of the fleshy part of your heart the wrong way,
or revoke the names of the things you've given birth to
crossbreeding with a fertile imagination
when things get dark and narrow
in a black hole where the shadows of sacred fires
dance to the picture-music of hallowed cave paintings,
until you realize how meaningless and futile
the most significant things in life are
you'll never know the playful intensity
of being so wholly absorbed into your own creation
there's no afterbirth of inspiration to cast off
like a shadow of the mind upon the light.
If you're still looking for your own face
behind the veils you lift
like the mirages of mediocrity
in the breathless splendour
of the restless mirrors of reality
where you drink from your own reflection
like the false idol of an image
you've kissed the feet of before.
Be assured. If you're still down on your knees
before this simulacrum of seeing
you're just peeking through the keyhole
of a little door into a bigger world
that isn't sleepwalking through the same dream you are.
If you've got talent. And why not?
When everything else including you does,
except when you're a fish out of water
dying of thirst beside a fresh water lake
asking the stars if you can swim as well as they do.
If so. Why do you keep it to yourself
like some secret contagious disease
you haven't had time to spread around yet?
If you've got talent, don't judge
the quality of the wine by asking someone
to appraise the worth of the jewels
that open like the eyes of rubies and rhinestones,
like fierce Venutian diamonds in the twilight
of empty, golden goblets mortally wounded
by the going down of the sun
striking its colours like pennants of surrender.
But if you've ever known the delirious oblivion
of the protean genius or juno of a child
then your cup runneth over like the moon at full.
You drink from the cups
of the wild gypsy poppies
with the crazy lunar slips of the tongue
they keep whispering like the sacred syllable
of a cataba worm at the bottom of a bottle
like an unforgiving message for help in your ear.
And it's perfectly clear
from the either/or lens of your orbiting telescope
the stars aren't waiting for an answer
to all their big first magnitude questions,
but if you were to say anything, say it
like the ghost of a breath from the past,
a shadow in passing
that makes the candle flames tremble
at a seance of sensitive souls and murky mediums
in a delirium of stars giving rise
to a dancer in a dream riding her own thermals
in the cooling of an August afternoon like a red-tailed hawk
winging it on the fly for the euphoric high of it,
for the pure joy and solitude
in the miscreant freedom of it
from the wounded wild rose in her heart
like blood and wine and the miracle of mirages
in a bottled hourglass of quicksand.
Down to the lees of moonset
in your own bottomless skull
where you can read the black tea leaves for yourself
like the spinal vertebrae of books on a library shelf
to see if you're ever going to make it into print or not
like a fossil in the Burgess Shale
of a lonely species of heart and mind
that was one of a kind from beginning to end.
Of course, you're talented. Show me a star
or a stagestruck flower in the green room that isn't.
But talent isn't just another antidotal snake serum
you pour like iodine onto to the burn
of a lightning strike you can't mend any other way.
And genius, what can anybody say?
You won't find it out trying to stake a claim
to the insights it's been panning for
like nuggets of harvest gold
from the blue ore of the new moon's dark potential.
from the mindstreams that have been turning over
the reflections of the green mountains
they've been walking beside all day
like stones in the flow of an ongoing conversation
that might have something hidden under them
like stars that size of misfit diamonds
that ring the craters of the meteor impacts
that don't enlighten anything
that's bigger than your eyes
could ever dream of seeing.
And what new species of intensely creative visual life
might have come of them in the aftermath
by adapting that poem you're holding in your hand
like the neck of a dying swan song
to a whole new biosphere of picture-music
where merely to breathe the stars in and out
even at these lower altitudes
in these valleys of the fireflies
the storm passed over out of consideration
for their blood ties to the lightning,
were to sign your name in the first edition
of a cosmic guest book with the wingspan
of an immensely talented constellation
working on the first draft of a brilliant myth of origin
that says as it will be at the end,
so it was in the beginning
and is now in the coming of nightfall to a stranger.

poem by Patrick White
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So Far Down This Road

So far down this road
without a destination
my childhood doesn't
recognize me anymore.
So far into this life
I've never been outside of
I can speak to myself
in a foreign language
that no one can understand
as if it were the ancient dream-grammar
of a past tense
that talked its way into the future.

So far into what I've become
the peduncle is lost
in the ensuing phylum
and of all thought
I'm the first monkey
to look for its origins in an asylum.

The crow on an autumn branch
in the white rain
laughs more than it ever did
at the specious foundations
of my ephemerid profundities
dropping like apples at my feet.

The minstrel warrior of the forlorn hope
I took up arms in a holy war of one
I was doomed to lose
like a sad generation of demons
who knew the wound would never close.

If heaven isn't a club-med in a specific place
but saturates all of space
like mystically dark matter
then we're all falling toward paradise
like particles and wavelengths of water.

Heaven may be the whole cup
and hell a crack in the wine
and earth the place you sober up
like a bad hangover from the divine
but it's a party I walked out of aeons ago
more a stranger than when I came
like a manger without a sign
like a magus without a logo
to an inn that had been empty for years.

I don't presume to teach people
what they already know.
Even hanging on
is going with the flow.
This is a delirious place
where the mysteries cut deep
and silence is the native tongue
God speaks to herself in.

So far down this mindstream
like a paper boat I made of a poem
and set aflame like an orchid of fire
to honour a poet
who said it right in China long before me,
I bloom on the water of a prophetic dream
true to the unpredictability
of a sleeping dragon
to wake from the brevity of oblivion
with the eyes of a narcoleptic chameleon.

Joy binds
what sorrow releases.
And thought might prick the lifelines
of an amniocentesis
and offer up my embryo like a thesis
on whether I should have been born or not,
but I drink from my own skull like the moon
when it's full to the brim
above the starwheat in the Virgin's hand
to the stealth of the wind that dropped me here
like a lone seed in a huge empty silo
I'm trying to stud like the Venus de Milo.

It's not easy rooting in stone
like the invasive metal
of a sword that will make you
king of the waxing year.
Things just fall apart on their own
like grain from the chaff of a fickle harvest
that rose from the dead
like the bitter bread
of an abandoned homestead
that walked out on itself too soon.

But I've never been one to talk
about leaving it all behind
like some dark gate of the mind
I could pass through
like a unilluminated comet through space
to shine in the light of a star
that was alarmed at my approach
and blind to my passing.

I'm more at home in the dark
with a firefly and a chimney spark
rolling koans like constellations of loaded dice
as if they were two diabolical buddhas
in the back alleys of enlightenment
pushing their luck to the wall.
They rise
and I fall.
I rise
and they fall.
Readiness is all.
Ripeness is all.
Lear shakes his fist at Hamlet.

The blue harvest moon in total eclipse.
All loveletters die like political pamphlets
up against a closed door.
So far into this cloud of unknowing
I have given up hoping
will ever become a star
and break into light in all directions
to show me where I'm going
I give up on myself like rain
and release my waterbird eyes
to fall wherever they might.

Readiness is spring.
Ripeness is fall.
Seven come eleven.
No one wins it all.
Two squared skulls
up against a crooked wall.
I shake the dice
and you call.
You shake the dice
and I call out to luck like a random goddess
to see if she still loves me
as she did once tomorrows ago
when I won everything back.

Whether you're giddy with happy truths
or more profoundly belled by the sad facts
it's scary at night in the spirit's lost and found
when the lights go out
and no one's around to look for anything.

Gardens of black umbrellas,
the wings of folded bats
stacked like unseasonal eclipses
that have lost the will to bloom
like flowers at a lavish funeral
for impoverished aristocrats.

And courage isn't a home
that's all that easy to return to
when you're out here on your own
like a lifeboat full of midnight on Mars.

So far along this long homeless road home
I have worn out my faithless friends like shoes
I took from the feet of the dead
to walk on ahead of myself
like a star with a jump on where it's been.

Now even I don't know what I mean
when the words say me
like some black benediction
over an unknown grave
as I mourn the roadkill
and try to bless the turkey-vultures.

Earth. Air. Water. Fire.
Four cultures that bury their dead differently
but all to the same end.
Who could have guessed
the angels that came to earth first
had the wingspan of loitering scavengers?
I give my soul up to the birds.
I give my eyes up to the sky.
I give my voice up to these words.
I give my mind up like water to water
light to light
darkness to darkness
to the star that has misled me this far
into this wilderness of myself
where I'm preaching stealth to shadows
and air to ride the wind.

I give my heart up
to the thorn that gored the rose
like a deep insight
into the nature of the moon's
bright vacancy
dark abundance
like two sides of the same face.

I give my will up to chance.
My blood to the conviction of the poppy it's fire.
So far beyond my last event horizon
I'm never coming back this way again
what does it matter if the path
is crooked or straight?

I lay my tiny wisdom down like a hazelnut
on the track of the silver thought-train
to see if it can crack it like a koan.
I lay the mantle of my dynastic ignorance
over the shoulders of an avalanche like snow.

However much
you love the valley
it will be the mountain
that sweeps you off your feet.

I give my imagination up like a black wine
that tastes a little like me
to the muses who bruised it
like the great night sea
they drank from my skull
whenever the moon was full.

Among so many sages
it was good to be a fool.
One by one the schools
dropped out of me
and settled like mud at the bottom
of a clarified way to see
that everything that passed through my head
like a shapeshifting cloud
was just water looking into water,
me looking into me with water for eyes.

Why be shocked
by the predictability of death
when it's life that always comes as a surprise?

I may have been lame
in my approach to things
and limped my way like an iamb into wings
but I wanted to look down
from way up there
as if I were a star without strings
and be the way things are
when they shine down on nothing
until a nightbird in a far tree sings.

Carrying forth into the carrying forth
eternity might be the ghost
in the starmud of time that perishes
to give forever a meaning
but it's this life now
that talks the talk
and walks the walk
of a human being.

I give my eyes up to the seeing.
So deeply lost upon myself
like an empty lifeboat drifting through
these veils and visions of things
that appear like sails in the fog a moment
and then evaporate into their nebularity.

I give my blessing to the waywardness
of the course
that took me the way I am.
I give up my pain
I give up my sorrow
I give up my love my joy my laughter
like orchids and ashes on the mindstream
that flows out of me like a waking dream
that doesn't insist on seeing me here tomorrow.

But most of all
I give my gratitude
to the mystic vagrancy of the great solitude
I approached like a friend
on my way to nowhere like the sea
as if everything came to an end in me
like a life I couldn't foresee.

Though I have mourned
life's preemptive reverses
I have not scarred my lips with curses.
I have not tainted the well I drink from.

And nothing's ever spoiled
the bread I broke with others.
The feast is free
but it isn't hunger or thirst
that makes us sisters and brothers
it's the way we raise
the cup to each other's lips
like a lunar elixir to a solar eclipse
as if we knew we would pass
long before the darkness did
but still made the gesture anyway.

It's the way we hope
we know what we mean
when we say we love people
we've never seen
as if they were everyone in particular
and love's mute theme
were helplessly gesticular.

You can't keep
what you won't give away.
Life's a long sleep
before a short dream
that wakes you up far from home
beside the unknown road you're on
that winds like smoke among the stars
whispering ghost stories around the flames
of their unbelievable fires.

By all means pursue what is true
but don't forget
mercy has its liars too.
I give my life up
to the mystic specificity
of the medium that sustains it
like a wavelength of light
to a sea of dark matter.

And more than I could have ever lived
living alone together with everyone
crammed into the same planetary shoe
I give up all the vastness
of my awareness of the space within
and how far there is to go like light
before you can open
even a single flower of insight
to end your long winter night.

I give up space
like my place at the table
where I stood like a tower of salt.
I give my imagination up
like an underground cult
that gave its secrets away to everyone
like dark spots on the sun.

And whatever beginnings
are behind me now
like things I'll never finish
I give my past and future up
to the omnipresence of time
in all I live today
as if something
were always coming my way
without expectation
from lightyears beyond my eyes
like letters from home
that never reach me
in time to call me back.

If I have shone among luminaries
like a firefly in an ice palace
of radiant chandeliers
that froze in their own tears
it was as a small lighthouse
on the coast of turbulent mirrors
that kept a nightlight on.

I spent the gone on the going
and trusted the darkness
to keep things flowing along
like a river coming down a mountain
without knowing about the sea
that summoned me to the lowest place
like an unfathomable watershed
in every eye of the fountain
that cried out to the birds
in words that feather the dead
for their long flight through the mystery
I am I am I am
the future memory
of my own prophetic history
before I wrote it down
like the path I took
on my way out of town.

poem by Patrick White
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