Citatepedia^®.com

The nominal budget is a poor indicator of the impact of government outlays and revenues.

quote by William Vickrey
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Low Budget

Cheap is small and not too steep
But best of all cheap is cheap
Circumstance has forced my hand
To be a cut price person in a low budget land
Times are hard but well all survive
I just got to learn to economize
Im on a low budget
Im on a low budget
Im not cheap, you understand
Im just a cut price person in a low budget land
Excuse my shoes they dont quite fit
Theyre a special offer and they hurt me a bit
Even my trousers are giving me pain
They were reduced in a sale so I shouldnt complain
They squeeze me so tight so I cant take no more
Theyre size 28 but I take 34
Im on a low budget
What did you say
Im on a low budget
I thought you said that
Im on a low budget
Im a cut price person in a low budget land
Im shopping at woolworth and low discount stores
Im dropping my standards so that I can buy more
[quality costs, but quality wastes,
So Im giving up all of my expensive tastes.
Caviar and champagne are definite nos,
Im acquiring a taste for brown ale and cod roes ]
Low budget sure keeps me on my toes
I count every penny and I watch where it goes
Were all on our uppers were all going skint
I used to smoke cigars but now I suck polo mints
Im on a low budget
What did you say
Yea Im on a low budget
I thought you said that
Im on a low budget
Im a cut price person in a low budget land
Im on a low budget
Low budget
Low budget
Art takes time, time is money
Moneys scarce and that aint funny
Millionaires are things of the past
Were in a low budget film where nothing can last
Moneys rare theres none to be found
So dont think Im tight if I dont buy a round
Im on a low budget
What did you say
Yes Im on a low budget

[...] Read more

song performed by Kinks
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Impact Of Poverty On Education

THE IMPACT OF POVERTY ON EDUCATION.

INTRODUCTION

There are so many different tools that have been thought relevant in people’s developmental projects both at individual and societal levels. Education is one of such practical tools. Importantly to note, there are also various meanings that denote the broad term ‘education’. In this essay, however, we are mainly interested in defining formal education since our discussion will dwell much on it. According to Nwomonoh (1998) , formal education is the process of gaining knowledge, attitudes, information and skills during the course of life especially at school.

Though education is said to be so instrumental in human development but also in the revamping of world economies, it is very unfortunate that education systems, world wide, are being held to ransom all because of poverty at both governmental and household levels. According to Thibault (2009) , poverty means the shortage of common things such as food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, all of which determine our quality of life. It may also include lack of access to opportunities like education and employment which aid the escape of poverty.

Problems in our society are interconnected in one way or the other, just like poverty and personal family problems affect a student’s capability to learn. Improving education entails improving the living conditions of students. Having in mind that education is basically responsible for the development of many countries including Malawi, as the back ground suggests, we cannot afford to bypass such a vital element without a mention. Considering also the fact that poverty is one of the forces that come in the way; blocking the success of education, we feel it rational to look at how the two realities, education and poverty, affect each other both positively and negatively. That is also why we are convinced that this topic is worth studying. Our awareness of this source, poverty, and its impact on education will enable us devise some proper measures of intervention with the hope of minimizing the negative impact of poverty on education. This point, in short, explains the purpose of our investigation and why we are so passionate in getting into this research. During the whole discussion we are being guided by two questions thus, ‘does poverty really affect education? And if it does, what points do we have on the positive and negative impacts of poverty on education? ’

METHODOLOGY

The study was basically qualitative in approach because of the nature of the issue that was being addressed. This was the case because the issue of how poverty affects education, both positively and negatively is particularly very difficult to predict the conclusions without penetrating into the core of the issue. For instance, one may unreasonably rush into concluding that poverty affects education negatively only and we cannot even dare to speak of poverty affecting education positively. The study was conducted in three schools namely; Mulunguzi, Masongola and Chirunga Private Secondary schools in Zomba district between 24th April and 3rd May. In this research we used both government and private funded schools to have a more balanced result on how poverty affects formal education in these different institutions. The information required for the study was collected through group interviews of form three students and individual interviews with teachers using semi-structured interview schedules. We opted to use these interviews in the first place because we felt books are more theoretical whereas a field research is practical and it involves real life experiences. Nevertheless, we still used desk research as a supplementary source of information and for clarity in some areas.

RESULTS

Positive impacts of poverty on education
To begin with, poverty encourages one to get educated and of course work hard in class. This is because the problems faced due to poverty are very serious and therefore students who are from poverty stricken families strive to end the problems and one of the best solutions is through education. That is to say, if a person, for instance, due to poverty, is taking just a meal in a day instead of three meals, and again if he/she is sometimes sleeping on an empty stomach, he/she will resort to education bearing in mind that if he/she gets educated they will secure formal employment and eventually be able to make ends meet for themselves as well as fending for their families.

Not only does poverty encourage one to get educated, but also it helped in the introduction of free primary education. In Malawi, for instance, when Bakili Muluzi became president, he introduced free primary education and he had eliminated the requirements for school uniform forthwith (Kadzamira & Rose,2001) . This had increased the access to education dramatically as those pupils who were coming from less privileged families were also given access to this free primary education. It should also be noted that the free primary education system was not only implemented to fulfill an electoral pledge but also bearing in mind that some families were not able to send their children to school due to poverty. Free primary education was there to deal with illiteracy by reducing families’ direct costs of education. Again due to the influx in the number of pupils in primary schools; there was a lack of teachers. Sonani (2002) , testifies that the Ministry of Education re-employed all retired teachers below the age of 65. This also meant that the once retired teachers got back to their source of income which helped them support their families as well as hauling the economy of the country. The implementation of free primary education system in Malawi forced the government to provide infrastructures so as to accommodate the large number of pupils in these schools. Simply put, poverty had led to the introduction of free primary education which means that more children are going to school, and again more teachers are being trained and getting employed and finally the construction of school blocks culminating into infrastructural development, all these branching from poverty.

We may also look at poverty from a positive angle bearing in mind that when a country is poor more funds and donations come into it. These funds and donations are also given to the education sector to build new infrastructures and in the maintenance of already existing ones in the sector. These privileged countries also provide learning materials to schools that are poor as a result students in these less privileged schools perform well in accordance with the amount and quality of the learning materials that they have been provided with. For instance, a United States based non governmental organization known as “Water for People” handed over 44 water toilets they built to Chimwankhunda primary school. The school toilet facilities had been vandalized 11 years ago but because of poverty the school could not renovate them (Gausi,2007) .

In addition, these funds and donations help more people to get educated. This is so because people can use funds as school fees, pocket money and buy stationery. The donations may include library books, chairs and writing materials. These can make a conducive environment for one to learn since there will be enough facilities at the school. For instance, with funding from the “United States Agency for International Development” (USAID) ,3,300 needy Malawian primary school girls are being funded. They are being provided with food, clothing, school supplies and hygienic products like soap and body lotion (Muhaliwa,2005) . Likewise,500 pupils at Katoto primary school in Mzuzu no longer sit on the floors during lessons courtesy of Southern Bottlers Limited and Lions Club of Limbe. Before these funds and donations, pupils used to sit on the floor due to scarcity of desks. These donations improved the pupils’ school attendance in such a way that pupils have started going to school regularly.

In the same line, a needy student can be given a scholarship to go further with his/her education. In this case the scholarship is given to the person just because he/she cannot manage to pay school fees on her own. This in turn benefits the needy person and the community at large. In this situation poverty has assisted in the development of education in an area by beckoning funds and donations from rich countries and organisations.

Further more; in most cases poverty facilitates one’s ambitions to attain formal education. It becomes easier for a poor child to put much of his concentration on education as compared to a rich child. This is because a poverty stricken student will have less destructive materials for entertainment. He/she will also have less or no money to indulge him/herself in activities that require spending a lot of money for instance, drinking beer. Sometimes even if the child can find money he/she can buy basic needs and not just spending it anyhow. Contrast to this a rich child may obtain things like ipods, mp3s, games for entertainment. These things in most cases destruct the concentration of students in their studies. As a result, one’s class performance is negatively affected since most of his/her time is being spent on entertainment.

Negative impacts of poverty on education

Just as a coin has got two sides, a head and a tail, poverty also, apart from having positive impacts on education, it does have negative impacts on the same. We have talked much about the positive face of poverty on education. We shall surely do ourselves injustice if we do not look at the negative part. In spite of the fact that poverty has an impact on education that is worth complimenting, we cannot afford in this discussion to overlook the point that so many students have been forced to leave the corridors of learning institutions due to the same poverty. One of the reasons that force some students leave the learning institutions prematurely is pregnancy, which in most cases, come because of poverty. It is almost common knowledge that a good number of students who come from poor families wish they could be sailing in the same boat with those who come from well to do families as far as luxurious life is concerned. The poor students constantly feel that there is something missing at the core psychologically. With this feeling in their minds, they tend to regard themselves as incomplete and not accepted socially. Consequently, they envy the rich students and squarely want to posses the things that are associated with the rich students. Very unfortunate that the poor students’ parents cannot afford to fulfill their children’s desires like what the rich parents would provide. Because the pull towards recognition is too strong for the poor students to resist, they end up in indulging themselves into prostitution in their search for money. Pity indeed that instead of recreating, as anticipated, their promiscuous behavior sees most of them getting pregnant and for some very unfortunate ones get even HIV and other STIs. From this discussion, commonsense convinces us that this school dropp out due to pregnancy is one of the negative impacts of poverty on education.

Adding more flesh to this discussion, we can also appreciate that hunger has been so instrumental in bringing down the standards of education world wide, in general, and Malawi, in particular. Frankly speaking, there are very few students if not none, who concentrate on their studies on empty stomachs. Food is one of the basic needs that every person is obliged to have if he/she is to survive. It is not surprising, therefore, to see some students performing miserably in class simply because they have not taken enough food or they have taken none altogether. The question of hunger finds its way into the education system because the government has failed to provide adequate food in most of its boarding schools. This is poverty at governmental level. There are also some students who are not boarders but still endure the hostile reality of hunger right in their homes. This is due to poverty at household level. It is sad that poverty, both at governmental and household level, has helped in engineering the deteriorating of education standards in Malawi.

Bearing in mind that it is only the eagle that can tell us the real whisper of a cloud, we visited Masongola Secondary school with the hope of getting first hand information from the students and their teachers since they are the ones who mostly benefit or get destructed by poverty. The Masongola secondary school students and their teacher, Mr. Enock Abraham, testified to us during an interview that government’s inability to provide extra food, apart from the usual beans that the institution offers, has seen many students developing ulcers. It would sound bizarre to reason that one can attend classes whilst he/she is on a hospital bed battling with ulcers. The Masongola students further testified that most poor students who have ulcers just bow down out of the race of learning because they cannot afford to buy extra food whenever the institution is serving the students beans.

This pitiful development goes beyond the boundaries of Masongola secondary school. Mulunguzi secondary school as Mr……the head teacher at the institution testifies, has not been spared from the scourge of school dropp outs simply because the school has not been able to provide extra or adequate food to students who cannot take what their friends take on health grounds. Needless to say this leaves the education standards in Malawi vacillating. It is a pity that though we have wrestled with this question of poverty a dozen times, we have not been successful in the battle. At one point in time, the government attempted to minimize the chances of school dropout in primary schools through its provision of porridge to pupils in the junior section. This attempt was in itself a good gesture but the government has failed to implement the initiative further in other schools that up to now have not benefited from the program.

It may not sound an exaggeration if we may say poverty has also forced a good number of students to give up their hopes of getting educated simply because they find it so difficult traveling to and from their respective schools. Lack of transport means, in short, has pushed them well towards the blink of despair as far as attaining formal education is concerned. This point speaks for itself how poverty can sometimes work on the education’s disadvantage.

As we go further with this discussion, we also appreciate the fact that the problem that mostly hinders a student’s success is inadequate resources that include; few teachers and learning materials. It must be highlighted that these problems are not only in developing countries but they may also find their way in reasonably developed countries like South Africa. In a developing country like Malawi, the education system encounters these problems because of the government’s failure to look into problems of infrastructure, capacity and availability of teaching and learning materials (Nkawike,2005) . The Muluzi government did a little if any; in as far as infrastructure is concerned. Lack of school blocks facilitated by a large number of pupils due to the introduction of the free primary education in 1994, forced pupils to have lessons under trees. In 2003, for example, lack of school blocks resulted in a tragedy at Nkomachi in Lilongwe when a tree fell onto an outdoor class, resulting in injury and deaths of pupils (Mvula & Chanika,2004) . This problem of learning materials continues till date, in all levels of the education system. According to Abraham (2009) , the school has always had shortage of learning blocks to an extent that the Physical Science and Biology laboratories are used as classrooms. There is also great shortage of books in all departments, and some departments like the technical department needs new equipment and current books which are very expensive. With this unfortunate situation we cannot anticipate good performance from Masongola secondary school.

In order to deal with these issues, the Muluzi government thought it wise to disregard the provision of learning materials in schools. Instead the Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) pass mark was reduced to ensure the success of students in their examinations. Even the director of Basic Education, Nelson Kaperemera admitted that funds intended for learning materials were servicing the debts of government at the expense of improving quality education. Instead of reducing the pass mark, the government and other stake holders should strive to improve quality of education, improve teacher salaries, and provide adequate materials and train teachers properly (Malawi News,2006) .

In developing countries like Malawi, the schools are understaffed (teaching personnel) and they tend to be handling a large number of students for long hours. Furthermore, the teachers are subjected to meager salaries, which are even made late. The government does not seem to have the welfare of teachers at heart, for instance the education Manager for Phalombe, Enoch Ali says the district is facing a dire shortage of teachers, a situation that is contributing to low education standards. The teacher pupil ratio in Phalombe is 1: 120, whilst the recommended ratio is 1: 60 (The Nation,2006) . Due to low pay teachers resort to organizing part time classes, which demand an extra amount of money on top of the normal fees. These changes clearly affect those students who come from very poor families, as they do not receive adequate studies because of lack of money.
This does not only occur in secondary schools, but it also happens in universities. As the academic staff of the Universities go on strike because of the government’s reluctance to increase their salaries. One considers how this is supposed to retain staff in the University. As a result lecturers spend more time doing consultancies; instead of preparing lectures and doing University mandated research. If we are serious about fighting poverty, formal education is the hub of ideas to fight these problems by improving its standards (Kapasula,2008) .
Child labour is one of the major problems that contribute to school dropp out. The majority of child labour victims are children who are living in poverty. This is so because they lack basic needs, for this reason they are forced even against their will to do any kind of work in order to gain financial wealth. This, therefore, affects school attendance. Evidence of school dropp out due to child labour is found in central region where most children are being employed in estates. This region has high tobacco production. Since this crop demands a lot of work, children are at high demand because they do not claim high wages compared to adults. Research, therefore, showed that the percentage of children attending schools is lower compared to that of northern and southern region (Nyirongo,2004) . We have the case of two brothers aged between 12 and 15 who were forced to work at a tobacco farm at Mpherembe in Kasungu district, where they were receiving 150 kwacha a day due to poverty (Namangale,2005) . We can see that child labour has a great impact on education because through it, a lot of children are being deprived of their right to education as they spend most of their time working.

In addition to that, Chirwa (2003) found out that child labour is also taking place in people’s houses. In this case children are forced to dropp out of school either by parents or on their own, to work in neighbouring homes. Here one of the victims is a 12 year old girl Elizabeth Chalimba, who left school when she was in standard six to work as a nanny in order to support her siblings. Children from low income families are at risk because though school is their only hope for a better future, they dropp out because their parents are failing to provide them with basic needs. Apart from child labour, psychological problems due to poverty is also another cause of school dropp outs. Research shows that the impact of poverty is greater on children as opposed to adults. Firstly, the problem arises due to the environment in which these children are raised. These environments being impoverished, they are intellectually unstimulating, and lack of stimulation results in impaired intellectual development of a child. This in turn contributes to failure in class which can later on lead to school dropp out.

[...] Read more

poem by Innocent Masina Nkhonyo
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Skids Into A Fizz

The budget?

The budget as it is,
Has skidded into a fizz.
No one chooses to say 'flop'...
Hoping that a plot is schemed,
To return smiling and gleaming grins again...
To those so close to giving up.

The budget?

The budget as it is,
Has skidded into a fizz.
With a 'don't-plop-me-down-now-thud'!
And added fuss and frustration.

The budget?
We monthy cuss that budget.
That budget...
Has us all caught up in corruptness.
And feuding over turf outsourced and sold.
Long ago.

The budget?
Skids into a fizz.
And folks with lips poked...
Still want to feel,
They can pop...
More champagne.

The budget?
Skids into a fizz.
And folks with lips poked...
Still want to feel,
They can pop...
More champagne.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Why Do Children Of The Poor

Why do children of the poor die so readily?
By the age of five
they're already disarmed for life.
Is money a gene they're missing?
Or is their suffering
just a diminished immunity to the rest of us?
The gluttons of knowledge
discuss James Joyce in a loud voice
in well-lit universities.
With great nuance and finesse
they enumerate the seven kinds of ambiguity
and the mean diameter of the vowel O
in the context of neo-Chicago Aristotelianism
in the latter plays of Shakespeare
where the commas fall like worms
out of every page of his art
as if he couldn't punctuate
the death-rage in his heart
with the subtler points
of the neo-critical literati.
I think Shakespeare would have seen
the sterling irony
of debating proto-Nostratic linguistics
while living children all around him
can't read their names in their own mother-tongue.
If the same word for oak
was the word we used for door
when we all learned to speak the same language
milennia ago
it's not hard to imagine
given modern advances in communication
that the word for child
that we used way back then
is the root of the word we use for atrocity today.
Why do the children of the poor die so readily?
Nature or nurture?
Is it because the children of the rich
are taught that wealth is longevity
and the children of the poor
who can't read the fine print
bleed to death like expired medical plans?
Why do the rich think that the poor
are the reason their children suffer
and the best thing to do is make orphans of them
by sending the poor of one nation
to war against another
to keep the economy growing
and cut back on the unemployed
like deer culled from a budget in hunting season?
If you're a child born from this womb

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Fourth Book

THEY met still sooner. 'Twas a year from thence
When Lucy Gresham, the sick semptress girl,
Who sewed by Marian's chair so still and quick,
And leant her head upon the back to cough
More freely when, the mistress turning round,
The others took occasion to laugh out,–
Gave up a last. Among the workers, spoke
A bold girl with black eyebrows and red lips,–
'You know the news? Who's dying, do you think?
Our Lucy Gresham. I expected it
As little as Nell Hart's wedding. Blush not, Nell,
Thy curls be red enough without thy cheeks;
And, some day, there'll be found a man to dote
On red curls.–Lucy Gresham swooned last night,
Dropped sudden in the street while going home;
And now the baker says, who took her up
And laid her by her grandmother in bed,
He'll give her a week to die in. Pass the silk.
Let's hope he gave her a loaf too, within reach,
For otherwise they'll starve before they die,
That funny pair of bedfellows! Miss Bell,
I'll thank you for the scissors. The old crone
Is paralytic–that's the reason why
Our Lucy's thread went faster than her breath,
Which went too quick, we all know. Marian Erle!
Why, Marian Erle, you're not the fool to cry?
Your tears spoil Lady Waldemar's new dress,
You piece of pity!'
Marian rose up straight,
And, breaking through the talk and through the work,
Went outward, in the face of their surprise,
To Lucy's home, to nurse her back to life
Or down to death. She knew by such an act,
All place and grace were forfeit in the house,
Whose mistress would supply the missing hand
With necessary, not inhuman haste,
And take no blame. But pity, too, had dues:
She could not leave a solitary soul
To founder in the dark, while she sate still
And lavished stitches on a lady's hem
As if no other work were paramount.
'Why, God,' thought Marian, 'has a missing hand
This moment; Lucy wants a drink, perhaps.
Let others miss me! never miss me, God!'

So Marian sat by Lucy's bed, content
With duty, and was strong, for recompense,
To hold the lamp of human love arm-high
To catch the death-strained eyes and comfort them,
Until the angels, on the luminous side

[...] Read more

poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Parish Register - Part III: Burials

THERE was, 'tis said, and I believe, a time
When humble Christians died with views sublime;
When all were ready for their faith to bleed,
But few to write or wrangle for their creed;
When lively Faith upheld the sinking heart,
And friends, assured to meet, prepared to part;
When Love felt hope, when Sorrow grew serene,
And all was comfort in the death-bed scene.
Alas! when now the gloomy king they wait,
'Tis weakness yielding to resistless fate;
Like wretched men upon the ocean cast,
They labour hard and struggle to the last;
'Hope against hope,' and wildly gaze around
In search of help that never shall be found:
Nor, till the last strong billow stops the breath,
Will they believe them in the jaws of Death!
When these my Records I reflecting read,
And find what ills these numerous births succeed;
What powerful griefs these nuptial ties attend;
With what regret these painful journeys end;
When from the cradle to the grave I look,
Mine I conceive a melancholy book.
Where now is perfect resignation seen?
Alas! it is not on the village-green: -
I've seldom known, though I have often read,
Of happy peasants on their dying-bed;
Whose looks proclaimed that sunshine of the breast,
That more than hope, that Heaven itself express'd.
What I behold are feverish fits of strife,
'Twixt fears of dying and desire of life:
Those earthly hopes, that to the last endure;
Those fears, that hopes superior fail to cure;
At best a sad submission to the doom,
Which, turning from the danger, lets it come.
Sick lies the man, bewilder'd, lost, afraid,
His spirits vanquish'd, and his strength decay'd;
No hope the friend, the nurse, the doctor lend -
'Call then a priest, and fit him for his end.'
A priest is call'd; 'tis now, alas! too late,
Death enters with him at the cottage-gate;
Or time allow'd--he goes, assured to find
The self-commending, all-confiding mind;
And sighs to hear, what we may justly call
Death's common-place, the train of thought in all.
'True I'm a sinner,' feebly he begins,
'But trust in Mercy to forgive my sins:'
(Such cool confession no past crimes excite!
Such claim on Mercy seems the sinner's right!)
'I know mankind are frail, that God is just,
And pardons those who in his Mercy trust;

[...] Read more

poem by George Crabbe
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

We Can Create A Modern International Community

And I wonder when Congress will allow public nationwide schools...
in the United States to set aside time for children again to pray?
To pray for, or quietly reflect on behalf of, their once great Nation!

To pray for their nation during this proclaimed danger time...
of struggle against the forces of evil dark international terrorism!
But in the White House lurks a dark soul of 100% fetus murder!

Barack against murder international terrorism with Pro-Abortion Record!
Like Pharaoh in the time of the birth of Moses, like King Harold at the birth of Jesus, killing innocent children based on state law is ok in America today!

Why? How can this be? On 9th of March 2008 Barack proclaimed “We were once were, we are no longer a Christian nation, at least not just....”
No Ten Commandments, No God’s law displayed in government buildings!

15th April 2009 Barack proclaimed “We can create a modern international community that is respectful that is secure that is prosperous....
(in an aside to himself) and like Baal Worshippers we will support propagate

State Policies funding killing innocent children against the will of the majority of Americans and I Barack will use tax payer dollars to kill innocent unborn! We will fill White House high office with Pro Abortion all! Yes We Can!

Darth Vader will create a universal New World Order!

And in the on going baby killing sweepstakes infant killer Obama selects: -

Pro-Abortion Sen. Joe Biden as Obama’s vice-presidential running mate. Pro-Abortion Rep. Rahm Emanuel as Obama’s White House Chief of Staff.
Pro-Abortion former Sen. Tom Daschle as Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary.

Former NARAL legal director Dawn Johnsen to serve as a member of Obama’s Department of Justice Review Team. Next appointed Assistant Attorney General for the Office of the Legal Counsel.

Betta check Obama’s rap sheet Pro-Abortion Record, for the rest of his all star elite baby killing machine selections.

'President Barack Obama's Pro-Abortion Record: A Pro-Life Compilation

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) - The following is a compilation of bill signings, speeches, appointments and other actions that President Barack Obama has engaged in that have promoted abortion before and during his presidency. While Obama has promised to reduce abortions and some of his supporters believe that will happen, this long list proves his only agenda is promoting more abortions.

During the presidential election, Obama selected pro-abortion Sen. Joe Biden as his vice-presidential running mate.

Post-Election / Pre-Inauguration
November 5,2008 - Obama selects pro-abortion Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his White House Chief of Staff. Emanuel has a 0% pro-life voting record according to National Right to Life.

November 19,2008 - Obama picks pro-abortion former Sen. Tom Daschle as his Health and Human Services Secretary. Daschle has a long pro-abortion voting record according to National Right to Life.

November 20,2008 - Obama chooses former NARAL legal director Dawn Johnsen to serve as a member of his Department of Justice Review Team. Later, he finalizes her appointment as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of the Legal Counsel in the Obama administration.

November 24,2008 - Obama appoints Ellen Moran, the former director of the pro-abortion group Emily's List as his White House communications director. Emily's List only supports candidates who favored taxpayer funded abortions and opposed a partial-birth abortion ban.

November 24,2008 - Obama puts former Emily's List board member Melody Barnes in place as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.

November 30,2008 - Obama named pro-abortion Sen. Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. Clinton has an unblemished pro-abortion voting record and has supported making unlimited abortions an international right.

December 10,2008 - Obama selects pro-abortion former Clinton administration official Jeanne Lambrew to become the deputy director of the White House Office of Health Reform. Planned Parenthood is 'excited' about the selection.

[...] Read more

poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

One Star In The Dirty Window

for the occupiers of Wall Street

One star in the window and that’s enough to see me through the darkness for another night. Trying to weave a flying carpet out of a snakepit. Toxic wavelengths of mind. Poison arrowheads that make it worse to be wounded than killed outright. And all over Perth tonight I imagine there are bruised hearts like mine and yours turning cyanotically blue from having drunk from the same tainted wellsprings of life like fish that have no choice. The apples of October have been laced with the razorblades of Halloween by the psychopathic tree that hands them out like treats to the children in the doorway of an upright coffin. And the leaves are burning up in a fever of arsenic. Spiders work the loom like the strings of the system that hooks us by our gills in its seine nets until the great wild seas of our awareness and the dangerous freedom to look for new ungovernable continents within us so we can flee the corporate corruption of this one is reduced to the neurotic dimensions of a fish farm. If you are poor. If you’re worried about how to pay the rent this month. If it’s winter and there are harpies and sprites and ghouls threatening to turn the gas, the lights, the elements of life off like trolls under the bridge your money built to bilk you until it collapses from lack of repair. If you don’t how you’re going to manage to buy your kid a birthday present this year and you’re even more afraid of Christmas. If you’re poor and your prospects are as bleak as this deserted street tonight now all the ladys-in-waiting, princes, jesters, and warring kings have called it a night and emptied their street court like a bar. If you’re chronically tortured by the rags of dignity with the blood of a lost cause upon them like something that cost your mother and father their lives to fight for. And you’re ashamed of the straitjacket you’ve been forced to wear in order to have some overseer raise a spoon to your lips three exact times of the day like banking hours and GST cheques. If you smoulder with rage like a underground cedar fire burning in your roots like fuses of lightning afraid to explode. If you’re poor. If the weight of the world is on your back heavier than any cross the spiritual spin doctors of the complicit church and their political henchmen encourage you to carry like a virtue all the way to a fabricated heaven on the installment plan, but you can’t bear the load as a volunteer stretcher-bearer anymore, carrying your own corpse to the grave, while they rave in the wealth of what they have deprived you of here and now. If you’re poor. If you feel like a subliminal archetype of guilt in the collective unconscious of a society of quisling theosophists and weight-concscious c.e.o.’s sitting down to salads of money they eat out of the skulls of the children they’ve starved to death. If you don’t make enough money in Oregon to appeal to hypocritic oaths that sit on decisive committees to see if your son is worthy of a kidney transplant. An education. Piano lessons. A future that isn’t always an echo worse than the voices we heard yesterday protesting to the vampires that without a free blood bank they didn’t stand a chance of surviving the contributions they’re expected to make at night. If you’re poor in a chilly apartment in Perth tonight and you’re being eaten alive by the eggs that have been laid on your forehead like the living host to sustain the young of the killer bees that have sewn their nettles in the honey of life like the military-industrial complex of the hive. If you’re poor and you don’t get one year’s free subscription to satellite radio on the bus you have to take to work every morning surrounded by ads for the latest Ford-150 pick up truck ready to do a man’s work at the dropp of a hard hat and then go hunting in the country, and the new black paint is trying to imitate the skin of a naked woman, because your sex life depends on what you drive, and the sumptuary laws of the lies you’re allowed to wear like a Roman triumph are too stringent to get the dirt out of the dowdy greens and browns of your serfdom long enough to get laid by the calendar girls who sit like mermaids on a brand new truck, but have never sung to you. If you’re the poor wretch sitting in the doorway of the Bank of Nova Scotia across Foster Street in the small hours of the morning like a bird that gets to pick the parasites off the back of the hippopotamus that keeps rolling over on you in your sleep. For a fee. To hold up your end of a symbiotic relationship whereby you’re expected to eat shit and call it your daily bread. Eat humiliation, a ration of rat meat, and call it a just portion. Eat your education like bitter food for thought when you see how the fascistic ignorance of antediluvian fat men and their gold-digging wives are dignified by the juke-box of the news as if the point of view of a maggot on how to turn base metal into a gold butterfly it will never become were worthy of the same air time they give to eagles. One hundred news outlets with the same six slug lines like the top hits of the day. Catastrophe du jour. With rescued puppy stories for the trimmings. Eat information like the news. It’s Chinese food of the mind. Not very filling. With a fortune-cookie and a fat tape worm of better things to come wrapped around your bowels like the noose of a downed powerline that spared the cost of the rope to lynch you by your large intestine. If you’re poor and you’re always the falling leaf and never the apple. If you’re poor and it’s always autumn to judge by the banks of junkmail and bills that are swept up on your doorsill at all times of the year. If you’re poor and you’re punished for being out on the streets after curfew for having dropped through the cracks of your caste by a neocon leper colony privatized by the messianic lobbyists of free enterprise with one finger on the scales of equal opportunity because there isn’t a feather’s worth of good in them when they go before the jackal god of death and their grubby hearts are found wanting. If you’re poor and you’re listening to the North Carolina state legislature discussing your extermination in the civic minded tones of the Pied Piper of Hamlin and you’re eating your self-respect like the plague rat of why the rich suffer. Because in their creationist myth your womb is the enemy of the state. And you the infectious carrier of the pestilence. If you’re poor and sitting by the window on a warped floor behind the heritage field stones of an upstairs ghetto apartment in Perth feeling like the second coming of the Irish potato famine with no where to emigrate this time to be third in line below the Scotch and English on the food chain. If you’re poor. Tattoo this on your forehead like an Egyptian destiny you and your eyes will live to see fulfilled. It’s not your fault. Even if you’ve given up. Even if you’re gaping like zero, like absolute nothing, between two hissing sibilants of a serpentine medical symbol unravelling. And the dragon’s lost its wings. And the physician doesn’t care enough to heal himself because he’s lost his faith in oaths. Or dangerous hope has given way to futile despair and they’re both siblings of the absurd. It’s not your fault that you were born into a society where even the mirages in this desert of stars are bundled and sold like real estate. That illusions and diseases apply for patents of ownership. That even the constellations have become the work of surveyors not shepherds on a hillside and the poor are being foreclosed and evicted from the signs of the zodiac because they can’t pay the rent or the mortgage on the house they were born into. Or the hydro on the stars. Even if your spinal cord tinkles like the burnt out filament of a dead lightbulb and the shining’s gone out. It’s not your fault if the universe that was airlifted to you at birth as your portion of life with nothing missing was intercepted and sold at prices that eat their own on the black market of free enterprise for the poor, or they couldn’t afford it, and socialism for the rich because they couldn’t survive without you. You might be like the sea in the lowest place of all but all things flow like rivers down into you. And the depth of the valley of shadows and death you’re walking through alone is a function of the height of the mountain that digs it like a grave it will be buried in. When all the grains of sand like stars come together they make a sea of waves where life thrives in the here and now spontaneously not a pyramid for the sake of a single capstone whose happy afterlife is founded on quicksand.
Saw a huge spiderweb once under a streetlamp at Carleton University thirty-six years ago. Six spiders, their abdomens obese as lightbulbs, six tumours ripening on the panicked cells and neural networks of more frenzied insects drawn to the light out of the dark than their webs were meant to accommodate. The webs were ripping under the weight of the horrified fruits of their gluttony stuck in the powerlines like kites and running shoes and treacherous parachutes. The dew spangled veils of the morning were being torn off like consumerist dream catchers to entice the mob to the artificial radiance of the light that drove them crazy. But the spiders were too satiate to move. And they were being pulled down along with their prey under the massive superflux of their immensely successful catastrophe. Pleonaxia. The disease of more and more and more. And all the insects had to do because the conglomerate spiders were too immobilized by the obscenity of their gigantism to stick an ice-pick in the back of Trotsky’s neck in Cuba was to keep a cool enough head to extricate themselves puppet string by puppet string, spinal cord by spinal cord, straitjacket by straitjacket, wing by wing from the web. But most were paralyzed by their own fear waiting for the fatal moment of the ruinous agenda to come like a budget cutting knife to end their nightmare. And after all these years that terrible insight still provides me with blood-freezing metaphors into the present economic system that preys upon the poor by beading the foodchain with black thoraxes as if they were the ninety-nine names of God and it were a rosary we could all say our novinas on pleading for more lifeboats and happier lifelines than the rigging of this ship of state that’s going down with all of us aboard as the captains of industry jump like rats in Genoa back into the year 1348 when there were corpses galore to feed on.
If you’re poor. Come to the revolution but leave your guillotine at home. Come to the revolution but leave Lenin in Geneva. Come to the revolution like Wat Tyler but don’t believe the promises of the king. Come to the revolution like Spartacus but don’t put your faith in pirates to provide you with the means of escape. Come to the revolution like Toussaint L’Ouverture in Haiti but first drive the fer de lance out of your sugar-cane so that no innocent bystanders get bit as an off-handed matter of population control. Come to the revolution like Aung San Suu Kyi ready to sit down in the teahouses of Burma to pry the fingers of the junta off the throats of the people like the petals of a flower whose time has come to let go. Come to the revolution like Ghandi walking all the way to the sea to turn the pillars of British imperialism to salt without all the fire and brimstone of Sodom and Gomorrah. Come like him to the revolution as a leader who knew how to follow his people. Come to the revolution like Helen Keller who stood up to the Rupert Murdochs of the age who were more in need of signage than she was on behalf of the rights of the working people and declared Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! What an ungallant bird it is! Socially blind and deaf, it defends a system that’s intolerable. The Eagle and I are at war. Come to the revolution like Nelson Mandela to an international rugby match in the uniform of a Springbok scrum half to show that over-rated hatred can’t make a comeback over the jubilation of people in play with one another in time enough to win. Come to the revolution like Victor Jara and the Chilean art brigades and bring that guitar and that voice he left us that you’ve been wanting to play for decades with a compassionate feel for the sorrows of others right down to the tips of your social democratic fingerprints as if you weren’t born too late to celebrate a lost cause with a Cinderella story right out the social pages of the mid-sixties into the front page slug lines of msnbc news today. And remember it’s better to sing sincerely than well when you’ve got Bob Dylan for a voice coach. Come to the revolution like Tuwakal Karman of Yemen like the first coffee flower of the Arab Spring to raise her voice against Ali Abdullah Saleh in the name of human rights and freedom of expression. Come to the revolution like Martin Luther to the church door in Wittenburg and post your thirty-three articles of protest but don’t think because you throw inkwells at the devil that’s the same as writing your name in blood on the marble of Wall Street or a war memorial for the dead of Vietnam. Come like George Washington to the American Revolution ready to lay your power down as a sign of complete victory over what satisfies the industrial complexity of the generals’ hearts. Come like Barack Obama to the wellsprings of a cleaner watershed than that which flowed like the corrupt ditches of the tainted bloodstreams of Eden like the four rivers of the running sores of the trickle down economics of the political food chain that ran before him for office by putting a carrot in front of a donkey and all your eggs in one basket in front of a rampaging elephant. Come to the revolution like Emmeline Pankhurst to a hunger strike in a game of cat and mouse with the government who’ll catch you and let you go to fatten you up and keep you from being force fed before they arrest you again for throwing your weight around like Emily Davison at the king’s horse in the name of wanting to run like a candidate at the same race track without the handicap of not being able to vote. Come to the revolution like Dolores Jiminez y Muro with a political plan to give Emiliano Zapata a Mexican classroom of political reform worth dying for. If you’re poor, as Kurt Cobain said, come as you are. And if Jesus doesn’t want you for a sunbeam then come as a cloud. Come as a mountain. Come as a full eclipse of the moon or a loveletter that someone sent back or come as seven come eleven and trust in your luck when the dice are not loaded like skulls with no eyes against you.

poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Eighth Book

ONE eve it happened when I sate alone,
Alone upon the terrace of my tower,
A book upon my knees, to counterfeit
The reading that I never read at all,
While Marian, in the garden down below,
Knelt by the fountain (I could just hear thrill
The drowsy silence of the exhausted day)
And peeled a new fig from that purple heap
In the grass beside her,–turning out the red
To feed her eager child, who sucked at it
With vehement lips across a gap of air
As he stood opposite, face and curls a-flame
With that last sun-ray, crying, 'give me, give,'
And stamping with imperious baby-feet,
(We're all born princes)–something startled me,–
The laugh of sad and innocent souls, that breaks
Abruptly, as if frightened at itself;
'Twas Marian laughed. I saw her glance above
In sudden shame that I should hear her laugh,
And straightway dropped my eyes upon my book,
And knew, the first time, 'twas Boccaccio's tales,
The Falcon's,–of the lover who for love
Destroyed the best that loved him. Some of us
Do it still, and then we sit and laugh no more.
Laugh you, sweet Marian! you've the right to laugh,
Since God himself is for you, and a child!
For me there's somewhat less,–and so, I sigh.

The heavens were making room to hold the night,
The sevenfold heavens unfolding all their gates
To let the stars out slowly (prophesied
In close-approaching advent, not discerned),
While still the cue-owls from the cypresses
Of the Poggio called and counted every pulse
Of the skyey palpitation. Gradually
The purple and transparent shadows slow
Had filled up the whole valley to the brim,
And flooded all the city, which you saw
As some drowned city in some enchanted sea,
Cut off from nature,–drawing you who gaze,
With passionate desire, to leap and plunge,
And find a sea-king with a voice of waves,
And treacherous soft eyes, and slippery locks
You cannot kiss but you shall bring away
Their salt upon your lips. The duomo-bell
Strikes ten, as if it struck ten fathoms down,
So deep; and fifty churches answer it
The same, with fifty various instances.
Some gaslights tremble along squares and streets
The Pitti's palace-front is drawn in fire:

[...] Read more

poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Three Women

My love is young, so young;
Young is her cheek, and her throat,
And life is a song to be sung
With love the word for each note.

Young is her cheek and her throat;
Her eyes have the smile o' May.
And love is the word for each note
In the song of my life to-day.

Her eyes have the smile o' May;
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
And the song of my life to-day
Is love, beautiful love.

Her heart is the heart of a dove,
Ah, would it but fly to my breast
Where love, beautiful love,
Has made it a downy nest.

Ah, would she but fly to my breast,
My love who is young, so young;
I have made her a downy nest
And life is a song to be sung.

1
I.
A dull little station, a man with the eye
Of a dreamer; a bevy of girls moving by;
A swift moving train and a hot Summer sun,
The curtain goes up, and our play is begun.
The drama of passion, of sorrow, of strife,
Which always is billed for the theatre Life.
It runs on forever, from year unto year,
With scarcely a change when new actors appear.
It is old as the world is-far older in truth,
For the world is a crude little planet of youth.
And back in the eras before it was formed,
The passions of hearts through the Universe stormed.

Maurice Somerville passed the cluster of girls
Who twisted their ribbons and fluttered their curls
In vain to attract him; his mind it was plain
Was wholly intent on the incoming train.
That great one eyed monster puffed out its black breath,
Shrieked, snorted and hissed, like a thing bent on death,

[...] Read more

poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Through the eyes of a Field Coronet (Epic)

Introduction

In the kaki coloured tent in Umbilo he writes
his life’s story while women, children and babies are dying,
slowly but surely are obliterated, he see how his nation is suffering
while the events are notched into his mind.

Lying even heavier on him is the treason
of some other Afrikaners who for own gain
have delivered him, to imprisonment in this place of hatred
and thoughts go through him to write a book.

Prologue

The Afrikaner nation sprouted
from Dutchmen,
who fought decades without defeat
against the super power Spain

mixed with French Huguenots
who left their homes and belongings,
with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Associate this then with the fact

that these people fought formidable
for seven generations
against every onslaught that they got
from savages en wild animals

becoming marksmen, riding
and taming wild horses
with one bullet per day
to hunt a wild antelope,

who migrated right across the country
over hills in mass protest
and then you have
the most formidable adversary
and then let them fight

in a natural wilderness
where the hunter,
the sniper and horseman excels
and any enemy is at a lost.

Let them then also be patriotic
into their souls,
believe in and read
out of the word of God

[...] Read more

poem by Gert Strydom
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

VII. Pompilia

I am just seventeen years and five months old,
And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks;
'T is writ so in the church's register,
Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names
At length, so many names for one poor child,
—Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela
Pompilia Comparini,—laughable!
Also 't is writ that I was married there
Four years ago: and they will add, I hope,
When they insert my death, a word or two,—
Omitting all about the mode of death,—
This, in its place, this which one cares to know,
That I had been a mother of a son
Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace
O' the Curate, not through any claim I have;
Because the boy was born at, so baptized
Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:
A pretty church, I say no word against,
Yet stranger-like,—while this Lorenzo seems
My own particular place, I always say.
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,
With half his body rushing from the wall,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man—
(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)
An ominous sign to one baptized like me,
Married, and to be buried there, I hope.
And they should add, to have my life complete,
He is a boy and Gaetan by name—
Gaetano, for a reason,—if the friar
Don Celestine will ask this grace for me
Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was
Baptized me: he remembers my whole life
As I do his grey hair.

All these few things
I know are true,—will you remember them?
Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,
To count my wounds,—twenty-two dagger-wounds,
Five deadly, but I do not suffer much—
Or too much pain,—and am to die to-night.

Oh how good God is that my babe was born,
—Better than born, baptized and hid away
Before this happened, safe from being hurt!
That had been sin God could not well forgive:
He was too young to smile and save himself.
When they took two days after he was born,
My babe away from me to be baptized
And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,—

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Mirrors Of Our Time

THE ECONOMY is a hose.
The Government collects water from the people
and pours it into the top of the hose
and gives it back to the people.
Near the top of the hose is a hole.
A lot of the water pours out of this into a tank
marked Government which is always empty.
The rest flows down towards the people.
It passes other holes marked
Government Agencies
Government buildings
Government contingencies
Government perks
There are also holes marked
Lawyers
Accountants
Criminals.
The Government is always trying
to stop these last three holes.
Finally what is left of the water
reaches people at the end of the hose.
The people fight over it
(it is never enough) .
When they get very thirsty they start
to throw stones at the government
and threaten to sack them.
The government then reluctantly
pours more water into the top of the hose
(which they get from the people) .
Finally when the people are very thirsty indeed,
under the leadership of the
Lawyers
Accountants
and other Criminals,
they attack the tank marked Government
and break it open.
It is always empty.
Then many of the people die
(except for the Lawyers, Accountants
and other Criminals.)
The survivors go off and look for a new well,
drink as much as they can
as quickly as they can
and wait for a new Government to find them.

poem by Brian Taylor
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Carrolling II-Parody Lewis CARROLL–The Mad Gardener’s Song

Carolling II

He Thought He Saw

He thought he saw new Internet
exchanging peer to peer,
he looked again and found it was
a mirage for each year
sees more control, “what rôle, ” he said,
“for values once held dear?
Some track to trace attack and get
convictions based on fear.'

He dreamt he saw spam disappear,
all consultations free,
he looked again and found it was
a spybot lottery.
“Is net neutrality”, he said,
“from rash risks viral clear? ”

He dreamt that Microsoft would steer
all trash deleted fast,
then woke to find world insincere
where independence past
was sacrificed throughout the year
to biometrics ghast.

He thought he saw a friend’s hello,
with an attachment piece,
he looked again and found it was
the porno scanning police.
“Politically correct”, he said,
“can’t guarantee release.”

He opened it, discovered though,
a trojan horse to fleece –
he looked again as data flow
declined, - mind not at peace -
and whispered with voice hoarse and low:
'when will our worries cease? ”

He thought he saw a hierophant,
who’d deal successful life,
he looked again and found it was
subpoena from ex-wife
demanding child support, he said,
“cards are cut by Time’s knife.”

He looked once more with rage and rant
and swore like a fishwife

[...] Read more

poem by Jonathan Robin
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Golden Age

Long ere the Muse the strenuous chords had swept,
And the first lay as yet in silence slept,
A Time there was which since has stirred the lyre
To notes of wail and accents warm with fire;
Moved the soft Mantuan to his silvery strain,
And him who sobbed in pentametric pain;
To which the World, waxed desolate and old,
Fondly reverts, and calls the Age of Gold.

Then, without toil, by vale and mountain side,
Men found their few and simple wants supplied;
Plenty, like dew, dropped subtle from the air,
And Earth's fair gifts rose prodigal as prayer.
Love, with no charms except its own to lure,
Was swiftly answered by a love as pure.
No need for wealth; each glittering fruit and flower,
Each star, each streamlet, made the maiden's dower.
Far in the future lurked maternal throes,
And children blossomed painless as the rose.
No harrowing question `why,' no torturing `how,'
Bent the lithe frame or knit the youthful brow.
The growing mind had naught to seek or shun;
Like the plump fig it ripened in the sun.
From dawn to dark Man's life was steeped in joy,
And the gray sire was happy as the boy.
Nature with Man yet waged no troublous strife,
And Death was almost easier than Life.
Safe on its native mountains throve the oak,
Nor ever groaned 'neath greed's relentless stroke.
No fear of loss, no restlessness for more,
Drove the poor mariner from shore to shore.
No distant mines, by penury divined,
Made him the sport of fickle wave or wind.
Rich for secure, he checked each wish to roam,
And hugged the safe felicity of home.

Those days are long gone by; but who shall say
Why, like a dream, passed Saturn's Reign away?
Over its rise, its ruin, hangs a veil,
And naught remains except a Golden Tale.
Whether 'twas sin or hazard that dissolved
That happy scheme by kindly Gods evolved;
Whether Man fell by lucklessness or pride,-
Let jarring sects, and not the Muse, decide.
But when that cruel Fiat smote the earth,
Primeval Joy was poisoned at its birth.
In sorrow stole the infant from the womb,
The agëd crept in sorrow to the tomb.
The ground, so bounteous once, refused to bear
More than was wrung by sower, seed, and share.

[...] Read more

poem by Alfred Austin
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Peter Bell, A Tale

PROLOGUE

There's something in a flying horse,
There's something in a huge balloon;
But through the clouds I'll never float
Until I have a little Boat,
Shaped like the crescent-moon.

And now I 'have' a little Boat,
In shape a very crescent-moon
Fast through the clouds my boat can sail;
But if perchance your faith should fail,
Look up--and you shall see me soon!

The woods, my Friends, are round you roaring,
Rocking and roaring like a sea;
The noise of danger's in your ears,
And ye have all a thousand fears
Both for my little Boat and me!

Meanwhile untroubled I admire
The pointed horns of my canoe;
And, did not pity touch my breast,
To see how ye are all distrest,
Till my ribs ached, I'd laugh at you!

Away we go, my Boat and I--
Frail man ne'er sate in such another;
Whether among the winds we strive,
Or deep into the clouds we dive,
Each is contented with the other.

Away we go--and what care we
For treasons, tumults, and for wars?
We are as calm in our delight
As is the crescent-moon so bright
Among the scattered stars.

Up goes my Boat among the stars
Through many a breathless field of light,
Through many a long blue field of ether,
Leaving ten thousand stars beneath her:
Up goes my little Boat so bright!

The Crab, the Scorpion, and the Bull--
We pry among them all; have shot
High o'er the red-haired race of Mars,
Covered from top to toe with scars;
Such company I like it not!

[...] Read more

poem by William Wordsworth
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Boy and the Teacher

Teacher, teacher, 'why is my gram parent going to have to go to a nursing home? '

'Well', says the teacher in disgust. 'The republicans(Defenders of the rich) won't allow the raise of the government budget ceiling(The Amount Of Money That The Government Can Borrow.) they don't want to raise taxes on the job creators(Corporations..). But they want taxes on the workers and cuts in government funded programs to equal the new budget. The Democrats(The Ones Who Believe Our Country Should Be A Nanny State) . Don't want to make the cuts in certain government programs or raise taxes on the poor and want to raise the budget ceiling without paying for it.'

The little boy says 'That don't sound that complicated. Why don't we just tax everyone across the board, according the money they make and have. And Why don't we make cuts in programs that are not necessary. Oh and while were at it why don't we bring back our military slowly. So were not spending 60 billion dollars month in other countries. Why do we have to police other countries? Or even a better question how can we afford too when our debt is so high? '

The teacher responds back, why don't you write your congressmen, senators, and president letters and ask them.

The little boys says, 'Easy they would never read them.'

The teacher a little annoyed says, 'You got answer for everything. And I thought I was the teacher.'

The little boy chirps, 'your darn tooting'.

poem by Ace Of Black Hearts
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

VIII. Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum Procurator

Ah, my Giacinto, he's no ruddy rogue,
Is not Cinone? What, to-day we're eight?
Seven and one's eight, I hope, old curly-pate!
—Branches me out his verb-tree on the slate,
Amo-as-avi-atum-are-ans,
Up to -aturus, person, tense, and mood,
Quies me cum subjunctivo (I could cry)
And chews Corderius with his morning crust!
Look eight years onward, and he's perched, he's perched
Dapper and deft on stool beside this chair,
Cinozzo, Cinoncello, who but he?
—Trying his milk-teeth on some crusty case
Like this, papa shall triturate full soon
To smooth Papinianian pulp!

It trots
Already through my head, though noon be now,
Does supper-time and what belongs to eve.
Dispose, O Don, o' the day, first work then play!
—The proverb bids. And "then" means, won't we hold
Our little yearly lovesome frolic feast,
Cinuolo's birth-night, Cinicello's own,
That makes gruff January grin perforce!
For too contagious grows the mirth, the warmth
Escaping from so many hearts at once—
When the good wife, buxom and bonny yet,
Jokes the hale grandsire,—such are just the sort
To go off suddenly,—he who hides the key
O' the box beneath his pillow every night,—
Which box may hold a parchment (someone thinks)
Will show a scribbled something like a name
"Cinino, Ciniccino," near the end,
"To whom I give and I bequeath my lands,
"Estates, tenements, hereditaments,
"When I decease as honest grandsire ought."
Wherefore—yet this one time again perhaps—
Shan't my Orvieto fuddle his old nose!
Then, uncles, one or the other, well i' the world,
May—drop in, merely?—trudge through rain and wind,
Rather! The smell-feasts rouse them at the hint
There's cookery in a certain dwelling-place!
Gossips, too, each with keepsake in his poke,
Will pick the way, thrid lane by lantern-light,
And so find door, put galligaskin off
At entry of a decent domicile
Cornered in snug Condotti,—all for love,
All to crush cup with Cinucciatolo!

Well,
Let others climb the heights o' the court, the camp!

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Idiot Boy

'Tis eight o'clock,--a clear March night,
The moon is up,--the sky is blue,
The owlet, in the moonlight air,
Shouts from nobody knows where;
He lengthens out his lonely shout,
Halloo! halloo! a long halloo!

--Why bustle thus about your door,
What means this bustle, Betty Foy?
Why are you in this mighty fret?
And why on horseback have you set
Him whom you love, your Idiot Boy?

Scarcely a soul is out of bed;
Good Betty, put him down again;
His lips with joy they burr at you;
But, Betty! what has he to do
With stirrup, saddle, or with rein?

But Betty's bent on her intent;
For her good neighbour, Susan Gale,
Old Susan, she who dwells alone,
Is sick, and makes a piteous moan
As if her very life would fail.

There's not a house within a mile,
No hand to help them in distress;
Old Susan lies a-bed in pain,
And sorely puzzled are the twain,
For what she ails they cannot guess.

And Betty's husband's at the wood,
Where by the week he doth abide,
A woodman in the distant vale;
There's none to help poor Susan Gale;
What must be done? what will betide?

And Betty from the lane has fetched
Her Pony, that is mild and good;
Whether he be in joy or pain,
Feeding at will along the lane,
Or bringing faggots from the wood.

And he is all in travelling trim,--
And, by the moonlight, Betty Foy
Has on the well-girt saddle set
(The like was never heard of yet)
Him whom she loves, her Idiot Boy.

And he must post without delay

[...] Read more

poem by William Wordsworth
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Government

The Government -- I heard about the Government and
I went out to find it. I said I would look closely at
it when I saw it.
Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to
the callaboose. It was the Government in action.
I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning
and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge
dismissed a case against a pickpocket who was a
live ward worker for the alderman. Again I saw
this was the Government, doing things.
I saw militiamen level their rifles at a crowd of
workingmen who were trying to get other workingmen
to stay away from a shop where there was a strike
on. Government in action.
Everywhere I saw that Government is a thing made of
men, that Government has blood and bones, it is
many mouths whispering into many ears, sending
telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying
"yes" and "no."
Government dies as the men who form it die and are laid
away in their graves and the new Government that
comes after is human, made of heartbeats of blood,
ambitions, lusts, and money running through it all,
money paid and money taken, and money covered
up and spoken of with hushed voices.
A Government is just as secret and mysterious and sensitive
as any human sinner carrying a load of germs,
traditions and corpuscles handed down from
fathers and mothers away back.

poem by Carl Sandburg
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!