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I think the thing that I most appreciate now is that stereotypes involving Jewish identity activate fears of persecution that exist in the present day.

quote by Gregg Easterbrook
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What Is A Jewish Poem?

WHAT IS A JEWISH POEM?

What is a Jewish poem?
‘Shema’ is a Jewish poem
Perhaps the Jewish poem-
'Shmoneh Esreh' is comprised of Jewish poems
Nineteen prayers as one-
Our history is filled with Jewish poems-
From the beginning with Abraham and Sarah
Those who have given so much beyond our understanding -
Jewish poems everywhere -

Is each Jewish life a poem and a story also?
Or is it only those who give something to our people and history
Who are worthy of Poetry?

I have known many Jewish poems
People the great world will not know the names of
People who whether they walked humbly or not
Made the lives of others better in some way –

Kindness is perhaps the ultimate Jewish poem
And Justice also-
And Jewish poems are not without their contradictions –

As I write this poem in Jerusalem in the land of Israel
I think of the small Jewish world of Troy New York where I came from so many years ago
And miss so many people no longer of that and this world –

Longing for Israel for two thousand years was the Jewish poem
Living here now is a blessing and a gift
I thank God for.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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Joseph's Gloss On God

When Joseph tells his brothers: “I
am not God, ” he perhaps implies
that unlike God he sometimes lies,
and unlike Him, is doomed to die.

The words that Joseph never said
are wrong, as we find out when burned;
God often lies, a lesson learned
from history, and God is dead.

Inspired by a review by Paul Buhle of R. Crumb’s The Whole Book of Genesis, in Forward, October 10,2009 (“In the Image of God: The Ambition of R. Crumb’s Graphic Genesis”:

To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark volume in comic art is somewhat of an understatement. It doesn’t hurt that excerpts of the book appeared during the summer in the New Yorker and that the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is opening an exhibit of the original drawings from which the book’s contents were adapted. “The Book of Genesis, ” Robert Crumb’s version, nevertheless stands on its own as one of this century’s most ambitious artistic adaptations of the West’s oldest continuously told story.
No comic artist has been more influential than Crumb. In terms of sales, his work is dwarfed by the superheroes and, in comic art prestige. Art Spiegelman, and a short list of others including Alison Bechdel and Marjane Sartrapi may have displaced Crumb. But Crumb’s influence abides and endures in his occasional LP/CD covers, in his volumes of collected work (16 volumes so far and counting) , his artistic prizes and a generation of artists who have incorporated his particular view of humanity.
Surprisingly, his best work in 20 years has actually been in the genre of adaptation, specifically an adaptation of Franz Kafka, dating to the mid 1990s. On that highly curious point, any consideration of this “Genesis, ” as a highly personal comic art, properly begins. Notoriously, Crumb is a gentile who fled from his deeply dysfunctional Delaware family to the Cleveland neighborhood of Harvey Pekar and the arms of the first of two Jewish wives. “Crumb, ” the 1994 film documentary, was in many ways about emotional pain (including a brother doomed to suicide) and his craving for a certain kind of woman, who, although possibly any female with a bemuscled backside, was in fact most likely to be Jewish. She, reality and image, was his consolation. The strips that he drew of Jewish-American life, nevertheless, reworked stereotypes, some funny (he visits Florida with his second wife, and holds a tiny grandfather on his knee) , and some, doubtless, insulting to many readers.
In the pages of “Introducing Kafka, ” Crumb became his fictional protagonist with such depth of insight into the logic of the doomed writer, as well as of Kafka’s famed works, that many readers were simply astonished, this reviewer among them. Kafka is the exemplar par excellence of a type of ambiguous, tortured mittel European Jewish personality as it hovered between faith and uncertainty, shortly before the Holocaust. Not Spiegelman, not Ben Katchor, nor Sharon Rudahl, nor others who drew historical or quasi-historical strips about Jewish history, had taken the characterization as far as Crumb. An earlier escape from Middle American culture had propelled Crumb toward his satirical protagonist Mister Natural, a Zen-like, robed quasi-prophet of the 1970s-80s. Three decades later, Crumb’s robed prophets are far from Zen.
Crumb’s “Genesis” is then perfectly serious and the author wants us to know it. As he says on the cover, “Nothing Left Out! ” Every “beget” from the King James Bible can be found here, along with plenty of scenes censored from previous graphic adaptations. And more prose, in the final “Commentary” segment of the book, than non-writer Crumb may have put on the page anywhere, aside from his published letters. More striking for anyone but the seasoned Crumb fan: unlike previous Biblical comic adaptations, including some published and drawn by Jews, Crumb’s characters actually look Jewish, the women even more than the men. The contrast to the classic work, EC Comics’ “Picture Stories from the Bible” (1945) in that respect is most illuminating. But more recent works like the best-selling “Manga Bible” (2000) are not much different (nor was the “The Wolverton Bible” by one of the strangest of comic artists Basil Wolverton) . Close readers will see Crumb’s wife Aline Kominsky, to whom the book is dedicated, again and again, in various guises; perhaps only Chagall drew his beloved wife so often and with such varied imagination.
Not only are the characters Jewish here, they are all ages and sizes. If, for instance, there are more drawings of Jewish elders in any single volume of comic art anywhere, I have never seen them. The women here are beautiful when young, heavily busted with large, muscular thighs. The men are strong, their beards full and noble. The deity has a really big beard and retains his notoriously bad temper, as well as his commanding presence, and absolute demand for loyalty. The animals of Genesis (in Noah’s ark and elsewhere) may be where Crumb is most similar to earlier comic art adaptations of Biblical texts, but they are drawn, like everything else, with such loving care that they are special and demand repeated viewing.
In those extensive notes at the end, Crumb comes as close as he is ever likely to revealing the sources and depth of his commitment to the text. He had been puzzling, no doubt under a wave of feminist criticism, about the gender struggle, until Torah scholar Savina Teubel’s “Sarah the Priestess” (1984) gave him new insight: a matriarchal background, female deities and actual female power, in a society turning toward patriarchy but retaining some elements of women’s prehistorical strength and centrality to the direction of early civilization. If anything is reinterpreted purposefully in “Genesis, ” it is in gender, and Crumb does so not by scoring points but by rearranging the visual subtext. Gender issues also help him reframe somewhat the class dimension of tribal society, which endures not through brute force but because of the strength of its women.
The commentary on his visual choices and his broader interpretations explores and explains his few intentional deviations, not only in the name of narrative clarity but artistic intent. Mainly, his notes drive home how he struggled to interpret the text in suitable graphic form, chapter by chapter, sometimes even character by character. There is no doubting the artist’s integrity or hard work, in no small part because he redrew again and again, trying to find historically accurate clothing and scenery. The Old Testament of cinematic Charlton Heston, so to speak, became the Genesis of lived and perceived experience, socially real and super-real. Clues are provided with translations of specific Hebrew names within the visual text, essentially metaphorical in meaning. These clues may be the closest to footnotes that Crumb has ever provided.
Comics scholar Jeet Heer, has noted in “Bookforum” that Crumb’s biblical characters, with the exception of the deity, have no internal lives: only the deity has depth and personality. As with the original text, much more is implied in Crumb’s visual text than can be stated, because scenes rush by so fast and because the artist forever works out, pen or brush in hand, a unique meaning that escapes easy interpretation. Even closer to the mark, Heer argues that above all, this is a book about bodies, the natural expression of an artist whose work has, possibly more than any other master of comic art, been concerned with body structure and expression.
And offending the deity? Crumb treads with a caution all the more remarkable for an artist, who, short decades ago, allowed himself the full run of his imagination, heedless of the consequences. Crumb’s innovation might be summed up in his characterization of Joseph, brilliant in subjugating Egypt but weary of his own powers. In the final phrases of the book, the artist suggests a radical view several thousand years previous to Jewish Karl Marx. “In the very last chapter, when his obstreperous brothers fling themselves at this feet and proclaim, ‘Here we are, your slaves, ’ he says to them, “I am not God, am I’ Joseph has learned a much finer humility than the fear-driven kind shown by his barbaric brothers.” So says a humble Crumb.

10/22/09

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Hudibras: Part 3 - Canto II

THE ARGUMENT

The Saints engage in fierce Contests
About their Carnal interests;
To share their sacrilegious Preys,
According to their Rates of Grace;
Their various Frenzies to reform,
When Cromwel left them in a Storm
Till, in th' Effigy of Rumps, the Rabble
Burns all their Grandees of the Cabal.

THE learned write, an insect breeze
Is but a mungrel prince of bees,
That falls before a storm on cows,
And stings the founders of his house;
From whose corrupted flesh that breed
Of vermin did at first proceed.
So e're the storm of war broke out,
Religion spawn'd a various rout
Of petulant Capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts,
That first run all religion down,
And after ev'ry swarm its own.
For as the Persian Magi once
Upon their mothers got their sons,
That were incapable t' enjoy
That empire any other way;
So PRESBYTER begot the other
Upon the good old Cause, his mother,
Then bore then like the Devil's dam,
Whose son and husband are the same.
And yet no nat'ral tie of blood
Nor int'rest for the common good
Cou'd, when their profits interfer'd,
Get quarter for each other's beard.
For when they thriv'd, they never fadg'd,
But only by the ears engag'd:
Like dogs that snarl about a bone,
And play together when they've none,
As by their truest characters,
Their constant actions, plainly appears.
Rebellion now began, for lack
Of zeal and plunders to grow slack;
The Cause and covenant to lessen,
And Providence to b' out of season:
For now there was no more to purchase
O' th' King's Revenue, and the Churches,
But all divided, shar'd, and gone,
That us'd to urge the Brethren on;
Which forc'd the stubborn'st for the Cause,

[...] Read more

poem by Samuel Butler
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Mosque of Omar and Jewish Temple

The Dome of the Rock was erected by the Muslim ruler Abd el-Malik in 688-691 A.D. It sits where the old Jewish temple mount was. The Roman General Titus destroyed the last Jewish temple around 70 A.D. This mosque is considered very sacred and would cause an international stir and possible war if it were destroyed.
The Jewish people begin to come back to their original homeland and after World War Two and the holocaust became the country of Israel again in 1948 under Jewish rule. They always have wanted to rebuild their temple. The city of Jerusalem went under their control during the six-day war in 1967. Jerusalem is a main point of any peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Everyone dealing with the volatile peace process in the world knows peace in the mid-east involves Jerusalem and the temple mount area.
Solomon’s Temple was the first temple built in Jerusalem and was completed around 953 BC and was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians and burned with fire in 586 BC. Zerubbabel and the returning exiles built the second temple, completing it in 516 BC. This temple was later embellished greatly by King Herod and was the temple Jesus Christ was dedicated in and preached in. Titus and the Romans destroyed this Temple in 70 AD.
Scholars such as Asher Kauffman are now saying Solomon’s original temple and the second temple built by Zerubbabel after the 70 year captivity to Babylon was aligned with the Eastern Gate and the temple was north of the Dome of the Rock mosque.
The Eastern Gate was the gate the Lord Jesus came riding thru on a donkey or what many Christians call Palm Sunday. This gate is now closed. The Golden Gate (Eastern Gate) in the eastern wall of Jerusalem gave access to the courtyards of the temple from the Kidron valley. The East gate was walled up by its Muslim conquerors (the Ottoman Turks) with great stones in 1530 A.D. The Prophet Ezekiel by a vision seen the Eastern Gate shut…Ezekiel 44: 1-3 'Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east; and it was shut. And he said to me, 'This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut. Only the prince may sit in it to eat bread before the LORD; he shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate, and shall go out by the same way.'
I remember starring at this gate when I was at the Mount of Olives knowing when Christ touches the Mount of Olives at the end of the Tribulation this gate will be open. Ezekiel seen this vision around 600 BC This alignment of the future Jewish temple with the Eastern Gate would only be appropriate. The architectural layout of the temple would surely have been to allow the Messiah to come through the eastern gate and go straight ahead into the Holy City. He would not be doing any turning left and then right or any 'jigs'. He would enter the city and go straight ahead and up into the temple.
This will allow the third temple to be built while co-existing for a while with the mosque now there.
As we look now at the present situation we see that the Dome of the Rock occupies the center of the temple mount. The future third temple could therefore be rebuilt to the north of the Dome. It would be on the same site as the former temple. There would be room to provide an acceptable easement between the two buildings. There would, in fact, be a clearance of 150 feet. This certainly would take an international agreement.
When Ariel Sharon presumptuously decided to take a stroll on the temple mount some years ago the result was bloody mayhem. There was a huge outcry throughout the Islamic world. For the Jewish temple to be built next to the Dome of the Rock mosque will take a peace covenant of world magnitude and import.
We also see in the book of Revelation 11: 2 KJV 'But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months'. Many believe this is a reference to the Dome of the Rock being there. Some say that later when the earthquake comes in
Zechariah 11 and Ezekiel 38 at the end of the Tribulation that this temple and mosque will destroyed as Christ touches the Mount of Olives preparing the way for the millennial temple of Ezekiel 40.
This would mean the third temple during Jacobs’ trouble and the Great Tribulation will not be the final temple.
It is uncanny that Jerusalem is a center of three major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The oil in the area is of major economic and political concern to the entire world. The whole region is now involved with international politics and the Israeli Palestinian conflict is paramount..
We Christians believe in a second coming of Christ when he will open the Jewish peoples eyes showing them he was their Messiah. We think it is prophecy that they are back from the nations. Mathew 24: 15 lets us know the temple will be rebuilt and defiled. We believe the gentile church age will end and many prophecies written in the Old Testament concerning Israel and the region and the world will be fulfilled
The more I see the picture unfold with prophecy the more I feel that the Mosque of Omar called the Dome of the Rock will not be destroyed but will stay there next to the rebuilt Jewish temple and will be a sign of peace between Israel and moderate Islam brokered by the man of peace from Europe. Jerusalem will be given to both sides and an agreement will be reached.
The false liberal church will help broker the situation as well. Radical Islam will seem to dissipate and the anti christ will use the false prophet of the false church and this very liberal so called church of eclectic faith will seem to respect all faiths allowing the temple in Jerusalem to coexist with the Mosque of Omar.
This covenant will be broken after three and one half years when Russia will come down as written about in Ezekiel 38. The peace will be broken with the Jews and the anti Christ will turn against them and also give a mark where by no man will be able to buy or sell.
I totally believe we are soon to come to these days and we are in the last days of the church age and the times of the gentiles mentioned in Luke 21: 24. We are now in the time of sorrows and distress amongst nations (Math 24: 6-8) and soon will go into the Great Tribulation when all this will happen. Math.24: 21
The Apostle Paul said in Romans 11: 25 that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles become in”. This dispensation of the gospel to the gentile nations is ending and there will also be a great falling away towards liberalism that will accept gay life styles and various religions.
The false church will not be based on the Bible but theology, psychology, philosophy and the wisdom of man and so called reason. It will use religious rhetoric and talk about liberation and peace, it will appear to many as good but it really is a wolf in sheep clothing and eventually will back up the anti christ and be destroyed in the tribulation period. Many a person already talks about Jesus Christ separate from the Holy Scriptures. This false church will help lead to a unified Europe and extend its hand to the mid east peace process.
I always thought that the Mosque of Omar would be destroyed but even if it was the Arabs and Islam would want it immediately rebuilt. In order to really broker a peace this Temple and Mosque problem has to be settled.
Recently all kinds of Orthodox Jews are buying up East Jerusalem and tunneling and digging. There was a segment concerning this on 60 minutes. Many are also saying the Mosque and Temple can co-exist along side one another. Israel would never give up the temple area and Islam would never give up the Mosque of Omar. The peace process that will be started by the anti christ who will come to power in the west will settle this question.
We are in the times of prophecy. Hold on to your Bible faith and never let it go for some liberal church system that doesn’t preach Jesus Christ according to the Scriptures and revelation. We need twenty-four hour prayer going up in our churches and real praise and worship and Bible teaching

poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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Sophia

Sophia:
Affirmations and Meditations for a Positive and Meaningful Life

By Uriah Lee Hamilton

1. The universe seeks to treat you kindly like a friend. The stars shine for you in the dreamy midnight air. Doors are opening to you to enter in and find the love of your life, the joy of your being. Garden paths are beneath your feet to gaze affectionately upon every flower. The fountains of wine flow abundantly for you to imbibe the spirits of desire and happiness. Accept your destiny as gods and goddesses in the mystical realm of innocence.
2. Your eyes are open and there is nothing you cannot see or perceive with translucent vision of understanding. Every mystery is discernible and arrayed in magnificent and colorful robes of light. Every day is a magical journey of discovery and especially self-discovery. Find your important place in the happy scheme of this life, your intricate functioning with every other soul.
3. Your song is being played and you’re invited to sing along and join the dance. No longer think in terms of withdrawal and alienation. Think in terms of participation. There is nothing to fear and no one to impress. Just enjoy your every experience, they’re yours to possess. When you open yourself to joy, joy finds you and reminds you life is beautiful and brief.
4. More people love you than you will ever know. Prayers congregate in the heart of God for you like stars swimming in the night. People you have nearly forgotten have not forgotten you. Your impression continues to linger and leave a kind feeling in the hearts of those you’ve touched and they are every moment sending you powerful karma that rushes to your aid in the hour of need. Trust the thoughts that seek to uplift you.
5. You have the power to overcome any difficult situation. With every stressful development in your life there is an equal reserve of strength and determination to resist and conquer the armies of the negative and harmful. The human will is boundless and will not accept defeat but will lift you up until you are the victor over every power of darkness that assaults you.
6. Every mistake you have made is in the past. To linger on any mistake with regret or judgment serves no purpose. Today is a clean slate, a new beginning. Forgive yourself, accept forgiveness, and never judge yourself or anyone else unkindly. Every moment you become more enlightened.
7. If you can remember love when you’re abandoned in the rain and the universe is in tears, you can pull yourself through any sadness. Love is the reality of the soul and the desire of everyone’s inner being. Love is the strength that sustains us when we're weary and seemingly at the end of our rope, dangling at the edge of the cliff of despair. Love is the nature of divinity shared with humanity and will not leave us to wither like waterless flowers. Remember love when you have forgotten everything else.
8. Forget the sound of unkind words and don’t repeat them. Remember how you felt when someone hurt you or treated you insensitively and be determined to never make anyone feel that way. The smile you leave on someone’s face will fill your own heart with joy and return your own smile back to you.
9. The best way to appreciate your own unique godliness is to appreciate and praise the unique godliness of others. When you perceive others as special and angelic, you will understand you have arrived at the shore of humanity from the same sea of divinity. We are here at this stage of our journey to find God in others and offer others the kindness of God that exists within ourselves.
10. Respect the dignity of everyone. This is enlightenment. Never suppose that you are superior or inferior to anyone. You are unique and your neighbor is unique. Our differences make the human experience beautiful and mysterious. Learn to appreciate the differences in everyone and the glorious variety this offers. Everyone compliments everyone and when any soul departs this plane we have all lost someone and something precious.
11. Live the power of kindness. When you’re kind, you respect yourself. When you know that you have helped someone else, you feel the presence of angels and God surrounding you. You can live without an abundance of money and possessions but you cannot live without confronting yourself as a human. If someone judges you unjustly and negatively, that hurts but never as much as judging yourself and knowing the truth about whom you are if you’re not a good and kind person. Jesus said if someone asks you to walk one mile, walk two. Go the added distance to know you are a compassionate human being. If by chance there is no God and no final judgment, if the last judgment is nothing more than the last time you look yourself in the mirror, don’t fail that judgment.
12. You are eternal in spirit. Your essence is from the beginning and is unending. You originate in the heartbeat of God and eventually were sent to earth as a hopeful song. Sing your song to every receptive ear. Allow the universe to partake in your melody of joy. You can make your life a gift to everyone; you are a flower in the human bouquet. One day, you will return happily to God. Let the world know today you’re here and partake of your bliss and happiness.
13. Godliness is your nature, divinity your true personality. Maybe the world has labeled you a prostitute or a thief, a police officer or a lawyer, but your real soul is the essence of God, the substance of eternity, the DNA of spiritual greatness. Never accept restricting labels, never define your dreams with other people’s language of defeat. Birth has opened every possibility, and every second is a new rebirth. Begin now whatever dream and path you choose.
14. Live in the moment. Experience the present. Breathe in the perfume of freshly bloomed flowers. Be conscious of the poetry of existence all around you. Compose your poems on trees and rocks and flower petals. Be the poem, be the flower. Compose your poems on human souls that will live in the heart of God for eternity. You’ve never had anything but this moment, perceive it as beautiful and make it more beautiful.
15. Never live in the past. The past is only a collection of memories that become sad overtime even if they were happy memories to begin with. The past is either defeat or forgotten glories. The present is your opportunity to shape the future in a positive manner. A few souls have lived their lives in such joy and kindness as to become spirits of the future. The future is about joy, acceptance, dreams accomplished, ideas realized, and the end of suffering. Every positive thought and action of today will transform tomorrow. Believe.
16. Celebrate the music of existence. The sparrow dawns, the symphonic engine hum of the highway, the locust afternoons of high summer, the angelic chatter of beautiful conversations, church bell Sunday mornings, the autumn chimes carried in by a cool breeze. Everything is music if you’re willing to listen and to rejoice.
17. In your life show kindness, express friendliness, make others feel comfortable in your presence and in their own. The karmic return for being a positive human being is receiving the eternal and universal goodwill of the divine; it is reaching that place where you see yourself in a beautiful and self-accepting mirror.
18. Find the true religion. The true religion is happiness, the welcoming, friendly smile, the exuberant heart. Most religious people throughout the human experience have embraced religion with a sad face for the purposes of judgment and condemnation, but hatred and cruelty must no longer have any place at the spiritual table, punishing one’s self for being human must cease. Love is the true religion and it is expressed with joy. Make laughing and dancing your greatest rituals.
19. Learn perspective and endurance. If you fail today, you are stronger tomorrow. If you fall today, you will soar tomorrow. A boxer has lost every round to eventually win the fight. He throws his bruised body into the pummeling of the opponent, his eyes are closed with blood and sweat but still looking for his opportunity until he lands the knockout punch. Life is a struggle but your heart must never be vanquished. Push forward in everything you do to make your existence meaningful. A hundred falls and a thousand mistakes will never define your being but your dogged determination to resist and succeed.
20. The past is a casket of despair, a realm of old ideas that embraced sadness and toil and dreams defeated. If you linger in the valley of regrets, there is only a bleak future of hopelessness to discover. If you abandon the unhappiness of history and embrace your child-like hopefulness, then the future is the home of ever unfolding potential where love is always waiting around the corner. In fact, you are love and you are no longer waiting, you have arrived. Your love is emanating like spring flowers in the sunlit day and you can waft your perfume for the world to breathe in and rejoice.
21. The life you are given at this moment should be heaven and can be heaven. If you accept unhappiness and loneliness and suffering to place your bet on the next lifetime, you will miss your opportunity to appreciate this lifetime. If the life you are living is hell, exchange it for heaven and exchange it now while you are breathing and not as a promise for the grave or reincarnation. Accept this life as your garden, as your paradise, as your heaven. Find something small in your life to appreciate until you can appreciate everything about your life. Do not practice rejection. Do not call the world evil or your life evil or believe that anything is evil. Practice acceptance and believe in the good. Accept everything as good and as a means to the eventual actualization of your real and lasting happiness.
22. You are god-like when you accept yourself, the qualities and tendencies that make up your unique personality. You are angry and pleasant, sad and happy, beautiful and ugly. You cannot divorce yourself anymore than God can divide or divorce himself. If you try to abandon or throw away half of yourself, you will lose all of yourself. Self-acceptance and self-love is the way of godliness and the means to loving and appreciating the beauty and uniqueness of others. It takes one lifetime at least if not innumerable lifetimes to learn who you are and it will never happen if you do not accept yourself for the entire all-encompassing creation you are.
23. Become everything and understand everything. Absorb the laughter of a child, the excitement of a bride, the sadness of a funereal, the love of a mother giving birth, the pride of a father at a child’s graduation, the fear of death, the pain of loneliness. Feel everything. Understand everything. Celebrate and commiserate with the world you live in as a human being and become life-positive and not life-negative. There is not joy without sadness; there is not laughter without tears. You will have them both. Learn from them both and then embrace your life with gratitude.
24. When a truly happy, dancing spirit ventures upon the scene, it attracts love and affection. Joy and happiness are magnets drawing our attention, our interests, and our passionate desire. The world has been so sad with terrible suffering and unhappiness and so many teachers have arisen to manipulate the fears and disappointments of the masses to instill hatred and judgment. The genuine happy person is rare, almost unheard of. The world is yours if you can harness your happiness and spiritual and psychological well-being. What do you have to lose? If you become happy and dancing and you’re happy and dancing alone in the world, you still have achieved more than every other soul. Claim your happiness, it is not selfish to do so because your happiness can only expand and become contagious. May your happiness become an ecstatic epidemic.
25. Be whole in all your thoughts and completely embrace all the various facets of your life. Don’t try to deny the child within who wants to play beneath the sun, to laugh and to run rather than be sequestered into some adult room where you’re not allowed to smile. There’s a place for responsibility and sacrifice, for noble thoughts and placing others first but if you try to occupy this place consistently and permanently, you will wither away like an autumn leaf, you will be a shell of the human promise that was given to you at birth. Enjoy your body, relish your desires, and laugh with ecstasy when the spirit moves you. Don’t be sad or stoic forever, return to the merry-go-round you loved in your youth.
26. When you depart your mother’s body to begin your own journey, the path begins with your initial tears, the cry that accompanies existence. It then becomes easy to cry for a lifetime, to feel fear and abandonment, to know nothing but sorrow and despair, but there is joy and the goal is to learn to laugh. Laugh from the heart and make your way through the world cheerfully. It won’t happen in a moment or a single day, but you can turn your life into a dance that sways to the rhythm of laughter and happiness.
27. Enjoy lazy afternoons. Sit in the cricket grass in the summer sunlight. Gaze at the pattern of the leaves beneath shaded trees. One only finds his soul in stillness, not in much activity. When people are too busy, they are hiding from themselves. You have to find your real self before you cease to exist else you may have to wait a prolonged time before your next incarnation allows you a new opportunity of self-discovery. When you find yourself, then you learn what the heart needs for true happiness and communion with the eternal.
28. Life is a dream and the future unfolds in the hands of imagination. Dream your future in bright beautiful colors; make your landscapes lavish and rich and dazzling. Don’t be timid with your dreams, your aspirations, and your hopes of self-realization. With a single thought you may revolutionize all thinking; you may touch hundreds or thousands of lives and leave a lasting and meaningful impression. The power to transcend becoming a statistic is yours. You are not required to be an unknown entity or live in shadows. Walk out into the sunlight of a positive life that is waiting like a circus clown’s balloon for you to form it into a lovely shape that brings a smile.
29. In a time of war, one is taught to suppress his desires and his needs, to sacrifice for the cause until the victory is won. The battle now is for the soul of your happiness, and the battle will not be won by sacrifice and suppression, it will not be gained by self-coercion and intense rejection. Only by realizing what you want in the core of your being and granting yourself permission to pursue it unhindered by guilt will you win this victory. Grant yourself the right to be yourself, appreciate yourself, and pursue your joy. The long sleep will endure forever for the happy and the sad; it is your time to be happy if you choose it.
30. If you have followed a path or a plan that has led you to a loveless place, then take stock of yourself, evaluate your life-choices and begin anew. If your hands are empty, there is nothing to be lost in opening them and turning them over. To remain on the path you’re on and refuse to make any changes can only reinforce the status quo of your loneliness and unhappiness. You have been a stunted tree too long. Become a new person and begin to flower. At whatever age you are it is not too late to experience rebirth. Become a stranger to the alienated person you were in the past when you find your destiny in joyfulness. You can become a new creation in the blink of an eye.
31. Attain God in your own room where the candles pray in the moonlight that seeps through the window blinds at night. God is the silent compassion that ever surrounds you and finds you when you’re sad. You’re success in perceiving the presence of God is not dependent upon rules of religion or great moral feats and ascetic accomplishments but on your child-like desire to perceive that reality of love. God is your heartbeat when your kind to others and to yourself. Listen to your heartbeat and you will find God. Most of the world never finds God because they’re looking under every religious rock instead of looking inwardly for the God within.
32. Beginning today, I’ve become my ally and no longer my opponent. I will trust my instincts and my desires and no longer view them as separate from my spiritual being, my eternal soul. When I tell myself yes and no, I pursue my own personal civil war. For now on there is only yes. Yes to self-love, yes to confidence, yes to friendship, yes to health, yes to joy, yes to success. To everything positive and life-affirming there is nothing but yes. Denial and suppression and negative opinion has ceased. The doubting and judgmental man has vanished and will not be seen again.
33. To become a happy human being dancing in the soft summer moonlight is not easily done in the world of manipulative guilt. You may have to dance alone if everyone you know will only sing a dirge. If everyone has a sad face and a melancholy heart, resort to friendship with scattered roadside flowers and happy stray dogs. Eventually your joy will become infectious and pleasantly contaminate existence with the smile they’ve been waiting to express. It is never wrong to offer someone your cheerfulness. Practice charity of the spirit.
34. The soul is deathless and enters the spirit world where every fear has vanished in the sunlight of love. There is a heavenly wine creating communion with the divine. Everyone is a psychic essence connected to each other. The secrets of non-violence are intuitively imparted and the heart will not be wounded again. The meaning of God is the embrace of all existence in joyous celebration.
35. The bright light illuminating true happiness flickers through time from ancient corridors of spiritual history and revelation. Some sainted madman playing a flute in the moonlight in the background hush of lakeside and the tune drifted into all future souls. Everyone has the melody of joy and tranquility encoded mystically into their DNA. Learn to access the songbook of your higher self that has all the answers to every difficult question pressing the spirit at the perfect time when you need them most.
36. It is difficult but meaningful to live life in the beauty of contradiction. To have a peaceful mind in the midst of turmoil and upheaval; to have an innocent heart engaged in romantic and intricate relationships of desire, to have a pure soul in the midst of thieves and cutthroats, to have the candlelight of your spiritual awareness burn steady amidst the storm of everyday confusion and societal manipulation. One can passionately embrace all of the world’s creatures both gentle and wild without ever forsaking his higher self of elevated ideals and inner truths.
37. Thousands of years of history, of wars and plagues and famines document the human will to survive and thrive and ever evolve to higher emotional and spiritual enlightenment. Poets and prophets slowly teach the way of joy and gentleness, the path to becoming a passionate soul that completely embraces his existence to the maximum potential of happiness. The day has arrived to believe in one’s own strength to completely express and possess his compassion and love under all circumstances. Completely loving on the battlefield or in the work place, at home or walking summer city streets, never separating the spiritual from the physical, the soul from the body, ever maintaining the highest goals of self-realization during all moments of his being.
38. The source of life and all knowledge of spiritual perfection emanates from your hidden God within. Every soul is an essence fragment of the One Soul. We live and move and find our destiny in eventually attaining communion with the One. The bliss is real and the ecstasy is true and indescribable. There is no death and our true self is ever peaceful. Find yourself in the tranquility of the God within.
39. The bondage of the soul by the chains of unhappiness is a delusion of false perceptions. No liberation movement is required. The soul is free and true reality is the awareness of bliss. Abandon false perceptions and definitions of unhappiness and accept the natural state of being one with everything positive and powerful. The true nature of the human spirit is divine with all the attributes and characteristics of divinity to lay claim to. Tranquility and joyfulness is always present and all one needs to do is open the eyes of the mind and perceive reality in the cosmic design of the eternal good.
40. Discard vain books outside the window, toss the directionless compass into the trash, abandon every previous form of knowledge and trust your intuition. Within your soul knowledge supreme is kept, you are part and parcel of the Over-Soul, the one truth established in eternity. Intuition is imperishable and not restricted by boundaries of time. Intuition is the instant flash of insight that dawns without hesitation or explanation. Intuition is your God within guiding your steps into the light. Trust the light that surrounds you, the light that comes from you and belongs to you.
41. There is no knowledge greater than the knowledge of the self. Most people remain alienated strangers from whom they really are. A lifetime of not knowing their own spiritual personality and then the grave. Too busy to quietly sit in the summer grass and gaze calmly into the mirror of their soul. Only in meditation is intuition discovered and realized. Not knowing yourself is the cause of loneliness and the sense of immense meaninglessness. No real connection with another human being can ever be made until a connection is made with the self. Find yourself in meditation and intuition.
42. As the spiritual life increases, the appetite for strife and struggle decreases, an inner sweetness is manifested and lovely new music is heard. As you recede into your true self, the desire for objects of unhappiness and lust for possessions of discontent fall away and leave a genuine beauty behind. This beauty is love and it must first be planted and nurtured before harvested. You are the seed, the sewer, and the harvest. Indeed, you are the love you have always sought.
43. Attain awareness through non-concern, gain knowledge by not seeking it, find trust by trusting yourself; everything worthwhile already belongs to you when you cease to pursue that which is outside yourself, when you find the quiet place within your soul and allow all doubts and fears to subside. God provides for every sparrow and arrays the flowers of the fields with immense beauty. God will also seek your good if you believe you are part and parcel of the compassionate heart of God.
44. There is no becoming; there is no fulfilled desire waiting to dawn; there is no completed destination at the end of the journey. You have become and are divine; you are the realization of beautiful desire at this very moment and forever; the journey and the destination are one in the same: you have arrived and always were present in your mystical soul reality.
45. One day, love will carry the heart to God. Love to love will be united, mystical soul will embrace sacred spiritual destination. Friendships never cease but find expression on eternal shores where there is no suffering or disease nor accidental cruelty by otherwise gentle and compassionate people. We live in beauty and offer the world beauty and finally become nothing but beauty. We are the hands of love, the clothes of love, the agents of love, the heart of love and love transports us to God to rest forever in his sanctuary of love.

[...] Read more

poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Canto the Second

I
Oh ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
It mends their morals, never mind the pain:
The best of mothers and of educations
In Juan's case were but employ'd in vain,
Since, in a way that's rather of the oddest, he
Became divested of his native modesty.

II
Had he but been placed at a public school,
In the third form, or even in the fourth,
His daily task had kept his fancy cool,
At least, had he been nurtured in the north;
Spain may prove an exception to the rule,
But then exceptions always prove its worth -—
A lad of sixteen causing a divorce
Puzzled his tutors very much, of course.

III
I can't say that it puzzles me at all,
If all things be consider'd: first, there was
His lady-mother, mathematical,
A—never mind; his tutor, an old ass;
A pretty woman (that's quite natural,
Or else the thing had hardly come to pass);
A husband rather old, not much in unity
With his young wife—a time, and opportunity.

IV
Well—well, the world must turn upon its axis,
And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails,
And live and die, make love and pay our taxes,
And as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails;
The king commands us, and the doctor quacks us,
The priest instructs, and so our life exhales,
A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame,
Fighting, devotion, dust,—perhaps a name.

V
I said that Juan had been sent to Cadiz -—
A pretty town, I recollect it well -—
'T is there the mart of the colonial trade is
(Or was, before Peru learn'd to rebel),
And such sweet girls—I mean, such graceful ladies,
Their very walk would make your bosom swell;
I can't describe it, though so much it strike,
Nor liken it—I never saw the like:

[...] Read more

poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Fears For Fears

Death promises nothing for me
And I don't expect nothing from death
Either than pain and sorrows
Fears for fears
Live in me
When I walk late at night on the road
Because I never know what can happen to me
But I believe that God is always on my side
Fears for fears
I will never trust the promises of a lazy man
Fears for fears
I will drink the one
With my food
So that I can give gheers to my God
Fears for fears
I don't fear the thunder or lightning
Fears for fears
The pond is home to all ducks
Because all the ducks lives in the pond
Swimming away
Fears for fears
What more can I give to God
Than myself
Fears for fears
The paths are not clear of the snow
In the winter
In the city where I live
Fears for fears
The harbour is so quiet during the winter
Because no boats are in the harbour during the winter
And everything sleeps away in the harbour
Also the night comes early during the winter months
But summer is different
Because the light shines all day
Fears for fears
Our bodies are made of water
And we need water to survive in this heat

poem by Aldo Kraas
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VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi

Answer you, Sirs? Do I understand aright?
Have patience! In this sudden smoke from hell,—
So things disguise themselves,—I cannot see
My own hand held thus broad before my face
And know it again. Answer you? Then that means
Tell over twice what I, the first time, told
Six months ago: 't was here, I do believe,
Fronting you same three in this very room,
I stood and told you: yet now no one laughs,
Who then … nay, dear my lords, but laugh you did,
As good as laugh, what in a judge we style
Laughter—no levity, nothing indecorous, lords!
Only,—I think I apprehend the mood:
There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
The titter stifled in the hollow palm
Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the nose,
When I first told my tale: they meant, you know,
"The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
"Well, he can say no other than what he says.
"We have been young, too,—come, there's greater guilt!
"Let him but decently disembroil himself,
"Scramble from out the scrape nor move the mud,—
"We solid ones may risk a finger-stretch!
And now you sit as grave, stare as aghast
As if I were a phantom: now 't is—"Friend,
"Collect yourself!"—no laughing matter more—
"Counsel the Court in this extremity,
"Tell us again!"—tell that, for telling which,
I got the jocular piece of punishment,
Was sent to lounge a little in the place
Whence now of a sudden here you summon me
To take the intelligence from just—your lips!
You, Judge Tommati, who then tittered most,—
That she I helped eight months since to escape
Her husband, was retaken by the same,
Three days ago, if I have seized your sense,—
(I being disallowed to interfere,
Meddle or make in a matter none of mine,
For you and law were guardians quite enough
O' the innocent, without a pert priest's help)—
And that he has butchered her accordingly,
As she foretold and as myself believed,—
And, so foretelling and believing so,
We were punished, both of us, the merry way:
Therefore, tell once again the tale! For what?
Pompilia is only dying while I speak!
Why does the mirth hang fire and miss the smile?
My masters, there's an old book, you should con
For strange adventures, applicable yet,

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Mama Africa's Identity

Mama Africa's identity,
And of the Fulanis and the Fulbes;
But the Savannah and the Sahara are here to stay in Africa.
Mama Africa's identity,
And of the Dogons and the Shilluks;
And of the cowries usedas money in those days,
But the identities of the African are in many faces.
It is like a durbar in Africa and,
At the market plac to meet others;
But a visit to the tomatoes market in Ghana will tell you much.
Mama African's identity,
And like 'the Golden Stool' of the Ashanti Kingsdom!
But wait for the dried-fish on the coasts of Africa.
Visit St. Louis in the delta of Senegal and learn about the ways of the African,
For my home i in El Molo;
And like Mama Africa's identity praising my muse.
Mama African's identity,
And of the pygmies in Central Africa!
But i have my mind on the Rift Valley,
And like the mirror of the rivers, lakes and the seas of Africa! !
The Massai and the Dinka do play their roles,
And like the Nubaians in South Sudan;
But with the temperature above 40 degrees in most parts of Africa.
Mama Africa's identity,
And like a message to my lover in Lalibala;
For early in the morning came the leopards to drink some water,
But a visit to Mount Meru will entice you.
Mama Africa's identity,
And of the Zulus and the Rendilles;
But the Afars are here to blend with the dry land.
Mama Africa's identity,
With the rhythms and rituals of the Africans!
And like the tribes of Ovambo, Herero, Xhosa, Shona and Matabele.
And like the Bemba, the Tonga and the Ovaimbundu!
But the red land of Africa care for you all.
Mama Africa's identity,
And of River Limpopo in the mist of love;
But try to visit the Victoria Falls to satisfy your curiosity.
Mama Africa's identity,
And of the Himbas with their traditional dance;
But the Kikuyu, the Hutu, the Tutsi and the Hambukushu are also there,
For Africa is a very big continent for all of us.

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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The Lonely Spider

The lonely spider reaches out
For what, you might ask?
If not to spin his web then for what?
For his identity
The identity of him
His identity...

The lonely spider calls out
For what, you might ask?
If not for his mate then for what?
For his identity
The identity of him
His identity...

The lonely spider waits
For what, you might ask?
If not for his food then for what?
For his identity
The identity of him
His identity...

'A spider doesn't have feelings! '
How should you know?

'A spider isn't that smart! '
That could be true.

'A spider can never have a real identity! '
And neither could you, or any of us
But we try to find one even if we're not looking
And thats our life... after which we die

What have we done with our life up until then?
Either we've thrown it away, gave it up, wrecked it, lived it up to the fullest, took it for granted, or got far in it.
We still had one.
It's up to us what we shall do with it
Just like the lonely spider
Who will probably just end up on the bottom of your shoe anyways

poem by Andreanna Atkins
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Virginia's Story

Elizabeth Gates-Wooten is my Grand mom.

She was born in Canada with her father and brothers.
They owned a Barber Shoppe.
I don't remember exactly where in Canada.
I believe it was right over the border like Windsor or Toronto.
I never knew exactly where it was.

When she was old enough she got married.

First, she married a man by the name of Frank Gates.
He was from Madagascar.
He fathered my mom and her brother and sister.
The boy's name was Frank Gates, Jr.
Two girls name were Anna and Agnes.

Agnes was my mother.

Frank Gates went crazy after the war
He drank a lot and died
Then grandma Elizabeth married a man by the name of Mr. Wooten.
He had a German name, but I don't think he was German.
She took his last name after they got married.

Then they moved to West Virginia in the United States.

Their son, Frank Gates Jr. Became a delegate in the democratic party.
He use to get into a lot of trouble because he liked to fight.
He was a delegate from the 1940's to 1970's.
He died of gout in the 1970's.

Anna was a maid and cook.

She baked cakes and stuff for people as a side line.
She had a hump on her back (scoliosis) .
She had to walk with a cane.
She could cook good though.
She did this kind of work all of her life, just like her mom, Elizabeth

They were both good cooks

They had a lot of money because they had these skills
Especially when people had parties.
Because they would make all of this food and then they would have left-overs.
We got to eat a lot of stuff we normally wouldn't get because of that.
When they cooked, they didn't use no measuring stuff, they would just use there hand.

My moms name was Agnes Barrie Gates.

She married James Wright and moved to Cleveland.

[...] Read more

poem by Talile Ali
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An Oak Wood Piano on Kristallnacht

The SS guard hit Zindel Grynszpan on the head and he fell
Into a ditch. Father, he heard the voice of his son, you must
Go on. Zindel took the hand of his son and climbed out of
The trench. With his wife, a son and daughter on his side
They continued the march. But the SS guards did not stop
The savage whipping of the deportees. Blood was flowing
On all sides.

The Grynszpan family were Polish Jews from Hanover.
When the Nazis came to power they became outcasts.
In October 1938 they were expelled from Germany
And deported to Poland in a group of 12,000 Jews.
They were taken by train to the frontier town Neubenschen
And from there on foot to the German-Polish border.
When they reached the border heavy rain started to fall.

The Nazis confiscated their money. They had no food to eat.
Polish officers arrived and began to inspect their papers.
They admitted the refugees with Polish passports,
Housing them in military stables. Old, sick and children
Were herded together in most inhuman conditions.

One of the first things that Zindel did in Poland was to send
A postcard to his seventeen year old son Hirsch in Paris.
When Hirsch Grynszpan read the family’s tribulations
He became furious. His heart was filled with rage and hatred
And he decided to avenge their sufferings. On the morning
Of November 7, Hirsch entered a gunsmith’s shop on rue
Faubourg Saint-Martin and purchased a 6.35 calibre pistol
With a box of 25 bullets, for 235 Francs.

Then he took a ride on the Metro to the Solferino stop
And walked to the German Embassy at 78 rue de Lille.
Hirsch told the receptionist that he has some documents with him.
He was received by Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary.
When the German diplomat closed the door Hirsch pulled out
The gun. “You are a filthy Kraut”, he said, “and in the name of
12,000 persecuted Jews here is the document”. He fired five
Bullets from point blank range at vom Rath. The diplomat died
Two days later of his wounds.

The assassination came as a godsend thing for the Nazis.
Hitler denounced it as part of a global Jewish conspiracy
Against Germany. It became a pretext for the well-orchestrated
Pogrom of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.
During the night of November 9-10,1938, in every place
Throughout the Third Reich, Storm Troops attacked Jews
And Jewish institutions.

Hitler’s henchmen burnt down or destroyed in Germany

[...] Read more

poem by Paul Hartal
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All Day Sucker

Come on up you say
Cause you can feel your love comin down
I find myself rushin over to
Do something for your love
I knock on the door
You answer askin what am I there for
I say I thought you wanted me to
Do something for your love
Im an all day sucker
Coming to give something to get nothin
Im an all day sucker
Coming to give something but to get none of your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
You call me up to say
Youre sorry for what went down the other day
And could I come over today
Do something for your love
One knuck gets me in
But then you say how very nice its been
That lets me know that I will once again
Get nothin fom your love
Im an all day sucker
Coming to give something to get nothin
Im an all day sucker
Coming to give something but to get none of your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
All day sucker for your love
All day sucker cup for your love
You drop by to say
Youre sorry for what went down the other day

[...] Read more

song performed by Stevie Wonder
Added by Lucian Velea
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Is Man A Winner Or A Loser?

Woman has a poof that the child is hers;
Man has no such proof to claim on the child.
She is cool with the child as identity.
He is desperate for his identity.

Identity crisis has disturbed him.
He invented marriage and chained woman.
He imposed chastity to mark his kids
And introduced patriarchal system.

Identity crisis has troubled him.
He assumed control over women.
He retained the progeny in his name
And made concubines to silence woman.

Identity crisis has worried him.
He bottled woman's skill and built up his.
He grew to be a Scholar. Sculptor and Poet
And assigned to woman the entertaining.

Identity crisis has bothered him.
He treated woman as her property.
He acquired family unfailingly
And labourd for its upkeep and status.

Identity crisis has bored him.
Water as she is, man could not cut her.
Tired of heat outside, man needed a shade
And sheltered himself in woman's coolness.

Woman treated man with due sympathy
With no fight with him for identity.
Her child is enough for her identity.
She helped him to anchor himself in her.

poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Sinful identity

It wasn’t the slightest in my hands to choose the
parents who had so handsomely procreated me; nor was
it my fault that the house in which I emitted my first
infantile cry; overflowed with unfathomable oceans of
glittering gold,
But it would irrefutably be the greatest sin if I
baselessly rejoiced and took all their hard-earned
wealth for granted; miserably dithered in my
impoverished life to carve a philanthropically
blissful identity of my very own….

It wasn’t the slightest in my hands to choose the
parents who had so majestically procreated me; nor was
it my fault that the house in which I emitted my
first baby cry; had an endless inundation of sparkling
currency coin,
But it would irrefutably be the greatest sin if I
parasitically feasted and took all their hard-earned
wealth for granted; pathetically staggered in my
diminutive life to carve a synergistically blazing
identity of my very own….

It wasn’t the slightest in my hands to choose the
parents who had so wonderfully procreated me; nor was
it my fault that the house in which I emitted my first
incoherent cry; remained perpetually embellished with
resplendently enamoring diamonds,
But it would irrefutably be the greatest sin if I
derogatorily marauded and took all their hard-earned
wealth for granted; dismally stuttered in my truncated
life to carve a celestially vibrant identity of my
very own…
It wasn’t the slightest in my hands to choose the
parents who had so marvelously procreated me; nor was
it my fault that the house in which I emitted my first
nimble cry; contained every speck of prosperity on
this timeless planet,
But it would irrefutably be the greatest sin if I
indiscriminately terrorized and took all their
hard-earned wealth for granted; meaninglessly quavered
in my destined life to carve a beautifully magnanimous
identity of my very own…..

It wasn’t the slightest in my hands to choose the
parents who had so amazingly procreated me; nor was it
my fault that the house in which I emitted my first
inaudible cry; had its foundations resting on an
insurmountable mountain of pearls,
But it would irrefutably be the greatest sin if I
savagely massacred and took all their hard-earned

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poem by Nikhil Parekh
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The Restaurant Keeper

In the City of Toronto there was once
a restaurant owned by a man named Imre Finta.
Born in 1912 in Austria-Hungary, Finta spent
his years of youth in my hometown Szeged,
immigrating to Canada after the Second World War.

Settling in Toronto, in 1953 Finta bought
the Candlelight Restaurant but it did not go well,
so he closed it. Then he opened The Moulin Rouge
on Avenue Road at DuPont Street.
The old fashioned Hungarian gentleman greeted
his guests warmly, politely kissing the right hand
of his female patrons.

I had never dined at the Moulin Rouge
but I encountered Finta in a brickyard and
at the railway station of Szeged in the summer
of 1944. At that time I was eight years old
and Finta, aged 32, was a Captain
of the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie.
He was also a Nazi collaborator who supervised
the deportation of 8,617 Jews to slave labour lagers
and death camps. I was one of them.

A few months earlier, on March 19,1944,
the German Army occupied Hungary
and Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest.
His Mission was to implement in Hungary
the “Final Solution”, a Euphemism the Nazis
used to disguise the mass murder of the Jews.

In June 1944, swearing gendarmes pushed
a group of Jewish prisoners from the ersatz ghetto
of Kistelek onto a freight train. My mother,
my three year old sister Vera and I were
among them. We travelled thirty kilometres to
Szeged where the gendarmes led us to
an abandoned brick factory that was turned into
a makeshift concentration camp.

The brickyard camp commandant was
SS captain Angermayer, whom I remember
as a tall and lanky silhouette moving among
the prisoners in a black uniform.
He was assisted by ruthless gendarmes
in cock-feathered hats, armed with
bayoneted rifles and swords,
who terrorized the captives.

Living conditions in the makeshift ghetto

[...] Read more

poem by Paul Hartal
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Domino Dancing

(tennant/lowe)
-----------------
(all day, all day)
I dont know why, I dont know how
I thought I loved you, but Im not sure now
Ive seen you look at strangers too many times
A love-you-once is of a, a different kind
Remember when we felt the sun
A love like paradise, how hot it burned
A threat of distant thunder, the sky was red
And when you walked, you always - turned every head
(all day, all day) watch them all fall down
(all day, all day) domino dancing
(all day, all day) watch them all fall down
(all day, all day) domino dancing
I thought that when we fought I was to blame
But now I know you play a different game
Ive watched you dance with danger, still wanting more
Add another number to the score
(all day, all day) watch them all fall down
(all day, all day) domino dancing
(all day, all day) watch them all fall down
(all day, all day) domino dancing
When you look around you wonder
Do you play to win?
Or are you just a bad loser?
(all day, all day)
(all day, all day)
(all day, all day) watch them all fall down
(all day, all day, domino dancing)
(all day, all day)
(all day, all day)
I dont know why, I dont know how
Id thought I loved you, but Im not sure now
I hear the thunder crashing, the sky is dark
And now a storm is breaking within my heart
(all day, all day) watch them all fall down
(all day, all day) domino dancing
(all day, all day) watch them all fall down
(all day, all day, domino dancing)
(all day, all daeheheheheheheh)
(all day, all daeheheheheheheh)
(all day, all day)
(all day, all day)
(domino dancing)
(all day, all day)
(all day, all day)
(all day, all day) watch them all fall down
(all day, all day, domino dancing)
(all day, all day) watch them all fall down

[...] Read more

song performed by Pet Shop Boys
Added by Lucian Velea
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Your Fears

Reaching to seek what is imagined mythically,
And worshipped to seduce fears...
If one doesn't live within restrictions to adhere.
With a loyality specific to something symbolically,
Endeared.
Promotes division and undecisiveness,
To market a decadence pocketed by deceivers.
And taunting those believers who can not sleep.

Your fears,
Keep you medicated and doped up.
Your fears,
Keep you agitated and stuck in ruts.
Your fears,
Keeps your back shoved up against a wall...
To sob over troubles with an instant recall.

Your fears,
Keep you medicated and doped up.
Your fears,
Keep you agitated and stuck in ruts.
Your fears,
Keeps your back shoved up against a wall...
To sob over troubles with an instant recall.

Reaching to seek what is imagined mythically,
And worshipped to seduce fears...
If one doesn't live within restrictions to adhere.
With a loyality specific to something symbolically,
Endeared.
Promotes division and undecisiveness,
To market a decadence pocketed by deceivers.
And taunting those believers who wish they could sleep!

Your fears,
Keep you medicated and doped up.
Your fears,
Keep you agitated and stuck in ruts.
Your fears,
Keeps your back shoved up against a wall...
To sob over troubles with an instant recall.

Your fears,
Are meant to keep you in a state of confusion.
Your fears,
Are like a leech who wants to feed you defeat.
Your fears,
Keep you medicated and doped up.
Because you have stated that enough is enough.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
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Henry And Emma. A Poem.

Upon the Model of The Nut-Brown Maid. To Cloe.

Thou, to whose eyes I bend, at whose command
(Though low my voice, though artless be my hand.
I take the sprightly reed, and sing and play,
Careless of what the censuring world may say;
Bright Cloe! object of my constant vow,
Wilt thou a while unbend thy serious brow?
Wilt thou with pleasure hear thy lover's strains,
And with one heavenly smile o'erpay his pains?
No longer shall the Nut-brown Maid be old,
Though since her youth three hundred years have roll'd:
At thy desire she shall again be raised,
And her reviving charms in lasting verse be praised.

No longer man of woman shall complain,
That he may love and not be loved again;
That we in vain the fickle sex pursue,
Who change the constant lover for the new.
Whatever has been writ, whatever said
Henceforth shall in my verse refuted stand,
Be said to winds, or writ upon the sand:
And while my notes to future times proclaim
Unconquer'd love and ever-during flame,
O, fairest of the sex, be thou my muse;
Deign on my work thy influence to diffuse:
Let me partake the blessings I rehearse,
And grant me love, the just reward of verse.

As beauty's potent queen with every grace
That once was Emma's has adorn'd thy face,
And as her son has to my bosom dealt
That constant flame which faithful Henry felt,
O let the story with thy life agree,
Let men once more the bright example see;
What Emma was to him be thou to me:
Nor send me by thy frown from her I love,
Distant and sad, a banish'd man to rove:
But, oh! with pity long entreated crown
My pains and hopes: and when thou say'st that one
Of all mankind thou lovest, oh! think on me alone.

Where beauteous Isis and her husband Thame
With mingled waves for ever flow the same,
In times of yore an ancient baron lived,
Great gifts bestowed, and great respect received.

When dreadful Edward, with successful care
Led his free Britons to the Gallic war,

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poem by Matthew Prior
Added by Poetry Lover
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph

Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:

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poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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