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I like a women who's got some balls, some strength. As long as I can beat her at arm wrestling, that's fine.

quote by James Hetfield
Added by Lucian Velea
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Crazy 'bout An Automobile

(william r. emerson)
-man, i'm gonna tell you my story
-go on and tell about it, go on and tell about it more
-just what i've been doing
-what you've been doing, ry ?
-well, you know i used to be particular about the womens that i picked
-aha!
-yeah! they used to be tender, lean and tall, that's all
-but the way things has been going, i'll take 'em knock-kneed and bow-legged
-what ?
-i'll even take 'em bald! man. i'll tell you why
-please, tell me why!
Every woman i know is crazy 'bout an automobile
Every woman i know is crazy 'bout an automobile
And here i am standing with nothing but rubber heels.
He-hey, every woman i know, crazy 'bout an automobile
Oh, every woman i know, crazy 'bout an automobile
And here i am standing with nothing but rubber heels.
Now look'it here!
They say, walking women home is a thing of the past
Women want to ride and ride around in class
Some like cadillacs, boys, some like fords
Some like anything as long as it rolls.
Crazy 'bout an automobile [that's right]
And here i am standing with nothing but rubber heels
Well, every woman i know she's crazy 'bout an automobile
Every woman i know is crazy 'bout an automobile
And here i am standing with nothing but rubber heels
One more thing i wanna tell you
Said, riding and loving just can't be beat,
You and your woman in your own front seat.
Now, she can play with your keys, shift the gears,
Turn on your radio just loud enough to hear.
Now, she can turn up the heat and flip on your fan,
And then you start rolling just as fast as you can.
Crazy 'bout an automobile
And just here i am standing with nothing but rubber heels
Man, when i get some money i just got to get me some kind of automobile
You don't seem like the women in this town just don't pay no attention to ya 'less you're driving
Look at that big, fine buick over there
Oh, i like that one
Yeah, now, looks like somebody left the keys in it
Oh, let's take a ride
Nothing but rubber heels

song performed by Ry Cooder
Added by Lucian Velea
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Cremation

When I die,
I hope that my body
Is cremated.
I want people I never knew
To stuff me in an almond wood box—
One lined with white-linen
(As a metaphor
For comforting peace) —
And shove my inanimate self down a funnel
Where I will burn
(hopefully
In only a physical way
And not in a way that refers to the state
Of my, albeit occasionally
Bitter and disgruntled
And disbelieving
And sometimes ungodly—
Though I do try very hard to
Be honest and empathetic;
I'm failing at the process sometimes -
soul) .
When this happens,
My skin will slowly melt
And welt in gray, white-capped,
Crusted sores that would
Peel off
If placed in the gusting wind.
My muscles will be eviscerated,
Cooking like all the animals that I don't eat—
Myself, though sitting in a furnace
Like a frozen pizza in a stove,
Will remain inedible—
And they'll curl off what was me
As if they were rolling
Sleeping bags.
My bones
Would turn
Into black ashy
Dust that could be
Used by painters to
Create chiaroscuro or crosshatching
Or stippling
Or anything that envelopes
An image in a shadow—
My shadow.
I would like it if my remains got some
Use out of them,
Even if human rights activists
Would complain that using my bones
For paint
Is unethical (which it is
But I don't mind…
Decaying organic matter
Lends more life to art,
Doesn't it?)
As my body disintegrates,
As each part and parcel of my past existence
Granulates into a molten dust,
Volcanic fumes spiraling out from the pyre,
I want to imagine myself metamorphosing
Into the air that blows the smoke away—
I want to intermingle with the molecules
That people breathe,
Becoming a source for future life.
I want to have a purpose in death.
A good purpose,
Nothing selfish—
Nothing like I imagined
When I considered myself
A Christian
Back when I was in 7th grade,
When I thought I believed in heaven
(When I didn't
But I wanted to
So I faked it)
And that heaven was a bright,
Fluorescently-lit paradise
With reflectively-white
Marble/linoleum
(I don't know much
About flooring material)
Tiles, sterile and calm,
Peaceful and loving…
Where everyone I knew would
Be happy
To play video games with me at the movie theater
And eat Chinese take-out
(I now prefer Thai)
For eternity,
For forever,
For however long it takes to be everlasting.
It just seems nice to me to be a part of someone else,
To support life when I have none,
To give when I can no longer take.
As I integrate with the atmosphere
And the human ecosystem,
Someone can pour me—
Chunks and all, if chunks remain—
In a vase
That they can tip over
To pour me
(Yet again)
All over a sandy beach—
Yet again, mixing me with the world
That I never had a chance to be
A part of.
People may forget me,
But even though I will no longer have a memory,
Or thoughts,
Or ideas,
I wouldn't want to forget them.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Women Who Walk Like Men

They seem to be everywhere now,
women who walk like men.
With hair cropped in a paint brush,
bullets for eyes and knives for noses,
they walk long halls, hips so still
they can have no pelvis.
Then one day you meet one
and become her friend.
A week later you still wonder:
Are all the women who walk like men
wildflowers, really,
locked in a hothouse,
craving the sun?

poem by Donal Mahoney
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Women who dwell afar

Yes, I think after reading the posts
so steeped in mortal despair
and oozing with anguish

Like the women
slowly twisting
lilac stalks
who come and go
chatting aimlessly
of fashions
in this and that

They wander the halls
of gray anomie draped
In darkest aspect
hoping without hope
that their eye
will light
on what
they know not

They come and go
chatting and texting
of trivia
and still
they despair

Once in an age or two
they erupt with faux passion
hoping their beaux
do not dwell
on their fading charms
and withdraw
as they must

Languid and hopeless
they will linger
through eternity
frustrated
and unloved

poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Women Who Begin With Letter S

Never published majorly,
But far beneath the sea, while I
Wake up on Tuesday after a holiday,
Holding my breath as a school of
Fish waits at the bus-: stop underfoot from
The lion,
I am surprised that I have arms and
Hands extended,
And a history brief and not well planned,
But sure,
And there are women who oppose my sex,
Who I am supposed to fit into,
Marry, love, support and reproduce into,
To eventually drift away every night
Our togetherness of the coital bed only
Highlighting how different planets we are,
But now I should move my fingers
And swim upward,
For there are bills and car insurance,
And naked speckled swimming in the shadows,
Their legs good enough to compete in
The Olympics,
For, you see, I created them. One of them
I named Lynn, all the others start with the
Letter S, and one day they might see the light
Of day,
So when the general populace wakes up
Sporadically, swimming into mass produced
Consciousness, they might see my women too,
And swim up into the belt of sun where
Green things grow, and notice how the sorority
Of freckled navels indent like flirting come-ons,
Like the bosom of fruit still clinging to its tree.

poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Jerusalem Delivered - Book 04 - part 06

LXXXI

'Ah! be it not pardie declared in France,
Or elsewhere told where courtesy is in prize,
That we forsook so fair a chevisance,
For or that might from fight arise;
Else, here surrender I both sword and lance,
And swear no more to use this martial guise;
For ill deserves he to be termed a knight,
That bears a blunt sword in a lady's right.'

LXXXII

Thus parleyed he, and with sound,
The approved what the gallant said,
Their general their knights encompassed round,
With humble grace, and earnest suit they prayed:
'I yield,' quoth he, 'and it be found,
What I have granted, let her have your aid:
Yours be the thanks, for yours the danger is,
If aught succeed, as much I, amiss.

LXXXIII

'But if with you my words may credit find,
Oh temper then this heat misguides you so!'
Thus much he said, but they with fancy blind,
his grant, and let his counsel go.
What works not beauty, man's relenting
Is eath to move with plaints and shows of woe:
Her lips cast forth a chain of sugared words,
That captive led most of the Christian lords.

LXXXIV

Eustace recalled her, and bespake her thus:
'Beauty's chief darling, let those be,
For such assistance shall you find in us
As with your need, or will, may best agree:'
With that she cheered her forehead dolorous,
And smiled for, that Phoebus blushed to,
And had she deigned her veil for to remove,
The God once more had fallen in love.

LXXXV

With that she broke the silence once again,
And gave the knight great thanks in little speech,
She said she would his handmaid poor remain,
So far as honor's laws received no breach.
Her humble gestures made the residue plain,
Dumb eloquence, persuading more than speech:
Thus women, and thus they use the guise,
To enchant the valiant, and beguile the.

LXXXVI

And when she her enterprise had got
Some wished mean of quick and proceeding,
She to strike the iron that was hot,
For every action hath his hour of speeding:
Medea or false Circe changed not
So far the shapes of men, as her eyes spreading
Altered their hearts, and with her syren's sound
In lust, their, their hearts, in love she drowned.

LXXXVII

All wily sleights that subtle women,
Hourly she used, to catch some lover new.
None kenned the bent of her unsteadfast bow,
For with the time her her looks renew,
From some she cast her modest eyes below,
At some her gazing glances roving flew,
And while she thus pursued her wanton sport,
She spurred the slow, and reined the forward short.

LXXXVIII

If some, as hopeless that she would be won,
Forebore to love, because they durst not move her,
On them her gentle looks to smile begun,
As who say she is kind if you dare prove her
On every heart thus shone this lustful sun,
All strove to serve, to please, to woo, to love her,
And in their hearts that chaste and bashful were,
Her eye's hot glance dissolved the frost of.

LXXXIX

On them who durst with fingering bold assay
To the softness of her tender skin,
She looked as coy, as if she list not play,
And made as things of worth were hard to win;
Yet tempered so her deignful looks alway,
That outward scorn showed store of grace within:
Thus with false hope their longing hearts she fired,
For hardest gotten things are most.

XC

Sometimes she walked in secret where,
To ruminate upon her discontent,
Within her eyelids the swelling tear,
Not poured forth, though sprung from sad lament,
And with this craft a thousand well near
In snares of foolish ruth and love she hent,
And kept as slaves, by which we fitly prove
That witless breedeth fruitless love.

XCI

Sometimes, as if her hope unloosed had
The chains of grief, wherein her lay fettered,
Upon her minions looked she blithe and glad,
In that lore so was she lettered;
Not glorious Titan, in his brightness clad,
The sunshine of her face in lustre bettered:
For when she list to cheer her beauties so,
She smiled away the clouds of grief and woe.

XCII

Her double charm of smiles and sugared words,
Lulled on sleep the of their senses,
Reason shall aid gainst those assaults affords,
no warrant from those sweet offences;
Cupid's deep rivers have their shallow fords,
His griefs, bring ; his losses, recompenses;
He breeds the sore, and cures us of the:
Achilles' lance that wounds and heals again.

XCIII

While thus she them torments twixt frost and fire,
Twixt and grief, twixt hope and restless,
The sly enchantress her gain the nigher,
These were her flocks that golden fleeces bear:
But if someone durst utter his,
And by complaining make his griefs appear,
He labored hard rocks with plaints to move,
She had not learned the gamut then of love.

XCIV

For down she bet her bashful eyes to ground,
And donned the weed of women's modest grace,
Down from her eyes welled the pearls round,
Upon the bright enamel of her face;
Such honey drops on springing flowers are found
When Phoebus holds the crimson morn in chase;
Full seemed her looks of, and of shame;
Yet shone transparent through the same.

XCV

If she by his outward cheer,
That any would his love by talk bewray,
Sometimes she him, sometimes stopped her ear,
And played fast and loose the livelong day:
Thus all her lovers kind deluded were,
Their earnest suit got neither yea nor nay;
But like the sort of weary huntsmen fare,
That hunt all day, and lose at night the hare.

XCVI

These were the arts by which she captived
A thousand of young and lusty knights;
These were the arms wherewith love conquered
Their feeble hearts subdued in wanton fights:
What wonder if Achilles were misled,
Of great Alcides at their ladies' ,
Since these champions of the Lord above
Were thralls to beauty, yielden slaves to lore.

poem by Torquato Tasso
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Retaliation: A Poem

1 Of old, when Scarron his companions invited,
2 Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united;
3 If our landlord supplies us with beef, and with fish,
4 Let each guest bring himself, and he brings the best dish:
5 Our Dean shall be venison, just fresh from the plains;
6 Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of brains;
7 Our Will shall be wild fowl, of excellent flavour,
8 Our Cumberland's sweet-bread its place shall obtain,
9 And Douglas is pudding, substantial and plain:
10 Our Garrick's a salad, for in him we see
11 Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree:
12 To make out the dinner, full certain I am,
13 That Ridge is an anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb;
14 That Hickey's a capon, and by the same rule,
15 Magnanimous Goldsmith, a gooseberry fool:
16 At a dinner so various, at such a repast,
17 Who'd not be a glutton, and stick to the last:
18 Here, waiter, more wine, let me sit while I'm able,
19 'Till all my companions sink under the table;
20 Then with chaos and blunders encircling my head,
21 Let me ponder, and tell what I think of the dead.

22 Here lies the good Dean, re-united with earth,
23 Who mixt reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth:
24 If he had any faults, he has left us in doubt,
25 At least, in six weeks, I could not find 'em out;
26 Yet some have declar'd, and it can't be denied 'em,
27 That sly-boots was cursedly cunning to hide 'em.

28 Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such,
29 We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much;
30 Who, born for the Universe, narrow'd his mind,
31 And to party gave up, what was meant for mankind.
32 Tho' fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat,
33 To persuade Tommy Townsend to lend him a vote;
34 Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining,
35 And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining;
36 Tho' equal to all things, for all things unfit,
37 Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit:
38 For a patriot too cool; for a drudge, disobedient,
39 And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient.
40 In short, 'twas his fate, unemploy'd, or in place, sir,
41 To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor.

42 Here lies honest William, whose heart was a mint,
43 While the owner ne'er knew half the good that was in't;
44 The pupil of impulse, it forc'd him along,
45 His conduct still right, with his argument wrong;
46 Still aiming at honour, yet fearing to roam,
47 The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home;
48 Would you ask for his merits, alas! he had none,
49 What was good was spontaneous, his faults were his own.

50 Here lies honest Richard, whose fate I must sigh at,
51 Alas, that such frolic should now be so quiet!
52 What spirits were his, what wit and what whim,
53 Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb;
54 Now wrangling and grumbling to keep up the ball,
55 Now teazing and vexing, yet laughing at all?
56 In short so provoking a devil was Dick,
57 That we wish'd him full ten times a day at Old Nick.
58 But missing his mirth and agreeable vein,
59 As often we wish'd to have Dick back again.

60 Here Cumberland lies having acted his parts,
61 The Terence of England, the mender of hearts;
62 A flattering painter, who made it his care
63 To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
64 His gallants were all faultless, his women divine,
65 And comedy wonders at being so fine;
66 Like a tragedy queen he has dizen'd her out,
67 Or rather like tragedy giving a rout.
68 His fools have their follies so lost in a crowd
69 Of virtues and feelings, that folly grows proud
70 And coxcombs alike in their failings alone,
71 Adopting his portraits are pleas'd with their own.
72 Say, where has our poet this malady caught,
73 Or wherefore his characters thus without fault?
74 Say was it that vainly directing his view,
75 To find out men's virtues and finding them few,
76 Quite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf,
77 He grew lazy at last and drew from himself?

78 Here Douglas retires from his toils to relax,
79 The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks:
80 Come all ye quack bards, and ye quacking divines,
81 Come and dance on the spot where your tyrant reclines,
82 When Satire and Censure encircl'd his throne,
83 I fear'd for your safety, I fear'd for my own;
84 But now he is gone, and we want a detector,
85 Our Dodds shall be pious, our Kenricks shall lecture;
86 Macpherson write bombast, and call it a style,
87 Our Townshend make speeches, and I shall compile;
88 New Lauders and Bowers the Tweed shall cross over,
89 No countryman living their tricks to discover;
90 Detection her taper shall quench to a spark,
91 And Scotchman meet Scotchman and cheat in the dark.

92 Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can,
93 An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man;
94 As an actor, confest without rival to shine,
95 As a wit, if not first, in the very first line,
96 Yet with talents like these, and an excellent heart,
97 The man had his failings, a dupe to his art;
98 Like an ill-judging beauty, his colours he spread,
99 And beplaister'd, with rouge, his own natural red.
100 On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,
101 'Twas only that, when he was off, he was acting:
102 With no reason on earth to go out of his way,
103 He turn'd and he varied full ten times a-day;
104 Tho' secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick,
105 If they were not his own by finessing and trick;
106 He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack,
107 For he knew when he pleas'd he could whistle them back.
108 Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came,
109 And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame;
110 'Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease,
111 Who pepper'd the highest, was surest to please.
112 But let us be candid, and speak out our mind,
113 If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind.
114 Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave,
115 What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gave?
116 How did Grub-street re-echo the shouts that you rais'd,
117 While he was beroscius'd, and you were beprais'd?
118 But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies,
119 To act as an angel, and mix it with skies:
120 Those poets, who owe their best fame to his skill,
121 Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will.
122 Old Shakespeare, receive him, with praise and with love,
123 And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above.

124 Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature,
125 And slander itself must allow him good-nature:
126 He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper;
127 Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper:
128 Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser?
129 I answer, no, no, for he always was wiser;
130 Too courteous, perhaps, or obligingly flat;
131 His very worst foe can't accuse him of that.
132 Perhaps he confided in men as they go,
133 And so was too foolishly honest; ah no!
134 Then what was his failing? come tell it, and burn ye,
135 He was, could he help it? a special attorney.

136 Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind,
137 He has not left a wiser or better behind;
138 His pencil was striking, resistless and grand,
139 His manners were gentle, complying and bland;
140 Still born to improve us in every part,
141 His pencil our faces, his manners our heart:
142 To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering,
143 When they judg'd without skill he was still hard of hearing:
144 When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Corregios and stuff,
145 He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

poem by Oliver Goldsmith
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Baby Done Got Some Soul

(jim clench)
Published by slalom publishing co. - bmi
Baby done got some soul, shes a fighter
Breakin my spine, but takin the time, to hit slowly
To rock my bones, till I got no feelin
Lord above, livin on love, do I know what Im doin
Get on, get on, get on, get on baby
Get on, get on, get on, get on baby
Baby done got some style, shes a hazer
Blacken my eyes, tellin me lies, gonna believe her
Dont put the world into motion
Shakin my tree, pushin on me, just tryin to please her
Get on, get on, get on, get on baby
Get on, get on, get on, get on baby
Get on, get on, get on, get on baby
And youll be there, God planted soul for two, me and you
Get on, get on, get on, get on baby
Get on, get on, get on, get on baby
Get on, get on, get on, get on baby
And youll be there, God planted soul for two, me and you

song performed by April Wine
Added by Lucian Velea
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Women Who LOVE Football

Women Who LOVE Football
Are DIFFERENT from the rest
They live their LIFE with PASSION
They love their FAMILY best.

They aren’t afraid to get their hands DIRTY
They are not afraid to FIGHT
They know how to put their GAME FACE on
Attempting last DOWN's under Stadium lights.

They are always ready to EXECUTE their OPTIONS
They always plan to SCORE
They have a sense of PURPOSE
And are STRONGER than they think.

They WILL NEVER GIVE UP without a fight
They always PLAY by all the RULES
They have a positive ATTITUDE
They always keep their COOL.

Women who LOVE Football
Will always WIN with STYLE
And if they ever happen to LOSE
They will always lose with DIGNITY
And leave their problems upon the FIELD.

(Version 2 revised December 21,2010 Wausau, Wisconsin USA)

(c) Copyright 2010 by Christine A Kysely, All Rights Reserved

poem by Christine A Kysely
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Who's Got My Back?

Run...hide
All that was sacred to us
Sacred to us
See the signs
The covenant has been broken
By mankind
Leaving us with no shoulder...with no shoulder
To rest our head on
To rest our head on
To rest our head on

Who's got my back now?
When all we have left is deceptive
So disconnected
So what is the truth now?

There's still time
All that has been devastated
Can be recreated
Realize
We pick up the broken pieces
Of our lives
Giving ourselves to each other...ourselves to each other
To rest our head on
To rest our head on
To rest our head on

Who's got my back now?
When all we have left is deceptive
So disconnected
So what is the truth now?

Tell me the truth now...Tell us the truth now

Who's got my back now?
When all we have left is deceptive
So disconnected
So what is the truth now?

song performed by Creed from Weathered
Added by Lucian Velea
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For Those Who Brought That to Others

Everyone they can name is blamed,
For the decline of their fantasized existence.
They insist reality be stopped.
The affects of it keeps them seeking shelter.
As if truth is an illusion that offers escape.
The madness unwraps upon mattresses,
Where no sleeping takes place for them.
They find themselves disgraced!
And faces before them frowning...
Are those who have lost their passion,
To keep up false impressions.
It is difficult to have had...
And to see what was possessed,
Gone.
It is like leaving a masquerade ball for some.
And for many...
They just can not seem to leave at all.
It is hard to feel a pity for their sadness.
It is hard to find a sorrow,
For those who brought that to others.
And turned their backs...
Uncaring and feeling no remorse!
But then,
Of course...
God and the Deities do not like ugly deeds!
Not to self pleasure while others are in need.
This pendulum switch is now witnessed!

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Power To The People

Power to the....
Good evening people, welcome to my party
Bring on the night, lets get it started
You want blood on the stage, well baby youve got it
I welcome all the people who have truly been my friends
F*ck all the bitches who broke my heart again
Love all the women who made my head spin
Baby..because they love me
I can make the sun go down
And I say give the power to the people, people
Bossman, somebody always tryin to break me
Slick mo-fo, hes always tryin to take me
In this arena only you can make me...
Sex and violence, a love in a rage...
Im pacing like a beast locked in a cage
Im a-comin Im a-comin Im a-comin of age
But I know you want me, right
I can make the sun go down
And I say give the power to the people
Solo
I am the sound and I am the light
You are the power that gives me the right
Together we own the night
Good evening people, welcome to my party
Bring on the night, we can get it started
You want my blood on the stage, well baby youve got it
Yes we know we love this
Yes, we know we want this, right
I can make the sun go down
And I say give the power to the people
I can make the sun go down
And I say give the power to the...

song performed by Poison
Added by Lucian Velea
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I Just Got Some

(maborn)
[b side of columbia db 7892, 1966]
Well, I know yall look as if you need some
But I just got some
I surely got some
The doctor prescribed some
I surely need some
Have to, have to have some, baby
Oh, I just went out and got some
My pockets aint jinglin and Im gettin fat
You know you cant hide it, I know where its at
My pockets are as heavy as a chunk of lead
I just got a taste of her meat and veg
I had to have some
Sure did need some
Doctor prescribed some
Had to, had to, had to have some baby
Yall know I look as if I need some
Oh, I just went out and got some, oh
Yeah
You would not help me when you really could
But right now baby, you cant do me no good
Cause I just got some
Had to, had to, have some
Doctor prescribed some
Had to, had to, had to have some baby
Yall know I look as if I need some
Oh, I just went out and got some, oh
Yeah
You would not help me when you really could
But right now baby, you cant do me no good
Cause I just got some
Had to, had to, have some
Doctor prescribed some
You all know I look as if I need some
I just got some
Had to had to have some, baby, oh
I just got some
Everybody knows that I need some
The doctor even prescribed me some
Oh, yeah

song performed by Rod Stewart
Added by Lucian Velea
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Women Who Are Well-behaved

Women who are well-behaved
do not make history, and they
take second place to the depraved,
whom history gives right of way,
for though officially the word condemns
the women who’re considered lawless,
they’re given diamonds and gems
for being flexible, not flawless.

Kathryn Harrison reviews “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (“We’re No Angels, ” NYT, September 30,2007) :
Ulrich, a Harvard historian whose “Midwife’s Tale” won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for history, uses “three classic works in Western feminism” as a springboard for examining the theme of “bad” behavior. Could the popularity of her slogan, she wondered, be explained by “feminism, postfeminism or something much older? ” The answer emerges in Ulrich’s choice of texts: Christine de Pizan’s “Book of the City of Ladies, ” written in 1405; Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Eighty Years and More, ” published in 1898; and “A Room of One’s Own, ” based on two lectures Virginia Woolf gave in 1928 — all works by women who “turned to history as a way of making sense of their own lives.” History, Ulrich reminds us, “isn’t just what happens in the past, ” but what we choose to remember. As much invention as discovery, history attempts to make the chaotic present into a coherent picture by comparing it to images, equally artificial, fashioned from events long past. Pizan, Stanton, Woolf: three women with “intellectual fathers” and “domestic mothers, ” who were “raised in settings that simultaneously encouraged and thwarted their love of learning” and “married men who supported their intellectual ambitions.” For each, her “moment of illumination came through an encounter with an odious book” expressing man’s “disdain” for women. Pizan responded to a 15th- century satire containing “diatribes” against her sex, Stanton to law tomes that set forth the rights of husbands and fathers over their wives and daughters, Woolf to “The Mental, Moral and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex, ” an imagined history representing what she discovered in the reading room of the British Museum.

9/30/07

poem by Gershon Hepner
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The Everlasting Throes of Those

The Everlasting Throes
Of Those
Who Argue about Poetry versus Prose
And about the Propriety or Crime
Of Meter and Rhyme
In Poetry:

as I see it, it’s back to the ancient Greek idea
of three near-absolutes – Truth, Beauty and Goodness
and although they’re all absolute in their aim,
and therefore theoretically equal,
most of us, I suspect, have our personal order for this list

those who put Truth first at all costs are more likely
to write prose; but if they love beauty in words
and have the urge to write something beautiful in words
they may try poetry; but to them,
rhyme is untruthful, dishonest, because
looking for a rhyme
becomes a crime:
and leads your mind away from the strict Truth.

while those who put Beauty first don’t have
a fixed attitude – they may, as children do,
love the formal music of hearing about
A certain Mrs Dhutti
Who was very slightly nutty
She wouldn’t wear a saree
As her arms and legs were hairy
And thought it was much better
To wear trousers and a sweater
etc.
or they may feel that their response to the world
is so full of love, of awe, of wonder
(of which Aristotle said the second and third
are shared by philosophers, that is, lovers - note the word - of wisdom,
and poets – though a poet
may not know it…)
where was I oh yes, their response to the world
is most truly - note the word - expressed
in free verse
which may be better poetry
or worse

and what about Goodness – oh let’s not
get into that: the poetry Forums are full of the emptiness
(though it’s a necessary evil, looked at in a way)
of poets and readers and critics saying
what’s good poetry and what’s bad
according to them and feeling
they’ve made a contribution to
Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, in that order
by pronouncing this.

some few, some worthy few, and I’ll mention no names
for reasons not unconnected as Milton might put it
with the previous stanza,
whose brilliance of that servant mind which we all share,
manages to juggle Beauty, Goodness and Truth,
in that order in this instance, and not only juggle but
remain faithful to them all; we could call them
The Absolutely Great – they speak straight from heart to heart
and they don’t worry about prosaic considerations like the above
because they’ve got it all, all this, within their art; within
their constant heart.

(Readers, please note,
that last line’s a quote.)

poem by Michael Shepherd
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Earthly Laws and ‘in utero’ Baby Rights!

Womb’s environs must be made conducive
For growth of every seed God-implanted;
The birth-canal is road to every life
That seeks a state of separate existence!

Man ought to help the life within the womb
To grow and get nourishment that’s timely;
Let none convert the sacred womb to tomb,
Enacting laws to curb birth ruthlessly!

Why muffle throats that yearn to raise ‘first cry’,
And see their parents’ faces and God’s sky!
The laws on earth shouldn’t make life worse in womb,
Curtailing growth of human progeny!

‘Unwanted child’ is no excuse to kill!
God heals some unborn, unhealthy and ill!
A few jurors can’t decide mankind’s fate,
And tilt the balance against life each time!

All forms of life get innate rights from God,
Including growth, birth, earthly existence;
No king or leader shall undo these rights
Of life, God-made or hinder their free birth!

If those already born have rights plenty,
If birth alone can give a person rights,
Why can’t such rights be given to the child,
By making way for birth in the first place?

There is no reason good enough to kill
The life allowed by God within the womb;
The laws in sacred womb are Nature-made!
No earthly law should permeate the womb.

Give freedom to be born to the unborn!
No God of life can watch with patience more,
When man can destroy millions unborn lives!
No tomb can ever yield a single birth!

When save you want a life that’s ebbing fast,
Why hinder lives that yearn to see the light?
He/she who kills within the womb will kill
By habit anyone already born!

The soul without the grace of God could do
More heinous crimes upon the planet earth;
A homicide is taking others’ lives –
Within the womb or without are both crimes!

God spare the lives of millions denied birth!
How can such murders foul give someone mirth?
The unseen tears of unborn kids brings curse;
Their unheard pleas to man will make lives worse!

If man can kill his child before ‘first cry’,
When man can torture children while in womb,
And bring about their death and destruction,
His heart has turned all cold and loveless too!

Denying freedom of God-destined births?
The woman’s womb belongs to her, sans seed!
Once seeded, it belongs to her seed now!
Eugenics is still far-fetched than real!

Life’s values cannot change in womb/ ex womb!
Abortion on demand can’t give the right
To kill a baby that can thrive on own!
Each baby has the right to live like all.

The days are not far-off when world demands
All invalids and elderly to die!
The theories Eugenics speaks are not true
Or proved beyond a doubt or time-tested!

No doctor can afford to use his ken
To abet crimes of sinful men, women!
Most ‘statistics’ are some-how error-prone;
No man can judge the worthiness of life!

The laws outside the womb can’t stifle life
That grows within the womb, awaiting birth!
Allow the unborn child to be born, man;
No man can add an hour to his life-span!

Copyright by Dr John Celes 3-26-2009

poem by John Celes
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Strongest Men are the Most Lonely

Apart from all men,
That have taken the world
Of genders, ambivalent or certain
Might have blunted themselves
Like stones on the shore

And in all their hearts,
Cancel the robust, omit the womanizers
Isolate the drunkards, and ostracize the blissful
One would remain, and straight with candor,
I will tell you this: he is the strongest.

Robust men, who pilfer the weak
And the womanizers with a blarney so obsolete
That it has overstated what stain these men hold
In their souls, that is why they fail to enrapture women
I too, have failed to enthrall, with or without love.

For the air is as scintillating,
As for the air that women share with men,
And that, as we ostracize the ebullient,
And talk about their tedious work during supper
We would be pondering over the unnoticed:

Where are all the lonely men?
You wouldn’t know, and you wouldn’t be sure
Because their tears are the most pure,
They ensconce pain because they’d rather see you there
In bejeweled beds, or waterbeds, making love with a drunkard

I shall quote Ibsen, like Bukowski did
For the quote justifies and vindicates the deed
“The strongest men are the most lonely.” You dare talk to me about somber
The somber felt in the loss of one’s reputation, without love
Then I shall tell you a story, where I have lost love before it took off.

In a thousand hazy nights, I do not drink with people
Stupid people, sullying with the same kinds of men and women
Who know nothing about pain, or what mystery lies
Behind the strongest men, for society has dictated
That a broken man is either confused with gender, or not that sharp with women.

I will tell you why I am not sharp with women,
And I shall tell you about my prayers
With my hands folded in the soliloquy of nostalgia and sallow nights
As my pallid lips utter words, words of the strongest men,
We do not pray for merriment, we pray for torture

Because men are forged with experience,
And not with cheap thrills of sex, alcohol, lust and indolence
If you do so, then you are not forged,
You are a child, in a playground, wan and wild
But devoid of all learning

Do if you must, conquer if you shall,
I tell you, I have been there, but not with lust and indolence and sex
But with alcohol perhaps, because a lonely man deserves a drink
From a goblet, in a narrowing room, and in a world that shrinks
Right before his feet, feet of stone.

So again, do not be envious
I am lonely, perhaps then, I am strong
Or maybe, I am wrong
Because with love, or without love
In the eyes of one woman, I am in distraught

The strongest man gets to be laughed at,
Jeered at, with stabbing convictions tousled in some bed
Not of cotton, but of sand, quicksand maybe, buried underneath it
No rescue has arrived, it is okay, for he is chivalric
Perhaps a gin tonic would do, if the circumstance permits.

I tell you again, I drink until I die,
Or at least, until the birth of the dawn,
But I never forget to kneel on both knees to pray,
Never did I avoid my pains, trust me, I cry at night
And cringe with the pain that I feel, perhaps, I will not be all right.

I am staunch in my beliefs,
That when one suffers here, animate, then he must be
Entitled to some kingdom far off, when time tells him so
Because the strongest men do not have place here on Earth,
They will never be approved by the mirth of the Gods.

I do not know if I am strong, let’s say,
A woman has left me; I will weep, and yes a woman has left me departed
In the morose dusk, I would feel unwanted,
As I unravel and unsheathe my scrawny shin,
I weep like a river, with my tears trickling down my chest

I would not advise you to give everything,
Because if love is a gamble, then it must be hinged
Or manipulated, fabricated or done with hearts on halves
Yet, I still did, wagered everything, gambled my whole life
As if to say, that in the conclusion, I will have my wife

Yet, my voyage is devoid and null
Look at me, I am categorized among the strongest men
Though not strong, for society has dictated again: “A man does not cry.”
Did you even ask why?
Maybe not, for men are scared of the truth.

In the littlest gist of allegories,
In poetry, prose, novels and short stories,
I have encountered men, who are the same as I am,
In times I long to live in a book, in the lines of a narrative
So all of you could see what lies behind this face

And so apart from all men,
The strongest are the loneliest
And so when the abandonment sets loose in a tempest
You will watch them weep, with or without love
But never did they flee. They never did.

poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr
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Motherhood, 1951

Dear Saint Patrick, this is Peggy,
Or maybe it's Pegeen to you,
Well, I'm really Stella Mae.
Peggy's my nickname,
But anyway, will you please tell me
What to do about the rattlesnake
That's in my room?
I know it's there,
But I can't find it anywhere I search.
I've ransacked the closet more than once,
Because that's where we found the skin it shed.
I even put the cat in there and shut the door,
But he only went to sleep on my new dress
Which he had clawed from a hanger.
My grandma, Maggie, says you drove the snakes from Ireland
And they came here to Arizona.
She's right, you know
For didn't a rattler kill our cat, Blackie?
There he was beside the porch, stiff as a board
And baby Florence saw it.
She's only three and doesn't need to see death like that, not yet.
If you can, let her believe for now
That we will live forever.
Anyhow, I'm pregnant again.
I know I've sinned
But I am paying for it.
Don't make my girl suffer
Because her mother used poor judgment
And got herself in trouble out of wedlock.
My mother's disappointed in me.
My father doesn't care
And says I don't have to marry
Just to have a name for this one in the oven.
Father says there's nothing wrong with our name
And will serve the babe as well as any other,
But mother is determined to give this one a legal father
Like Baby Florence has, but only on paper.
She doesn't have a father either,
But she's got her granddad, he says
And goes to work. He is a barber.
Mother is a cook and she works longer hours,
So I'm here with Baby Florence
And that infernal snake all day.
Outside, the new cat, dogs, chickens and hogs
Roam about the yard,
But they can't help me, can they?
I keep praying, but you don't answer.
I guess you've got no time for me,
So armed with a shovel,
I go in the closet once again
And succeed in smashing a wall.
Bits of plaster fall on my head,
But I don't mind.
I'd rather be dead than never find the thing
That crawls about the room
Without fear of discovery.
This morning, I woke up to find a coiled imprint
At the foot of my bed.
They say I am protected from harm
Because the Virgin Mary put her heel
Upon a snake's head and crushed it
For the sake of all pregnant women.
I am safe, I say to myself and pray for mercy
And recall the dead baby diamondback we found last fall.
It glittered like a tiny jeweled bracelet
And I almost picked it up,
Before I remembered my own warning to my daughter
To never, ever pick up anything suspicious.
I wish I'd done that with the man partly responsible
For the mess I've made.
The diamondback was like the lust I felt for him.
It glittered so beautifully
I had to pick it up and wear it for awhile,
Then like some Lazarus, it came to life,
By striking me with its poisonous fangs,
Leaving me to pay for my crime
Once by lying to myself
And twice for good measure.
Now I must suffer for my pleasure.
I curse, slam the wall again
And feel pain radiating from my navel
Down through my bowels
And am not able to get to the telephone
To call my mother.
I hear a splash and all of a sudden,
The snake darts from the hole I made in the wall
And crawls forward to slake its thirst.
I grit my teeth, but stand stock still
As the pain gnaws at my vitals.
I try to show no fear
As the snake takes a long drink of my water
Then slithers away,
But not fast enough to escape,
As screaming with pain and rage
with all the mother instinct I can muster,
and in the Virgin Mary's name,
I raise the shovel and smash the snake,
Crushing its head,
As I double over and fall beside it
On the red, concrete floor.
For awhile, a ripple runs through its body,
Then it is still.
When my pain subsides, I fall asleep
And dream I'm dead
And hundreds of baby snakes are gathered at my wake.
They crawl all over my body
And I try to shake them off,
Until I realize they're part of me.

At Saint Mary's Hospital, the nurses and my doctor
Tell me how courageous I am
And the nuns even come to visit me.
They claim I have performed a miracle
And should be canonized.
Saint Peggy. 'How does that sound?'
I ask Saint Patrick aloud
When left alone to hold my child.
I smile at her and tell her she is blessed.
The nuns have gone off to light some candles
And in the chapel.
They say they're praying for special dispensation
But I don't need that and neither does my girl.

Back home, after a few days, I realize

That I made a mistake in thinking I could take away my sins
When Mother tells me my new daughter is cursed
Because I killed a snake the day she was born.
'What a cruel mother you are,' I tell her
And she says, 'Yes, I'm just like all the others.
I should have smothered you when you were born.
I was so torn up inside, I nearly died for you
And you repay me with not one bastard, but two.
I never thought I'd call a whore my daughter.'
When I protest, she says, 'There's the door.'
After that, I decide to ignore her
And in a state between agitation and rest,
I remember something I had forgotten.
As I lay beside the snake.
I saw a tiny bunch of eggs spill out of her
And realized she was an expectant mother too
And simply wanted a drink to soothe herself
One desert afternoon
When mothers must decide to save
Or execute their children.

poem by Ai Ogawa
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Not A Black Wind On A Blue Day

Not a black wind on a blue day
but definitely grey.
Enter image of a slumping gas pump
with red paint flaking off it
and a coca cola sign just as old
hanging lop-sided
above an abandoned grocery store
across a small wooden bridge on a dirt road
beside an old stone mill with a seized waterwheel
that stopped turning in the flow of the river a long time ago.
Now take it a step further
and try to imagine a black pot-belly stove
in the middle of the wooden-floored grocery store
with people warming their hands around it
like petals turned toward
this black sun that shines at midnight
almost cast iron cherry red when its stoked
with two year old red oak
and it's snowing thick and heavy outside
as if someone got into a pillow fight with swans
and there's an orange-apricot glow
ripening on the drifts under the storefront windows,
that tints the blue snow
towards its complementary violet
and everything looks like a picture-perfect oil painting
on a nineteen-fifties Christmas card.
And there are people inside. Can you see them?
They look like dark, habitable planets transiting the light
of another star seventy-one light years from here.
Silhouettes of men who are always wiping their hands on a rag
as if they just finished fixing something,
farm wives asking the grocery clerk
who cooked which pie
and whose were selling the most,
kids as impatient as snowballs
waiting for their skates to be sharpened
that expect you to use your imagination
to fill in the negative spaces
and give them the benefit of the doubt as to the rest.
The river that runs beside the mill
isn't all that wide but it canters
over a Stonehenge of creek stones
like a blue-black anthracite horse
with a white mane
that's no longer harnessed
to the tyranny of equinoctial wheels.
And I'd expect to see more trucks
than cars parked outside
and feel that everybody
took a secret pride in being trusted enough
to pump their own gas
and have their word taken for the amount.
And stepping inside out of the cold
through a doorway that triggered a bell
to call someone out of a dark backroom
to greet you like a friend they've been meaning
to ask about cutting swamp wood
when the ice grows thicker
and your brother's hauled in
enough to spare the Clydesdales
before they ask you what they can help you with
as they're already pulling
what they know you want
off the shelves and piling it on the counter,
I can smell the wet wool
as the snow melts on their shoulders,
smoke and ashes of acrid oak,
kerosene, gas, metallic sorrows
everyone stores in the corners of their mind
and seldom talks about
like the wreck of a tractor
that turned over on their father and crushed him
trying to pull off the road up a slope
into that first year's planting of cattle corn,
and even though it's been tarred and feathered
by years of pigeon shit and straw
one day they're going to fix it
as soon as the part that's missing like their father
they've put on order comes in.
Sitting like owls on the counter
to keep the pigeons away
two fat, unconcerned farm cats
who hunt the deer mice and river rats
through the badlands of the bags of grain
slumped like corpses on top of one another
in the storage sheds out back.
The smell of wet sawdust, savaged wood,
and a confidence in the air like pipe smoke
or the billowing chimney
of a lone farmhouse in the distance
on a cold, dark night
where a man steps out onto the porch
in his work shirt
and looks long and hard at the stars
like someone who knows tools
and doesn't doubt
if you keep the big questions in life
close to home in a clearing among the trees
there's not much
that can't be reasonably resolved
by a fan-belt, a new timing chain,
a fifty-two Ford pick-up and a timber-mill
that was always thumbs up about the future
in a tried and trued way you could count on
like the number of fingers you had left.
Patti Page, Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams,
McCarthy, the Red Scare, Korea,
and the uprooted stumps of the farmboy vets
not even a decade back from World War II,
still learning what they can do
without this arm or that leg
if you wanted to look at it in a historical context.
John Diefenbaker was the prime minister of Canada,
but basically political opinions were undergarments
you kept to yourself for fear of offending
your neighbour's sensibilities
as they sloshed the crabapple wine
for a second time over the rim of your glass.
But that's not to say there wasn't the occasional bad ass
looking for a casus belli to start a brawl
in the Friday night hotel
where his son was the bouncer
and the cop who came into stop it, his cousin.
Pigeon-holed doves of mail in envelope tuxedos
that knew how to write an address
as beautifully and clearly
as someone who knew how to tie
a double Windsor knot properly.
And it's not hard to imagine
what was conveyed by fountain pens
that slipped quietly through the local news
like loons and birch bark canoes
like the MacLeans' Method of Hand Writing
with inkwells and nibs,
the tentative proposals of an epistolary romance,
the shock of sudden deaths
on the periphery of tribal families
and the grandmothers that aged like shamans
who saw to the funeral arrangements
and remembered the childhoods of the deceased
long after anyone else could
and what songs and wildflowers they liked the most.
The intimate up close business of the cell
attending to its own farm-sized affairs
that could tell by the light through the trees at night
it's got a neighbour, and both belong to a bigger body
though it's the elephant in the dark for most
and everyone's opinion is shaped
by the part they're holding on to the hardest.
Now the lights go out.
The people disappear like breath on air.
The kids have grown and some of their kids
still live around here on potluck crannies of land
and some, like the last son to leave, have inherited the farm,
but most have moved into town or the city
to save the long drive to take their kids
to dance and judo lessons, hockey games
and left the fields unrocked in the spring
and bridges, gas pumps,
waterwheels, and grocery stores
to the spiders and mice and birds
that stayed for the winter,
to collapse under the weight of snow on the roof,
as the sun and rain warp the grey boards
into insurrections against the old fashioned nails
that kept things together awhile
like bridges and grocery stores
with only three flavours of ice-cream,
vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry,
and lives that were no longer tenable
once the fruit stopped dropping
close to the tree in their dream.
And the thick heavy snow
buried them like seldom-used bridges
on the back roads of the unpeopled silence
that takes their absence for granted.

poem by Patrick White
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A Dilettante

Good friend, be patient: goes the world awry?
well, can you groove it straight with all your pains?
and, sigh or scold, and, argue or intreat,
what have you done but waste your part of life
on impotent fool's battles with the winds,
that will blow as they list in spite of you?

Fie, I am weary of your pettish griefs
against the world that's given, like a child
who whines and pules because his bread's not cake,
because the roses have those ugly thorns
that prick if he's not careful of his hands.
Oh foolish spite: what talk you of the world,
and mean the men and women and the sin?
Oh friend, these all pass by, and God remains:
and God has made a world that pleases Him,
and when He wills then He will better it;
let it suffice us as he wills it now.

Nay, hush and look and listen. For this noon,
this summer noon, replies "but be content,"
speaking in voices of a hundred joys.

For lo, we, lying on this mossy knoll,
tasting the vivid musk of sheltering pines,
and balm of odorous flowers and sweet warm air;
feeling the uncadenced music of slow leaves,
and ripples in the brook athwart its stones,
and birds that call each other in the brakes
with sudden questions and smooth long replies,
the gossip of the incessant grasshoppers,
and the contented hum of laden bees;
we, knowing (with the easy restful eye
that, whichsoever way it turns, is filled
with unexacting beauty) this smooth sky,
blue with our English placid silvery blue,
mottled with little lazy clouds, this stretch
of dappled wealds and green and saffron slopes,
and near us these gnarled elm-trunks barred with gold,
and ruddy pine-boles, where the slumbrous beams
have slipped through the translucent leafy net
to break the shimmering dimness of the wood;
we, who, like licensed truants from light tasks
which lightly can be banished out of mind,
have all ourselves to give to idleness,
were more unreasoning, if we make moan
of miseries and toils and barrenness,
than if we sitting at a feast told tales
of famines and for the pity of them starved.

Oh, life is good when, on such summer days,
we linger in the dreamful paradise
that lies at every door where so much space
is left to garner in the languid air
as grass may grow in and some verdurous tree,
and some few yards of blueness and of clouds
may stretch above, making immensity;
when, lost out of our petty unit selves,
the heart grows large in the grave trance of peace,
and all things breathing, growing, are its kin,
and all the fair and blossoming earth is home.

And beauty is our lesson: for, look there,
that exquisite curve and cluster of rich leaves,
emerald and shadow, in that patch of sun,
what is it but a nettle? And that knoll
of woven green, where all fantastic grace
of shaggy stems and lush and trailing shoots
and all a thousand delicate varied tints,
are mingled in a wanton symmetry,
what is it but a thorn and bramble copse?
And that far plain, on which, through all the day,
change still grows lovelier and every cloud
makes different softer dimness, every light
an other-coloured glory, what is it?
a desolate barren waste, marshland and moor.
And in some other moment, when the rain
spurts greyly downwards on the soddening fields,
or the dank, autumn fog veils leaden skies,
or the keen baleful east winds nip the bloom
of frightened spring with bleak and parching chills,
the waste, the thorns, the nettle, each would seem
cursed with the unloveliness of evil things.

So beauty comes and goes: yet beauty is
a message out of Heaven; can it speak
from evil things? I know not; but I know
that waste and thorns and nettle are to-day
teachers of Love, a prospect not to change,
for use, against a fifty miles of corn.
Can we tell good from evil you and I?

Oh, if the men and women of to-day
seem ill or good to us, why, what know we?
to-morrow they, or those who follow them,
will seem another way; and are they changed,
or are the eyes that see them? Let them be;
are we divine that we should judge and rule?
And they are not the world by several selves
but in a gathered whole, and if that whole
drift heavenward or hellward God can see,
not we, who, ants hived in our colonies,
count the world loam or gravel, stocked with flowers
or weeds or cabbages, as we shall find
within our own small ranges, and (being wise
and full of care for all the universe),
wonder, and blame, and theorize, and plan,
by the broad guide of our experiences!

'Twere a neat world if levelled by the ants;
no ridges, no rough gaps, all fined and soft.
But I will rather use my antish wits
in smoothing just my cell and at my doors
than join in such heroic enterprise.

Selfish, you call me? callous? Hear a tale.
There was a little shallow brook that ran
between low banks, scarcely a child's leap wide,
feeding a foot or two of bordering grass
and, here and there, some tufts of waterflowers
and cresses, and tall sedge, rushes and reeds;
and, where it bubbled past a poor man's cot,
he and his household came and drank of it,
and all the children loved it for its flowers
and counted it a playmate made for them:
but, not far off, a sandy arid waste
where, when a winged seed rested, or a bird
would drop a grain in passing, and it grew,
it presently must droop and die athirst,
spread its scorched silent leagues to the fierce sun:
and once a learned man came by and saw,
and "lo," said he, "what space for corn to grow,
could we send vivifying moistures here,
while look, this wanton misdirected brook
watering its useless weeds!" so had it turned,
and made a channel for it through the waste:
but its small waters could not feed that drought,
and, in the wide unshadowed plain, it lagged,
and shrank away, sucked upwards of the sun
and downwards of the sands; so the new bed
lay dry, and dry the old; and the parched reeds
grew brown and dwined, the stunted rushes drooped,
the cresses could not root in that slacked soil,
the blossoms and the sedges died away,
the greenness shrivelled from the dusty banks,
the children missed their playmate and the flowers,
and thirsted in hot noon-tides for the draught
grown over precious now their mother went
a half-mile to the well to fill her pails;
and not two ears of corn the more were green.

Tell me, what should I do? I take my life
as I have found it, and the work it brings;
well, and the life is kind, the work is light,
shall I go fret and scorn myself for that?
and must I sally forth to hack and hew
at giants or at windmills, leave the post
I could have filled, the work I could have wrought,
for some magnificent mad enterprise,
some task to lift a mountain, drain a sea,
tread down a Titan, build a pyramid?
No, let me, like a bird bred in the cage,
that, singing its own self to gladness there,
makes some who hear it gladder, take what part
I have been born to, and make joy of it.

Grumbler, what are you muttering in your beard?
"You've a bird-likeness too, to shew me in;
I take life, as a sea-gull takes the sea,
mere skimmingly." I say no otherwise;
'tis a wise bird the sea-gull, does but taste
the hale and briny freshness of the spray:
what would you have me do? plunge in and drown?

Oh chiding friend, I am not of your kind,
you strenuous souls who cannot think you live
unless you feel your limbs, though 'twere by aches:
great boisterous winds you are, who must rush on
and sweep all on your way or drop and die,
but I am only a small fluttering breeze
to coax the roses open: let me be;
perhaps I have my use no less than you.

Ah well! How strange that you and I, who tread
so same a path, perceive it so unlike.
And which sees justly? Maybe both of us:
or maybe one of us is colour-blind,
and sees the tintings blurred, or sees them false,
or does not see, so misses what they shew.
Or likelier each of us is colour-blind,
and sees the world his own way, fit for him:
doubtless we afterwards shall understand
the beauty and the pain are more alike.

poem by Augusta Davies Webster
Added by Poetry Lover
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