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I've got like a week and a half left, all bets are off.

quote by Rob Corddry
Added by Lucian Velea
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End Of The Week

I get out of work
And then I throw away all of my cares
I get out of work
And then I wash the week out my hair
Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday
Its hard as could be
But by old friday evening
Were free, were free, were free
End of the week
The weekend started
Been working so hard to play
End of the week
Its time to party
End of the week
End of the week
End of the week
Youre tasting freedom
No one to push you around
End of the week
And life has a reason
End of the week
End of the week
End of the week
Street are alive
You know everybodys going somewhere
You put on the slide
You gotta beat the crowd just everywhere
And all the music all the dancing
Get you so high
And all that sweet romancing
Oh my, oh my, oh my
End of the week
The weekend started
Working so hard to play
End of the week
Its time to party
End of the week
End of the week
End of the week
Feels good now
Feels good now
End of the week
End of the week
Its real good now
Real good now
End of the week
End of the week
End of the week

song performed by Donna Summer
Added by Lucian Velea
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Week In Week Out

IIs there something more?
Surely there must be
You can't lose everything
So you're quite happy
To live with nothing more
Than a life-long shopping list
You tick off on credit
Well you'll pay for it
Week in and week out
Your lucky charms will always let you down
Maybe next week, we'll see
Maybe
You stand in life completely still
Feel really truly unfulfilled
Week in week out
Where are you going to turn?
When all ambition fails?
Why try any more
If human nature's stale?
Invite the hand of God
To touch the lucky few
There's no such thing as God
Nor easy money too?
Week in and week out
These lucky charms will always let you down
Maybe next week, we'll see
Maybe
You stand in life completely still
Feel really truly unfulfilled
Week in week out
Week in and week out
Your lucky charms will always let you down
Maybe next week, we'll see
Maybe
You stand in life completely still
Feel really truly unfulfilled
Week in week out

song performed by Ordinary Boys
Added by Lucian Velea
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First Week/last Week... Carefree

Can we run that again
Is that a womans voice I hear?
I said, lets wait and see. Ill see for myself
Thats a phrase I repeat
To myself
Made a reference to me and
Thats myself too
What progress I have made the first week
First week
First week
First week
Every sentence I use
Refer to women and their names
I heard the voice first last week
I heard it myself
Made a reference to me
Thats myself
This reports incomplete
I see for myself
Every appointment has been moved to last week
Last week
Last week
Last week
Oh...
Ah...
Oh...
I heard the voice first last week
I heard it myself
Made a reference to me
And thats myself
This reports incomplete
I see for myself
Every appointment has been been moved to last week
Last week
Last week
Last week
Oh...
Ah...
Oh...

song performed by Talking Heads
Added by Lucian Velea
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Third Book

'TO-DAY thou girdest up thy loins thyself,
And goest where thou wouldest: presently
Others shall gird thee,' said the Lord, 'to go
Where thou would'st not.' He spoke to Peter thus,
To signify the death which he should die
When crucified head downwards.
If He spoke
To Peter then, He speaks to us the same;
The word suits many different martyrdoms,
And signifies a multiform of death,
Although we scarcely die apostles, we,
And have mislaid the keys of heaven and earth.

For tis not in mere death that men die most;
And, after our first girding of the loins
In youth's fine linen and fair broidery,
To run up hill and meet the rising sun,
We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool,
While others gird us with the violent bands
Of social figments, feints, and formalisms,
Reversing our straight nature, lifting up
Our base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts,
Head downward on the cross-sticks of the world.
Yet He can pluck us from the shameful cross.
God, set our feet low and our forehead high,
And show us how a man was made to walk!

Leave the lamp, Susan, and go up to bed.
The room does very well; I have to write
Beyond the stroke of midnight. Get away;
Your steps, for ever buzzing in the room,
Tease me like gnats. Ah, letters! throw them down
At once, as I must have them, to be sure,
Whether I bid you never bring me such
At such an hour, or bid you. No excuse.
You choose to bring them, as I choose perhaps
To throw them in the fire. Now, get to bed,
And dream, if possible, I am not cross.

Why what a pettish, petty thing I grow,–
A mere, mere woman,–a mere flaccid nerve,-
A kerchief left out all night in the rain,
Turned soft so,–overtasked and overstrained
And overlived in this close London life!
And yet I should be stronger.
Never burn
Your letters, poor Aurora! for they stare
With red seals from the table, saying each,
'Here's something that you know not.' Out alas,
'Tis scarcely that the world's more good and wise

[...] Read more

poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Last Week

Oh, the new-chum went to the backblock run,
But he should have gone there last week.
He tramped ten miles with a loaded gun,
But of turkey of duck saw never a one,
For he should have been there last week,
They said,
There were flocks of 'em there last week.
He wended his way to a waterfall,
And he should have gone there last week.
He carried a camera, legs and all,
But the day was hot and the stream was small,
For he should have gone there last week,
They said,
They drowned a man there last week.

He went for a drive, and he made a start,
Which should have been made last week,
For the old horse died of a broken heart;
So he footed it home and he dragged the cart --
But the horse was all right last week,
They said,
He trotted a match last week.

So he asked all the bushies who came from afar
To visit the town last week
If the'd dine with him, and they said "Hurrah!"
But there wasn't a drop in the whisky jar --
You should have been here last week,
He said,
I drank it all up last week!

poem by Andrew Barton Paterson
Added by Poetry Lover
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The Pillage Hangman - Parody LONGFELLOW - The Village Blacksmith

Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The Smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can
And looks the whole world in the face
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming furge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church
and sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach.
He hears his daughter's voice
singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, -rejoicing, -sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend

[...] Read more

poem by Jonathan Robin
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IV. Tertium Quid

True, Excellency—as his Highness says,
Though she's not dead yet, she's as good as stretched
Symmetrical beside the other two;
Though he's not judged yet, he's the same as judged,
So do the facts abound and superabound:
And nothing hinders that we lift the case
Out of the shade into the shine, allow
Qualified persons to pronounce at last,
Nay, edge in an authoritative word
Between this rabble's-brabble of dolts and fools
Who make up reasonless unreasoning Rome.
"Now for the Trial!" they roar: "the Trial to test
"The truth, weigh husband and weigh wife alike
"I' the scales of law, make one scale kick the beam!"
Law's a machine from which, to please the mob,
Truth the divinity must needs descend
And clear things at the play's fifth act—aha!
Hammer into their noddles who was who
And what was what. I tell the simpletons
"Could law be competent to such a feat
"'T were done already: what begins next week
"Is end o' the Trial, last link of a chain
"Whereof the first was forged three years ago
"When law addressed herself to set wrong right,
"And proved so slow in taking the first step
"That ever some new grievance,—tort, retort,
"On one or the other side,—o'ertook i' the game,
"Retarded sentence, till this deed of death
"Is thrown in, as it were, last bale to boat
"Crammed to the edge with cargo—or passengers?
"'Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est!
"'Huc appelle!'—passengers, the word must be."
Long since, the boat was loaded to my eyes.
To hear the rabble and brabble, you'd call the case
Fused and confused past human finding out.
One calls the square round, t' other the round square—
And pardonably in that first surprise
O' the blood that fell and splashed the diagram:
But now we've used our eyes to the violent hue
Can't we look through the crimson and trace lines?
It makes a man despair of history,
Eusebius and the established fact—fig's end!
Oh, give the fools their Trial, rattle away
With the leash of lawyers, two on either side—
One barks, one bites,—Masters Arcangeli
And Spreti,—that's the husband's ultimate hope
Against the Fisc and the other kind of Fisc,
Bound to do barking for the wife: bow—wow!
Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here
Would settle the matter as sufficiently

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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In A Week Or Two

(james house/gary burr)
In a week or two
I would have been ready
I would have known what to say
But I missed my chance
When the words I love you
Came just a little too late
In a week or two
I was gonna bring you diamonds
In a week or two
A long, long string of pearls and
We wouldve run down to the river at night
Sailed away, just me and you
In a week or two
A little more time
Was all I needed
But somehow fall became spring
But put off today
What you can do tomorrow
Sometimes you dont do a thing
In a week or two
I was gonna bring you diamonds
In a week or two
A long, long string of pearls and
We wouldve run down to the river at night
Sailed away, just me and you
In a week or two
These words in my heart never had a chance to be heard
But Im telling you now for all that its worth
In a week or two
I was gonna bring you diamonds
In a week or two
A long, long string of pearls and
We wouldve run down to the river at night
Sailed away, just me and you
In a week or two

song performed by Diamond Rio
Added by Lucian Velea
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Neighborhood Threat

Down where your paint is cracking
Look down you backstair buddy
Somebodys living there and
He dont really feel the weather
And he dont share your pleasures
No he dont share your pleasures
Look at his eyes
Did you see his crazy eyes
Youre so surprised he dont run to catch your ash
Everybody always wants to kiss your trash
Ah you cant help him
Nobody can
Now that he knows
Theres nothing to get
Will you still place your bet
On the neighborhood threat
Somewhere a babys bleeding
Somewhere a mothers needing
Outside a boy is lying
But mostly he is crying
And he just shouts in anger
Youll find him interesting
Look at his eyes
Did you see his crazy eyes
Youre so surprised he doesnt build for you
Everybody always wants to run with you
Ah you cant help him
Nobody can
Now that he knows
Theres nothing to get
Will you still place your bet
On the neighborhood threat
Youre so surprised he dont run to catch your ash
Everybody always wants to kiss your trash
Ah you cant help him
Nobody can
Now that he knows
Theres nothing to get
Will you still place your bet
On the neighborhood threat
On the neighborhood threat (a night in your face)
Dont place your bets (a night in your place)
On the neighborhood threat (will you still place your bets)
Dont place your bets (when the neighbor comes)
On the neighborhood threat (neighborhood threat)
Dont place yor bets
On the neigborhood threat

song performed by David Bowie
Added by Lucian Velea
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March of Memories

Left, right - left, right . . .
We march today for memories (the grizzled Digger said)
Memories of lost dreams and comrades gone ahead
Comrades bloody war took, dreams that men have slain
(Left, right - left, right . . .) Not ours to dream again.
There was Shorty Hall and Len Pratt, Long Joe and Blue,
Skeet and Brolga Houlihan, and Fat and me and you:
Bright lads, the old bunch; eager lads and keen
That first day we marched down thro' this familiar scene.
Dreams were ours, and high hopes went with us overseas.
(Left, right - left, right . . . ) And now 'tis memories.

We march again for memories (the grizzled Digger sighed)
Memories of lost mates, of foolish hopes that died.
First, Shorty got his issue on the beach at Sari Bair.
(Left, right - left, right . . .) The vision of him there
Brought the dawn of disillusion. I needed little more
To blood me to the butchery, the filthiness called war.
Shorty, like a limp rag, slung there anyhow,
Sprawling on the warm sand like I can see him now.
Always was a merry mate, a rare lad for fun.
(Left, right - left, right . . .) And Shorty, that was one.

We march today for memories; and they come crowding fast
As each year adds another page to the story of the past.
Pratt went west at Mena Base; raved of home and peace.
(Left, right - left, right . . . ) His was a kind release.
For a Lone Pine shell-burst got him; and he was less than man.
'Twas a sniper's bullet bore the name of Brolga Houlihan.
We called him Happy Houlihan, the man who took a chance.
Then the Reaper paused and plotted for the rest of them in France -
Except Long Joe, the luckless, a youth ill-shaped for war.
(Left, right - left, right . . .) And Long Joe was four.

We march today for memories. Little else had we
When we marched home as veterans. Blue and you and me.
For Skeet went with a night raid, and none came back alive.
(Left, right - left, right . . .) So Skeet, he tallied five.
Five gone and four to fight; us and Blue and Fat,
Who vowed he was too big to hit; but a whizz-bang settled that.
Yet Fat was lucky to the end - an end that held no pain.
All hell erupted where he stood; and none saw him again.
And Blue marched, and you marched, and I, a war-torn three.
(Left. right - left, right . . . ) Marched with memory.

We march again with memories (the grizzled Digger spake)
One year? Ten years? How soon shall we awake
To glorious reality? For lately it would seem -
(Left, right - left, right . . .) - we march within a dream.
Where Shorty is, and Blue is, and Happy Houlihan,

[...] Read more

poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
Added by Poetry Lover
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XI. Guido

You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,
As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.
Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.
The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Who Do You Want Me To Be For You This Week?

Who do you want me to be for you this week?
Someone conservative and works alot?
Or some thug who disrespects and cusses?
Like that guy who caught your eye down the street.
You know...
The one who has five kids with different women,
Who you say is so sweet.
Who do you
Really want me to be
For you this week?

Who do you want me to be for you this week?
Tonto, Baskins of Robbins or a preacher...
The one you say looks at you,
As he stumbles through his sermon as he is preaching.
And reaching towards you to fondle,
But you say...
Nothing has happened between the sheets.
Who do you
Want me to be,
For you this week?

Nothing I do seems to please you of late.
Except for showing up for another round of cold shoulders.
You want me to be superman, Clark Kent, Clark Gable
AND Denzel!
You want me to get butt naked,
BEFORE you tell me to go to hell!
Well...
'You coming soon, baby? '
Then you expect me to be tender...
To get you heated and wet?
I am no machine, baby!
You knew that when we met...
And I knew you.
It was exactly what you wanted then,
When you tempted me away from my mate and kids!
To do what I did to know what we've done!
Never got to be the fun we thought.

This is what you got when you wanted it to be caught,
AND kept!
And that is where we differ.
With no regretted memories.
But being 'kept' and not slept with
Isn't the right thing to do.
But you didn't know that then.
And nothing between us tells me you know that now.

There can only be one happiness under one roof!

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Ernie

I am the bringer of your wishes,
Your saviour from doing work,
The washer of your dishes,and
Youll still get you mid-day perk.
Estate agent,
Your mansion and pot of gold,
All the home comforts,
Before youre getting tired and old.
One more try,
Try to get what youve never had,
Five more bob,
For the whole world that cant be bad.
We cant all win,
Look its happening,
The futures looking not so bleak,
A thousand winners every week.
A thousand winners every week.
So when you hear me coming,
Along halls and up the stairs,
Get the black teapot,
In the cupboard, under chairs,
Forget all your wives tales,
Or forecasts and dividends,
E.r.n.i.e. feels vibrations,
Only pays out to trusting friends.
One more try,
Try to get what youve never had,
Five more bob,
For the whole world that cant be bad.
We cant all win,
Look its happening,
The futures looking not so bleak,
A thousand winners every week.
A thousand winners every week.
Keep your hand on the bottle,
And your eyes glued upon the set,
When the score cards come up,
Could be you for the big one next.
Publicity, no thank you,
On the front page of the currant bun,
They think you stink,
But in the pub youll be number one.
One more try,
Try to get what youve never had,
Five more bob,
For the whole world that cant be bad.
We cant all win,
Look its happening,
The futures looking not so bleak,
A thousand winners every week.

[...] Read more

song performed by Madness
Added by Lucian Velea
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Who

Every minute passes by
You're always talking
Makes me cry
Finding out the reasons why
I'm needing space get out my ride
Talking about what I do, where I go, who I'm with and why I don't bring you
Think about the times you pushed me
Saying "baby please don't go"
You make me sick
Yeah, yeah
I'll make you lost in
Times before you break my small
You claim you love me, tease me, leave me, hold me, please me
Get off I'm movin on
Cos I'm tryin to take control
Chorus:
But it's you talking dirty
When I'm trying to sleep
And it's you, said you love me
After just one week
Tell me who's always calling on my telephone
Now it's you tryin to tell me
We should take things slow
And you said: "don't go, don't go, please don't go
Please don't leave me, on my own
Don't go, don't go, please don't go
Please don't leave me, on my own"
You're creepin, sneaking, cheating, on me
Leavin, this round,
Gotta end the strike cos it ain't going down
Now you wanna come back, claim you give me a track
I forgive what you do then you want it back
I'm sick of playing this game
I ain't sticking with a claim fame
Stop this, right now
You crossed the line so baby get the hell out
Chorus:
But it's you talking dirty
When I'm trying to sleep
And it's you, said you love me
After just one week (just one week yeah)
Tell me who's always calling on my telephone
Now it's you tryin to tell me
We should take things slow (take things slow)
Chorus:
But it's you talking dirty
When I'm trying to sleep (yeah)
And it's you, said you love me
After just one week (just one week yeah yeah)
Tell me who's always calling on my telephone (telephone)

[...] Read more

song performed by Sugababes
Added by Lucian Velea
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All We Got Left Is The Beat

[Intro]
Ey, ey, check it out homie
man, you need to get up out of this spot man
and get a job man before you get smoked man
(yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah son...)
I know you don't wanna hear it man
but, ey, man, wait, hold up loc. you got company man
(where's my guns?)
[Gunshot]
[LL Cool J]
When I'm ridin' on the street I hear gunshots [rare shots]
(swear) crack niggas cause they moms missed flips
So black man really care about politics
In the ninety's, our governments so slick
I watch CNN sometimes and I realize
they're playin' tricks on my mind
They want a man to work with his hands
Too young to die, and they don't give a damn
Rare-momma got down on her knees
But not no more, god damn it, I make cheese
I'm on the move and I'ma show and prove
you might cry to my political groove
Rest in peace, Sauce Brothers underneath
I love you to death while my beats' like a reef
In the middle of the night on the city streets
The only thing we got left is the beat
[Chorus: LL Cool J]
All we got left is the beat, is the beat, yo
All we got left is the beat, huh, give it to me
All we got left is the beat, the beat, yo
All we got left is the beat, uh
[LL Cool J]
Who brings guns into the USA?
And then makes sure that they come around the way
Gain the points until the whole race traps
And teach up my woman that she should call up the cops
The projects are hell, wait a, minute
There's nothin' we do but ride on top of an elevator
Say the clubs, I can't get a job
Mouth to feed, somebody's gettin' robbed
I ain't worked, but I ain't workin' for crumbs
You ever seen a man-shelter?
Check out the bombs!!!
Brother of pain, their whole lives are over
They spent every dime tryin' not to be sober
And all the ladies got bags of clothes
They'll be your long lost momma, one never knows
The streets are like a nightmare
While the presidents secretary is chillin' in his leather chair
[Chorus: LL Cool J]

[...] Read more

song performed by LL Cool J
Added by Lucian Velea
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Christmas-Eve

I.
OUT of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night air again.
I had waited a good five minutes first
In the doorway, to escape the rain
That drove in gusts down the common’s centre,
At the edge of which the chapel stands,
Before I plucked up heart to enter:
Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
Reached past me, groping for the latch
Of the inner door that hung on catch,
More obstinate the more they fumbled,
Till, giving way at last with a scold
Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
One sheep more to the rest in fold,
And left me irresolute, standing sentry
In the sheepfold’s lath-and-plaster entry,
Four feet long by two feet wide,
Partitioned off from the vast inside—
I blocked up half of it at least.
No remedy; the rain kept driving:
They eyed me much as some wild beast,
The congregation, still arriving,
Some of them by the mainroad, white
A long way past me into the night,
Skirting the common, then diverging;
Not a few suddenly emerging
From the common’s self thro’ the paling-gaps,—
—They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;—
But the most turned in yet more abruptly
From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
Where the town’s bad blood once slept corruptly,
Which now the little chapel rallies
And leads into day again,—its priestliness
Lending itself to hide their beastliness
So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),
And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
That, where you cross the common as I did,
And meet the party thus presided,
“Mount Zion,” with Love-lane at the back of it,
They front you as little disconcerted,
As, bound for the hills, her fate averted
And her wicked people made to mind him,
Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.

II.
Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,

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poem by Robert Browning
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Part I

"That oblong book's the Album; hand it here!
Exactly! page on page of gratitude
For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view!
I praise these poets: they leave margin-space;
Each stanza seems to gather skirts around,
And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine,
Modest and maidlike; lubber prose o'er-sprawls
And straddling stops the path from left to right.
Since I want space to do my cipher-work,
Which poem spares a corner? What comes first?
'Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!'
(Open the window, we burn daylight, boy!)
Or see—succincter beauty, brief and bold—
'If a fellow can dine On rumpsteaks and port wine,
He needs not despair Of dining well here—'
'Here!' I myself could find a better rhyme!
That bard's a Browning; he neglects the form:
But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense!
Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide!
I'll quench the bits of candle yet unburnt.
A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work!
Three little columns hold the whole account:
Ecarté, after which Blind Hookey, then
Cutting-the-Pack, five hundred pounds the cut.
'Tis easy reckoning: I have lost, I think."

Two personages occupy this room
Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn
Perched on a view-commanding eminence;
———— -Inn which may be a veritable house
Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste
Till tourists found his coign of vantage out,
And fingered blunt the individual mark
And vulgarized things comfortably smooth.
On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays
Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag;
His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds;
They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World.
Grim o'er the mirror on the mantlepiece,
Varnished and coffined, Salmo ferox glares
—Possibly at the List of Wines which, framed
And glazed, hangs somewhat prominent on peg.

So much describes the stuffy little room—
Vulgar flat smooth respectability:
Not so the burst of landscape surging in,
Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair
Is, plain enough, the younger personage
Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft
The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Inn Album (1875)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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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.

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poem by Talile Ali
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Russian Roulette

Hey boy pushin on your girlfriend
Trying to show her all the pain you feel inside
Yeah and head all scrambled and the love is gone
And you dont know what went wrong
But I think I heard you hissing something about blue steel
But when you talk about something like gun play
Let me tell you its a losing bet
But when the hammer falls all bets are called
And five to one youre gonna lose
When you talk about something like russian roulette
Tears run down your sweet loves face
I say shes a mirror of your insides
And you cant scream loud enough to let it go
And you mouthful of pride you just cant swallow
Rips your soul like a hurricane tide
But when you talk about something like gun play
Let me tell you its a losing bet
But when the hammer falls all bets are called
And five to one youre gonna lose
When you talk about something like russian roulette
Pack up your ego and your tantrum
Put it back with your anger and your pride
Beating up on your girlfriend
Aint gonna change anything inside
But when you talk about something like gun play
Let me tell you its a losing bet
But when the hammer falls all bets are called
And five to one youre gonna lose
When you talk about something like russian roulette

song performed by Edwin McCain
Added by Lucian Velea
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A Short Leap (you would think for a mature audience)

Summer of 1966 I was
Just out of high school
Newspaper web press apprentice
For the San Francisco Chronicle

Working one night I overheard
Several journeymen
Talking about
If they could

Get up enough money
Get the bets up high enough
Buy him a couple of drinks
See if he really could do it

They wanted to talk
This other jouneyman into
Proving what
He'd been bragging about

Up until this point
It had only been a rumor
No one had seen him do it
No one believed it could be done

The proper amount of cash
Was quickly raised
Even guys from the third floor
Newsroom white shirts and ties got involved

They put in their share of money
Once the word got around
Posted their bets
I put up my two bucks

We gathered in the basement
Where the one-ton rolls
Of blank newsprint are hoisted
Like fat spindles

Spinning
At a maximum speed
Of thirty-thousand
Continuous copies an hour

When the audience had gathered
The lights in the basement were turned off
Only for a moment
So we could all see the electricity

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poem by Tom J. Mariani
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