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Candyman

Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett , Colman Domingo, Kyle Kaminsky, Vanessa Williams, Carl Clemons-Hopkins

trailer for Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta (2020)
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Cadenus And Vanessa

THE shepherds and the nymphs were seen
Pleading before the Cyprian Queen.
The counsel for the fair began
Accusing the false creature, man.
The brief with weighty crimes was charged,
On which the pleader much enlarged:
That Cupid now has lost his art,
Or blunts the point of every dart;
His altar now no longer smokes;
His mother's aid no youth invokes—
This tempts free-thinkers to refine,
And bring in doubt their powers divine,
Now love is dwindled to intrigue,
And marriage grown a money-league.
Which crimes aforesaid (with her leave)
Were (as he humbly did conceive)
Against our Sovereign Lady's peace,
Against the statutes in that case,
Against her dignity and crown:
Then prayed an answer and sat down.

The nymphs with scorn beheld their foes:
When the defendant's counsel rose,
And, what no lawyer ever lacked,
With impudence owned all the fact.
But, what the gentlest heart would vex,
Laid all the fault on t'other sex.
That modern love is no such thing
As what those ancient poets sing;
A fire celestial, chaste, refined,
Conceived and kindled in the mind,
Which having found an equal flame,
Unites, and both become the same,
In different breasts together burn,
Together both to ashes turn.
But women now feel no such fire,
And only know the gross desire;
Their passions move in lower spheres,
Where'er caprice or folly steers.
A dog, a parrot, or an ape,
Or some worse brute in human shape
Engross the fancies of the fair,
The few soft moments they can spare
From visits to receive and pay,
From scandal, politics, and play,
From fans, and flounces, and brocades,
From equipage and park-parades,
From all the thousand female toys,
From every trifle that employs
The out or inside of their heads

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poem by Jonathan Swift
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Domingo

We are here
In this holy cave today
To celebrate
The reincarnation
Of domingo de santa clara
The man who convinced us
That there is no lord
For his name is buddha, allah, shiva, jahve [yahweh? ]
Outside our bodies
We are god
cause only we can create the idea
Of his existence in our holy brains
[? ]
[? ]
[? ]
Let us pray to ourselves and our spirits!
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo of santa clara
You made us believe
That you are no phantom
When without
The slightest spot of a thousand nations
You sprayed your blood of domingo
We all know
Domingo of santa clara
Will be born today, tomorrow, and the day after
Billions of times
til the end of the universe
Here with a smile on his face
As the rest of our species watches
The catastrophe
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before

song performed by Yello
Added by Lucian Velea
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Domingo

We are here
In this holy cave today
To celebrate
The reincarnation
Of domingo de santa clara
The man who convinced us
That there is no lord
For his name is buddha, allah, shiva, jahve [yahweh? ]
Outside our bodies
We are god
cause only we can create the idea
Of his existence in our holy brains
[? ]
[? ]
[? ]
Let us pray to ourselves and our spirits!
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo of santa clara
You made us believe
That you are no phantom
When without
The slightest spot of a thousand nations
You sprayed your blood of domingo
We all know
Domingo of santa clara
Will be born today, tomorrow, and the day after
Billions of times
til the end of the universe
Here with a smile on his face
As the rest of our species watches
The catastrophe
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before
Domingo you show me just nothing
Like no one before

song performed by Yello
Added by Lucian Velea
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Saving a Train

'Twas in the year of 1869, and on the 19th of November,
Which the people in Southern Germany will long remember,
The great rain-storm which for twenty hours did pour down,
That the rivers were overflowed and petty streams all around.

The rain fell in such torrents as had never been seen before,
That it seemed like a second deluge, the mighty torrents' roar,
At nine o'clock at night the storm did rage and moan
When Carl Springel set out on his crutches all alone --

From the handsome little hut in which he dwelt,
With some food to his father, for whom he greatly felt,
Who was watching at the railway bridge,
Which was built upon a perpendicular rocky ridge.

The bridge was composed of iron and wooden blocks,
And crossed o'er the Devil's Gulch, an immense cleft of rocks,
Two hundred feet wide and one hundred and fifty feet deep,
And enough to make one's flesh to creep.

Far beneath the bridge a mountain-stream did boil and rumble,
And on that night did madly toss and tumble;
Oh! it must have been an awful sight
To see the great cataract falling from such a height.

It was the duty of Carl's father to watch the bridge on stormy nights,
And warn the on-coming trains of danger with the red lights;
So, on this stormy night, the boy Carl hobbled along
Slowly and fearlessly upon his crutches, because he wasn't strong.

He struggled on manfully with all his might
Through the fearful darkness of the night,
And half-blinded by the heavy rain,
But still resolved the bridge to gain.

But when within one hundred yards of the bridge, it gave way with an awful crash,
And fell into the roaring flood below, and made a fearful splash,
Which rose high above the din of the storm,
The like brave Carl never heard since he was born.

Then; 'Father! father!' cried Carl in his loudest tone,
'Father! father!' he shouted again in very pitiful moans;
But no answering voice did reply,
Which caused him to heave a deep-fetched sigh.

And now to brave Carl the truth was clear
That he had lost his father dear,
And he cried, 'My poor father's lost, and cannot be found,
He's gone down with the bridge, and has been drowned.'

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poem by William Topaz McGonagall
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Abdul Abulbul Amir

The sons of the Prophet are brave men and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.

If you wanted a man to encourage the van,
Or harass the foe from the rear,
Storm fort or redoubt, you had only to shout
For Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame
In the troops that were led by the Czar,
And the bravest of these was a man by the name
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

One day this bold Russian, he shouldered his gun
And donned his most truculent sneer,
Downtown he did go where he trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Young man, quoth Abdul, has life grown so dull
That you wish to end your career?
Vile infidel, know, you have trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

So take your last look at the sunshine and brook
And send your regrets to the Czar
For by this I imply, you are going to die,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

Then this bold Mameluke drew his trusty skibouk,
Singing, "Allah! Il Allah! Al-lah!"
And with murderous intent he ferociously went
For Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

They parried and thrust, they side-stepped and cussed,
Of blood they spilled a great part;
The philologist blokes, who seldom crack jokes,
Say that hash was first made on the spot.

They fought all that night neath the pale yellow moon;
The din, it was heard from afar,
And huge multitudes came, so great was the fame,
Of Abdul and Ivan Skavar.

As Abdul's long knife was extracting the life,
In fact he was shouting, "Huzzah!"
He felt himself struck by that wily Calmuck,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

[...] Read more

poem by William Percy French
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Twin State

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poem by Caasder Fronds
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Epitaph on an Unread Verse after William Carlos Williams' Red Wheelbarrow

This is just to play on plum phrases
hibernating in your brainbox,
which your neurones were probably waiting for
to break free fast.

Forgive me their taste is delicious,
so neat and so bold.

An agèd poet with hollow laughter
swiftly sprayed her incisive syllables
in consonant activity and, yearning,
paid [s]lip service:

so much depends
upon lifelong learning's expectations,
an unread verse [s]pokes for comments,
reigns above lily-livered chicken-hearted critics
before a blank screen.

so much more depends
upon monochromatic ash clouds
glazed with silicates
beside Icelandic
eruptions.

Life is verse role-reversing uninclined ignorance
shadowing dis...inclined ink lined page.

(Revised 3 October 2009 and19 Aptil 2010)

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams 1883_1963

Variation on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
1 I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting.

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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Haunted By Tigers

NATHAN BEANS and William Lambert were two wild New England boys,
Known from infancy to revel only in forbidden joys.
Many a mother of Nantucket bristled when she heard them come,
With a horrid skulking whistle, tempting her good lad from home.
But for all maternal bristling little did they seem to care,
And they loved each other dearly, did this good-for-nothing pair.

So they lived till eighteen summers found them in the same repute,—
They had well-developed muscles, and loose characters to boot.
Then they did what wild Nantucket boys have never failed to do,—
Went and filled two oily bunks among a whaler's oily crew.
And the mothers,—ah! they raised their hands and blessed the lucky day,
While Nantucket waved its handkerchief to see them sail away.

On a four years' cruise they started in the brave old 'Patience Parr,'
And were soon initiated in the mysteries of tar.
There they found the truth that whalers' tales are unsubstantial wiles,—
They were sick and sore and sorry ere they passed the Western Isles;
And their captain, old-man Sculpin, gave their fancies little scope,
For he argued with a marlinspike and reasoned with a rope.
But they stuck together bravely, they were Ishmaels with the crew:
Nathan's voice was never raised but Bill's support was uttered too;
And whenever Beans was floored by Sculpin's cruel marlinspike,
Down beside him went poor Lambert, for his hand was clenched to strike.
So they passed two years in cruising, till one breathless burning day
The old 'Patience Parr' in Sunda Straits with flapping canvas lay.
On her starboard side Sumatra's woods were dark beneath the glare,
And on her port stretched Java, slumbering in the yellow air,—
Slumbering as the jaguar slumbers, as the tropic ocean sleeps,
Smooth and smiling on its surface with a devil in its deeps.
So swooned Java's moveless forest, but the jungle round its root
Knew the rustling anaconda and the tiger's padded foot.
There in Nature's rankest garden, Nature's worst alone is rife,
And a glorious land is wild-beast ruled for want of human life.
Scarce a harmless thing moved on it, not a living soul was near
From the frowning rocks of Java Head right northward to Anjier.
Crestless swells, like wind-raised canvas, made the whaler rise and dip,
Else she lay upon the water like a paralytic ship;

And beneath a topsail awning lay the lazy, languid crew,
Drinking in the precious coolness of the shadow,—all save two:
Two poor Ishmaels,—they were absent, Heaven help them!— roughly tied
'Neath the blistering cruel sun-glare in the fore-chains, side by side.
Side by side as it was always, each one with a word of cheer
For the other, and for his sake bravely choking back the tear.
Side by side, their pain or pastime never yet seemed good for one;
But whenever pain came, each in secret wished the other gone.

You who stop at home and saunter o'er your flower scattered path,
With life's corners velvet cushioned, have you seen a tyrant's wrath? —

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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Jonathan Nathan Go Do Your Homework

JONATHAN NATHAN GO DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

Little Jonathan Nathan looked at his mama.
“Juan wasn’t at school today.
His family are illegal immigrants. They’re being deported.”
“Good, they have no business being here.”

“He was looking through the fence at school,
And he was crying. Why was he sad? ”
“He’s being sent back to Mexico where he belongs.
You know he and his family are here illegally.”

“Are we here legally? ”
“Why Jonathan Nathan, of course we are! ”
And, I am a Daughter of the Revolution.
This country was built on such as we.”

“Were we here before anyone else? ”
“Well, no, there were some Indians and Mexicans.
But they don’t count. We count.”
“Why do we count and they don’t? ”

“JONATHAN NATHAN GO DO YOUR HOMEWORK! ”

“I can’t. I keep seeing Juan crying at the fence, ”
“We had a right to this land by the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny.
That means from sea to sea, we have a right to this land.
God gave us that right.” “MAMA! Did you hear God say so? ”

“JONATHAN NATHAN GO DO YOUR HOMEWORK! ”

“Mama, where did we come from? ”
“Well, they took us out of jails in England, mostly,
because we had to steal food for our families,
And they sent us to America.”

“Mama, that’s almost like Juan’s Mama and Daddy!
They came here to earn money to feed their family!
And they do work no one else wants to do.
They’re like we were long ago! ”

“JONATHAN NATHAN GO DO YOUR HOMEWORK! ”

“But Mama…” “We fought a war for this land and won.”
“Didn’t it belong to the Mexican people first? ”
“Well, yes, and we offered them money for the land,
But they refused to be reasonable about it.”

“Our teacher says our Constitution is the hope of the world.
I was just wondering, since they were here first,

[...] Read more

poem by Mary Naylor
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Miss Reid's Speed Seeds Misread Red Weed Barrow Greed Screed

Miss Reid's Speed Seeds Misread Red Weed Barrow Greed Screed

So much depends upon callow Monsanto’s
arrow minded rein reign
glazed with gain and, again, phrased with pain,

wheedling sallow farmers who see red
forced to furrow b[l]ushels of transgenic sterile crop seeds
on narrow plain
lots which soon lie fallow
rather than wide marrow
raised with rain
and fertile appetizers

Need greed's speed weed reeds
beside white ants’
terror might nest?

Fazed again, who chickens out of errors?

12 October 2009 robi3_1928_will5_0006 PVW_JNX
Parody William Carlos Williams 1883_1963 The Red Wheelbarrow

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon
a red
wheelbarrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

William Carlos WILLIAMS 1883_1963

WILLIAMS William Carlos 1883_1963 will5_0001_will5_0000 PXX_NXX The Red Wheelbarrow_So Much Depends
__________________

The Yellow Goldfish

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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The Brus Book XVIII

Only Berwick remains in English hands; a burgess offers to betray it]

The lordis off the land war fayne
Quhen thai wist he wes cummyn agan
And till him went in full gret hy,
And he ressavit thaim hamlyly
5 And maid thaim fest and glaidsum cher,
And thai sa wonderly blyth wer
Off his come that na man mycht say,
Gret fest and fayr till him maid thai.
Quharever he raid all the countre
10 Gaderyt in daynte him to se,
Gret glaidschip than wes in the land.
All than wes wonnyn till his hand,
Fra the Red Swyre to Orknay
Wes nocht off Scotland fra his fay
15 Outakyn Berwik it allane.
That tym tharin wonnyt ane
That capitane wes of the toun,
All Scottismen in suspicioun
He had and tretyt thaim tycht ill.
20 He had ay to thaim hevy will
And held thaim fast at undre ay,
Quhill that it fell apon a day
That a burges Syme of Spalding
Thocht that it wes rycht angry thing
25 Suagate ay to rebutyt be.
Tharfor intill his hart thocht he
That he wald slely mak covyne
With the marchall, quhays cosyne
He had weddyt till him wiff,
30 And as he thocht he did belyff.
Lettrys till him he send in hy
With a traist man all prively,
And set him tym to cum a nycht
With leddrys and with gud men wicht
35 Till the kow yet all prively,
And bad him hald his trist trewly
And he suld mete thaim at the wall,
For his walk thar that nycht suld fall.

[The marischal shows the letter to the king,
who seeks to avoid jealousy between Douglas and Moray]

Quhen the marchell the lettre saw
40 He umbethocht him than a thraw,
For he wist be himselvyn he
Mycht nocht off mycht no power be
For till escheyff sa gret a thing,
And giff he tuk till his helping

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poem by John Barbour
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The Demon Snow-Shoes (A Legend of Kiandra)

The snow lies deep on hill and dale,
In rocky gulch and grassy vale,
The tiny, trickling, tumbling falls
Are frozen 'twixt their rocky walls
That grey and brown look silent down
Upon Kiandra's shrouded town.

The Eucumbene itself lies dead,
Fast frozen in its narrow bed,
And distant sounds ring out quite near,
The crystal air is froze so clear,
While to and fro the people go
In silent swiftness o'er the snow.

And, like a mighty gallows-frame,
The derrick in the New Chum claim
Hangs over where, despite the cold,
Strong miners seek the hidden gold,
And stiff and blue, half-frozen through,
The fickle dame of Fortune woo.

Far out, along a snow capped range,
There rose a sound which echoed strange,
Where snow-emburthen'd branches hang,
And flashing icicles, there rang
A gay refrain, as towards the plain
Sped swiftly downward Carl the Dane.

His long, lithe snow-shoes sped along
In easy rhythm to his song;
Now slowly circling round the hill,
Now speeding downward with a will;
The crystals crash and blaze and flash
As o'er the frozen crust they dash.

Among the hills the first he shone
Of all who buckled snow-shoe on,
For though the mountain lads were fleet,
But one bold rival dare compete,
To veer and steer, devoid of fear,

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poem by Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake
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Blighted Trees

Like flowers in the spring, youth proves
that winter’s ended, and its bloom
can’t sense the distant horses’ hooves
that come to trample its perfume.

Like blighted trees, we’re doomed to die,
first at the top, although our roots
help us, when falling from the sky,
to greet the gloom without our boots.

Sexless, we lose all respect
from those we love, though we still cast
a shadow which they can’t dissect
till our life, like a day, has passed.

James Wood reviews “Exit Ghost” by Philip Roth in The New Yorker, October 15,2007:

Before his death, Jonathan Swift pointed to a blighted tree and said to a friend, “I shall be like that tree; I shall die first at the top.” Philip Roth’s dying animals, at loose in the twilit carnival of his late work, reverse Swift’s prophecy: they fear they will die from the bottom up. Their minds are ripe with sexual energy, with transgressive vitality, but their bodies are sour with decline. The aging David Kepesh, in “The Dying Animal, ” makes the mistake of growing infatuated with one of his many young conquests, and becomes the toy of her youthful sexual mastery. The elderly nameless protagonist of “Everyman, ” Roth’s previous novel, weakened by heart surgery, watches young women jogging along a New Jersey boardwalk, aware of the absurd disparity between his waxing mind and his waning body. He starts a foolishly flirtatious conversation with one of them, who then changes her route and never returns, “thereby thwarting his longing for the last great outburst of everything.”…
Suddenly, isolation in the Berkshires has given way to a “crazed hope of rejuvenation.” (The novel is set during the week of the election of 2004, and the bitter madness of those days is a kind of Forest of Arden in which Nathan’s antic moment can be played out.) Now Amy is pulled into the swirl, too, since Nathan must seek her out to hear her account of Lonoff’s “great secret.” He finds her in a grim walkup on First Avenue. Movingly, grotesquely, the dying woman who was once the object of Nathan’s desire has ceded her power to the thirty-year-old Jamie, and is now good only for the sexless respect of posterity. She will have a little place in literary history as Lonoff’s final partner, but there is no erotic gravitational pull on the seventy-one-year-old Nathan. Amy confirms Kliman’s hunch, but Nathan rejects the fact and, more important, the premise of the fact, which is that fiction can be read confessionally. If Lonoff was writing a novel about incestuous relations, Nathan argues, then that was the fiction he was making. A fiction, not a report. “Fiction for him was never representation, ” he tells Amy. “It was rumination in narrative form. He thought, I’ll make this my reality.”

poem by Gershon Hepner
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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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The Battle of Abu Klea

Ye sons of Mars, come join with me,
And sing in praise of Sir Herbert Stewart's little army,
That made ten thousand Arabs flee
At the charge of the bayonet at Abu Klea.

General Stewart's force was about fifteen hundred all told,
A brave little band, but, like lions bold,
They fought under their brave and heroic commander,
As gallant and as skilful as the great Alexander.

And the nation has every reason to be proud,
And in praise of his little band we cannot speak too loud,
Because that gallant fifteen hundred soon put to flight
Ten thousand Arabs, which was a most beautiful sight.

The enemy kept up a harmless fire all night,
And threw up works on General Stewart's right;
Therefore he tried to draw the enemy on to attack,
But they hesitated, and through fear drew back.

But General Stewart ordered his men forward in square,
All of them on foot, ready to die and to dare;
And he forced the enemy to engage in the fray,
But in a short time they were glad to run away.

But not before they penetrated through the British square,
Which was a critical moment to the British, I declare,
Owing to the great number of the Arabs,
Who rushed against their bayonets and received fearful stabs.

Then all was quiet again until after breakfast,
And when the brave little band had finished their repast,
Then the firing began from the heights on the right,
From the breastworks they had constructed during the night;

By eight o'clock the enemy was of considerable strength,
With their banners waving beautifully and of great length,
And creeping steadily up the grassy road direct to the wells,
But the British soon checked their advance by shot and shells.

At ten o'clock brave General Stewart made a counter-attack,
Resolved to turn the enemy on a diferent track;
And he ordered his men to form a hollow square,
Placing the Guards in the front, and teeing them to prepare.

And on the left was the Mounted Infantry,
Which truly was a magnificent sight to see;
Then the Sussex Regiment was on the right,
And the Heavy Cavalry and Naval Brigade all ready to fight.

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poem by William Topaz McGonagall
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The Two Rabbins

THE Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten
Walked blameless through the evil world, and then,
Just as the almond blossomed in his hair,
Met a temptation all too strong to bear,
And miserably sinned. So, adding not
Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught
No more among the elders, but went out
From the great congregation girt about
With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head,
Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed,
Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid
Open before him for the Bath-Col's choice,
Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice,
Behold the royal preacher's words: 'A friend
Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end;
And for the evil day thy brother lives.'
Marvelling, he said: 'It is the Lord who gives
Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells
Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels
In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees
Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees
Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay
My sins before him.'

And he went his way
Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers;
But even as one who, followed unawares,
Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand
Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned
By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near
Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear,
So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low
The wail of David's penitential woe,
Before him still the old temptation came,
And mocked him with the motion and the shame
Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred
Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord
To free his soul and cast the demon out,
Smote with his staff the blankness round about.

At length, in the low light of a spent day,
The towers of Ecbatana far away
Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faint
And footsore, pausing where for some dead saint
The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb,
Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom
He greeted kindly: 'May the Holy One
Answer thy prayers, O stranger!' Whereupon
The shape stood up with a loud cry, and then,
Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray men

[...] Read more

poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Friday Night (Life Poem)

Chica cailiente, straightest hair,
Image rich, asset poor tonight,
Sexy sirens, seeking Mr. Right.
On this Friday in Santo Domingo.

Single fathers with kids, eager
To earn a weekly happy moment,
For all the mistakes of the past,
On this Friday in Santo Domingo.

The other men are here hunting,
Searching, looking everywhere,
But, into their partners’ eyes,
On this Friday in Santo Domingo.

The girls here are too young,
The men are twice their age,
Desperately looking for love,
On this Friday in Santo Domingo.

poem by Ian Beckett
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The Greatest Showman

Cast: Rebecca Ferguson, Zac Efron, Hugh Jackman, Zendaya, Michelle Williams, Paul Sparks, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Diahann Carroll, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

trailer for The Greatest Showman, directed by Michael Gracey (2017)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Hopkins River

Centuries before the black people to this Land came
An unknown Country that did not have a name
The river now known as the Hopkins through the scrublands did flow
And that is going back many centuries ago.

The dinosaurs came at the twilight of the day
For to slake their thirst at the quiet water-way
And though the dinosaurs from the World are forever gone
The old Hopkins river keeps babbling on.

Through the flat brown Countryside to Warrnambool to the sea
The Hopkins has flowed for century on century
Through places dry and stony and places remote
The river has inspired the artist and poet.

For to sketch and sing of it in decades gone by
The river that has never stopped flowing through Summer's warm and dry
And though the artist and poet now with the deceased lay
The Hopkins keeps babbling on night after day.

Through places dry and stony and places remote and brown
On down to the ocean near Warrnambool Town
And the Seasons may come and the Seasons may go
But the old Hopkins river forever will flow.

poem by Francis Duggan
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Boundaries

Cast: Vera Farmiga, Christopher Plummer, Lewis MacDougall, Christopher Lloyd, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Kristen Schaal, Bobby Cannavale, Peter Fonda

trailer for Boundaries, directed by Shana Feste, screenplay by Shana Feste (2018)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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