:: so i just finished a wicked 6 hour exam, and i just couldn't stand to study for my next one (wednesday) quite yet. i had to take a mind break. so here are a few of my favourite poems. for now at least :) ::
Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild, Women
Anne Sexton
Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
born expecting the kiss of mercy,
born with a passion for qui
ckness
and yet, as things progressed,
I learned early about the stockade
or taken out, the fume of the enema.
By two or three I learned not to kneel,
not to expect, to plant my fires underground
where none but the dolls, perfect and awful,
could be whispered to or laid down to die.
Now that I have written many words,
and let out so many loves, for so many,
and been altogether what I always was—
a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
I find the effort useless.
Do I not look in the mirror,
these days,
and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?
Do I not feel the hunger so acutely
that I would rather die than look
into its face?
I kneel once more,
in case mercy should come
in the nick of time.
I died for Beauty -- but was scare
Emily Dickinson
I died for Beauty -- but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining room --
He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied --
"And I -- for Truth -- Themself are One --
We Brethren, are", He said --
And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night --
We talked between the Rooms --
Until the Moss had reached our lips --
And covered up -- our names --
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
William Blake
Plate 5
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough
to be
restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place &
governs the unwilling.
And being restraind it by degrees becomes passive till it is
only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost. & the Governor
or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the
command of the
heavenly host, is calld the Devil or Satan and his children are
call'd Sin & Death
But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd Satan.
For this history has been adopted by both parties
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out. but t
he
Devils account is, that the Messi[PL 6]ah fell. & formed a heaven
of what he stole from the Abyss
This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to
send the comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build
on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he, who dwells
in flaming fire.
Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the
five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of
Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he
was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it
Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition
John Keats
The chuch bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crowned
.
Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp -
A chill as from a tomb - did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That 'tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion - that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.
And the sins of the fathers should be
Stephen Crane
And the sins of the fathers shall be
visited upon the heads of the children,
even unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate me."
Well, then I hate thee, unrighteous picture;
Wicked image, I hate thee;
So, strike with thy vengeance
The heads of those little men
Who come blindly.
It will be a brave thing
air and light and time and space
Charles Bukowski
you know, I've either had a family, a job,something has always been in the
way
but now I've sold my house, I've found this place,a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I'm going to have a place and the time to
create."
no baby, if you're going to create
you're going to create whether you work 16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you're going to create in a small room
with 3 children while you're on
welfare,
you're going to create with part of your mind and
your body blown away,
you're going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you're going to create with a cat crawling up your back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake,
bombardment,
flood and fire.
baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don't create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.
