an elegy: to my _________

:: 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.