I Think It Might Be Time For POEMS

Vann Diras

this had me blubbering like a fool so i figure it is time for a POETRY THREAD

shane koyczan - move pen move

Stay.
That's what mothers say when their sons and daughters go away, they say stay.
My mother said go.
So I wasn't there the night she fell out of her wheelchair, so frustrated that she amputated her own legs, or rather tried to with a steak knife.
Her life leaking out on the white floor blossoming like roses in the snow.
Our relationship was an anthem composed of words like "gotta go".
So we went.
And sent our regards on postcards from other places we'd been with stories about all the things we'd seen, that's how it was with you and I; why say good bye when we could still write.
But then it took your hands.
We should've practiced our goodbyes, because then it took your eyes. And I was somewhere, in the middle of nowhere watching the sun rise over a stop sign placed down the centre line of a highway filled with sudden turns for the worse.
Running back home 'cause I gotta play nurse.
Gotta figure out which pill alleviates which pain, which part of your brain is being used for a boxing bag as your body became a never ending game of freeze tag, taking place in an empty playground.
I was left looking for your limbs in a lost and found, and I couldn't set you free.
So we just sat there.
Our heads bent towards each other like flowers in the small hours of the morning, while light wandered in like a warning that time is passing and you right along with it,
Bit by bit every day.
And all I could say is if I could I would write you some way out of this, but my gift is useless. And you said no.
Write me a poem to make me happy.
So I write.
Move pen move,
Write me a bedroom where cures make love to our cancers... But my mother just motions to a bottle full of answers and says "help me go".
And now I know something of how a piano must feel when it looks at the fireplace to see sheet music being used for kindling,
Smoke signalling the end of some song that I thought it would take too long to learn. Now I just sit here watching you burn away all those notes I never had a chance to play, to hear the music of what you had to say.
I count out the pills just to see if I can do it.
I can't even get halfway through it before I turn back into your son and say
Stay.
I could hook up my heart to your ears, and let my tears be your morphine drip because maybe it's easier to let you slip away than it is to say goodbye.
So I hold my breath.
Because in the count down to death the question of "why" melts into "when".
How much time do we have left, because if I knew what I know now then...
Move pen move, write me a mountain.
Because headstones are not big enough.
My mother says stop it,
Write me a poem to make me happy.
So I write this.
Stay.
She smiles and says, "gotta go".
I know.
Goodbye.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nPbVM8kgR4&feature=related

poetry, yes

Butler For Life #1

I just read this one yesterday, and it is amazing
ee cummings:
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

Grey Ghost

Les Murray wrote:

An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow

The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.

The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets
which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:
There's a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.

The man we surround, the man no one approaches
simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps
not like a child, not like the wind, like a man
and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even
sob very loudly—yet the dignity of his weeping

holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
longing for tears as children for a rainbow.

Some will say, in the years to come, a halo
or force stood around him. There is no such thing.
Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us

trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.

Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit—
and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand
and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;
as many as follow her also receive it

and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea—
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

#pipe

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman was a boss.

Grey Ghost

Ted Kooser wrote:

After Years

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

Vann Diras

#pipe wrote: »

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman was a boss.

hm yes go on go on

Ubik

so much depends
upon

Orikaeshigitae

i could not speak, and my eyes failed, i was
neither living nor dead, and i knew nothing
looking into the heart of light, the silence
od`und leer das meer

Jordyn

Here is the sonnet Butler wrote for me for Solid Saints. It is based on this post from my Wasted in the Wasteland Fallout blog.

In ragged garments, as a slave would dress,
I yielded all my weapons at the gate
"This better be one sweet-ass ammo press"
I vowed, "or else I'll scourge The Pitt with hate."
They handed me a worn out, rented gun
and made me play their stupid death-match sport
I blew each fighter's brain out, one by one,
To make it clear I'm not the fuck-with sort.
And when I sought to cure the sickened slaves
The key component was a baby's life!
I snatched the tot, dodged countless bullet waves
and closed the deal before I drew new strife
Homicide, in balance, is a trifle,
when it yields more ammo for your rifle.

sarukun

I am not a big fan of modernist poets.

Virginia Woolf makes me want to hit people with bricks.

Wet book? How about fuck you.

Swill

i've found these teeth don't work anymore

sarukun

Jordyn wrote: »

Here is the sonnet Butler wrote for me for Solid Saints. It is based on this post from my Wasted in the Wasteland Fallout blog.

In ragged garments, as a slave would dress,
I yielded all my weapons at the gate
"This better be one sweet-ass ammo press"
I vowed, "or else I'll scourge The Pitt with hate."
They handed me a worn out, rented gun
and made me play their stupid death-match sport
I blew each fighter's brain out, one by one,
To make it clear I'm not the fuck-with sort.
And when I sought to cure the sickened slaves
The key component was a baby's life!
I snatched the tot, dodged countless bullet waves
and closed the deal before I drew new strife
Homicide, in balance, is a trifle,
when it yields more ammo for your rifle.

This is brilliant and Butler should be carried on our shoulders and lauded as a Warrior Poet deserves.

Swill

it gets run over by a van.
you find it at the side of the road
and bury it.
you feel bad about it.
you feel bad personally,
but you feel bad for your daughter
because it was her pet,
and she loved it so.
she used to croon to it
and let it sleep in her bed.
you write a poem about it.
you call it a poem for your daughter,
about the dog getting run over by a van
and how you looked after it,
took it out into the woods
and buried it deep, deep,
and that poem turns out so good
you're almost glad the little dog
was run over, or else you'd never
have written that good poem.
then you sit down to write
a poem about writing a poem
about the death of that dog,
but while you're writing you
hear a woman scream
your name, your first name,
both syllables,
and your heart stops.
after a minute, you continue writing.
she screams again.
you wonder how long this can go on.

zimfan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0W7Jbc_Vhw

#pipe

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Orikaeshigitae

:^:

Desktop Hippie

Roses are red
Violets are Blue
My mind is blank
And so is my verse

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

D.H. Lawrence

Swill

He tried to spit out the truth;
Dry-mouthed at first,
He drooled and slobbered in the end;
Truth dribbling his chin.

Swill

if you're not careful girl,
i won't hesitate to choke on your snake tongue
it will be grand
like i was born yesterday and today
a shit eating grin on my shit eating face
throat spasming, losing air
as i show you what it means to be Tough

Antimatter

there once was a green dragon
who spotted a horse-drawn wagon
there was a big mess
I am sad to confess
he drank the remains from a flagon

#pipe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTWUYhLBg_A

Evander

I'm posting my own poetry because I don't even give a fuck.

Bananitary Evolution
By Evan M. Rosenberg

Bananas never evolved.
They were developed in a secret government lab,
By the evil Dr. Tallyman;
Designed to call in to question
The origins of our species.

Perfect for grasping
With primate appendage,
The banana stands testament to both sides.
Suggesting evidence toward both
Adaption and design.

Dr. Tallyman would never see
His freakish fruit's fruition for himself, for
Working late one night,
He spliced the wrong line of genetic code
And became the world's first banana slug.

Monkeyfeet

I really liked that first one.

I often feel that for being an English major I don't have a strong enough appreciation of poetry. I dig me some Robert Frost though

Aneurhythmia

Orikaeshigitae wrote: »

i could not speak, and my eyes failed, i was
neither living nor dead, and i knew nothing
looking into the heart of light, the silence
od`und leer das meer

I know this is wrong, but I can't put my finger on it. I wouldn't have even got half of that from memory, so I'm not gonna look it up just for the sake of being an ass.

Desktop Hippie

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

Evander

I am currently in the midst of writing a seven piece poem about a ghost ship. This is not that poem.

Live In The Moment
By Evan M. Rosenberg

In a moment:
Your pinky finger outstretched
At more than half past the fated hour
I feel a flutter upon my hand
And disappointment turns to ecstacy
I am ecstatic

A whole night's turmoil is overturned
In that one single instant.
Worries of mistakes made or
What to have for breakfast
Are suddenly irrelevant
In the face of the simplest of actions.

Too determined to be a mistake,
I know this is what I've been waiting for
For hours
For months
For my life
In this moment, it all falls in to place.

Later I will feel different.
I will miss you
I will mourn us
I will run away from the scent of your perfume
But when I am at my darkest I can still take solace
In a moment.

Langly

Aneurhythmia

Desktop Hippie wrote: »

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

Going to save this from the bottom of the last page, because I like Larkin.

Grey Ghost

#pipe wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTWUYhLBg_A

Yes yes yes

Evander

This is it, because I actually hate doing this, but, you know, rule of threes. I need to stop being self depricating, and actually get back to part V of the poem I'm working on.

A Star Wars Fan Laments
by Evan Rosenberg

We pay for the privilege of disappointment
again and again.
And again.

Lucas, that cur!
Thinks he can play
with retroactive-continuity
just because he hold the rights?

We try to resist but the marketing,
like a carnival barker of yore,
refuses to be ignored.

Come one, Come all,
to the Ret-Con Carnival!

SEE
the story of a smuggler turned hero,
turned.
Now he’s only hero.
Asking questions first, and shooting later.

SEE
evil incarnate
as a whiny orphan,
complaining of sand.

SEE
the old ghost now young,
meaning penance undone.

SEE
deep narrative make way
for simplified feel-good drivel
and flash-bang special effects.

Look how he tempts
us with brighter colors.
Look how he lures
us with remastered sounds.
Until we submit to his new visions, leaving
our own at the door.

See Lucas do it again and again.
And again.

Desktop Hippie

Parsley

1. The Cane Fields

There is a parrot imitating spring
in the palace, its feathers parsley green.
Out of the swamp the cane appears

to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General
searches for a word; he is all the world
there is. Like a parrot imitating spring,

we lie down screaming as rain punches through
and we come up green. We cannot speak an R—
out of the swamp, the cane appears

and then the mountain we call in whispers Katalina.
The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads.
There is a parrot imitating spring.

El General has found his word: perejil.
Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining
out of the swamp. The cane appears

in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.
And we lie down. For every drop of blood
there is a parrot imitating spring.
Out of the swamp the cane appears.


2. The Palace

The word the general’s chosen is parsley.
It is fall, when thoughts turn
to love and death; the general thinks
of his mother, how she died in the fall
and he planted her walking cane at the grave
and it flowered, each spring stolidly forming
four-star blossoms. The general

pulls on his boots, he stomps to
her room in the palace, the one without
curtains, the one with a parrot
in a brass ring. As he paces he wonders
Who can I kill today. And for a moment
the little knot of screams
is still. The parrot, who has traveled

all the way from Australia in an ivory
cage, is, coy as a widow, practising
spring. Ever since the morning
his mother collapsed in the kitchen
while baking skull-shaped candies
for the Day of the Dead, the general
has hated sweets. He orders pastries
brought up for the bird; they arrive

dusted with sugar on a bed of lace.
The knot in his throat starts to twitch;
he sees his boots the first day in battle
splashed with mud and urine
as a soldier falls at his feet amazed—
how stupid he looked!— at the sound
of artillery. I never thought it would sing
the soldier said, and died. Now

the general sees the fields of sugar
cane, lashed by rain and streaming.
He sees his mother’s smile, the teeth
gnawed to arrowheads. He hears
the Haitians sing without R’s
as they swing the great machetes:
Katalina, they sing, Katalina,

mi madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows
his mother was no stupid woman; she
could roll an R like a queen. Even
a parrot can roll an R! In the bare room
the bright feathers arch in a parody
of greenery, as the last pale crumbs
disappear under the blackened tongue. Someone

calls out his name in a voice
so like his mother’s, a startled tear
splashes the tip of his right boot.
My mother, my love in death.
The general remembers the tiny green sprigs
men of his village wore in their capes
to honor the birth of a son. He will
order many, this time, to be killed

for a single, beautiful word.

Rita Dove

On October 2, 1937, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), dictator of the Dominican Republic, ordered 20,000 people killed because they could not pronounce the letter “r” in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley.

Vann Diras

need more spoken word

Grey Ghost

Here is part 1 of Shel Silverstein's "The Devil and Billy Markham"

The Devil walked into Linebaugh's on a rainy Nashville night
While the lost souls sat and sipped their soup in the sickly yellow neon light.
And the Devil, he looked around the room, then got down on his knees.
He says, "Is there one among you scum who'll roll the dice with me?"
Red, he just strums his guitar, pretending not to hear.
And Eddie, he just looks away and takes another sip of beer.
Vince, he says, "Not me, I'll pass. I've had my share of hell,"
And scribbling on a napkin, some song he was sure would sell.
Ronnie just kept whisperin' low to the snuff queen who clutched at his sleeve.
And somebody coughed -- and the Devil scoffed -- and turned on his heel to leave.
"Hold on", says a voice from the back of the room," 'fore you walk out that door.
If you're lookin' for some action, friend, well, I've rolled some dice before."
And there stood Billy Markham, he'd been on the scene for years,
Singin' all them raunchy songs that the town didn't want to hear.
He'd been cut and bled a thousand time, and his eyes were wise and sad,
And all his songs were the songs of the street, and all his luck was bad.
"I know you," says Billy Markham, "from many a dark and funky place,
But you always spoke in a different voice and wore a different face.
While me, I've gambled here on Music Row with hustlers and with whores,
And, hell, I ain't afraid to roll them devilish dice of yours."
"Well, then, get down," says the Devil, "just as if you was gonna pray,
And take these dice in your luckless hand and I'll tell you how this game is played.
You get one roll -- and you bet your soul -- and if you roll thirteen you win,
And all the joys of flesh and gold are yours to touch and spend.
But if that thirteen don't come up, then kiss your ass goodbye
And will your useless bones to God, 'cause your goddam soul is mine!
"Thirteen?" says Billy Markham. "Hell, I've played in tougher games.
I've loved ambitious women and I've rode on wheel-less trains.
So gimme room, you stinkin' fiend, and let it all unwind.
Nobody's ever rolled a thirteen yet, but this just might be the time."
Then Billy Markham, he takes the dice, and the dice feel as heavy as stones.
"They should, they should," the Devil says, "'cause they're carved from Jesus' bones."
And Billy Markham turns the dice and the dice, they have no spots.
"I'm sorry," says the Devil, "but they're the only dice I got."
"Well, shit," says Billy Markham. "Now, I really don't mean to bitch,
But I never thought I'd stake my roll in a sucker's game like this."
"Well, then, walk off," says the Devil. "Nobody's tied you down."
"Walk off where?" says Billy Markham. "It's the only game in town.
But I just wanna say 'fore I make my play, that if I should chance to lose,
I will this guitar to some would-be star who'll play some honest blues,
Who ain't afraid to sing the words like damn or shit or fuck
And who ain't afraid to put his ass on the stage where he makes his bucks.
But if he plays this guitar safe, and sings some sugary lies,
I'll haunt him till we meet in hell -- now, gimme them fuckin' dice."
And Billy Markham shakes the dice and yells, "Come on, thirteen!"
And the dice, they roll -- and come up blank. "You lose!" the Devil screams.
"But I really must say 'fore we go our way that I really do like your style.
Of all the fools I've played and beat, you're the first one who lost with a smile."
"Well, I'll tell you somethin'," Billy Markham says. "Those odds weren't too damn bad.
In fourteen years on Music Row, that's the best damn chance I've had."
Then, arm in arm, Billy Markham and the Devil walk out through Linebaugh's door,
Leavin' Billy's old beat-up guitar there on the floor. And if you go into Linebaugh's now, you can see it there today
Hangin' from a nail on that wall of peelin' gray
Billy Markham's old guitar...
That nobody dares to play.

And here's the rest

Antimatter

uhhhhhhhh GG that is very NSFW
like, boobs

Grey Ghost

Shit, I didn't see all the illustrations

Stand by

Desktop Hippie

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grady
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so ryly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell he so,
And they are better for her praise.

Robert Frost

Grey Ghost

This is one I did a while back on Google Scribe

I don't really know what I was going for at the start there

The road runs for miles along the empty coast
and the smoke stings my eyes as I take another sip of my drink

The night air crackles with the first hint of autumn
and she stands by the window and watches the moon as it rises
and I say to the barman let me have another one of these

I take it to her and we drink without a lot of talk
there is nothing to discuss, not here, not now

far away I hear the sound of a gun or a car accident,
impossible to tell
She turns, bites her lip, and a few tears shine in the night

I take another sip
and say
Deal With It

Desktop Hippie

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

Ubik

this is the kind of poetry i'm into:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
-Justice Robert H. Jackson, W.V. Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943)

Kusuguttai

my favorite two poems:

T.S. Eliot wrote:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown

and

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Kusuguttai

another great poem is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner but it's really long