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Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female

Posted: Jan 17, 2022 - 1:30pm

ScottN wrote:

Good Bones

Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and Iâve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
Iâll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and thatâs a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

A fave.

oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male

Posted: Jan 17, 2022 - 10:05am
Manbird wrote: I love it! Good. Make this place beautiful...

Manbird

Manbird Avatar

Location: Owl Creek Bridge
Gender: Male

Posted: Jan 17, 2022 - 9:58am

ScottN wrote:

Good Bones

Maggie Smith

I love it!

ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male

Posted: Jan 10, 2022 - 10:55am

Good Bones

Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female

Posted: Jan 5, 2022 - 6:15am

ScottN wrote:

Returning

EMILY DICKINSON I YEARS had been from home,
And now before the door,
I dare not open, lest a face
I never saw before Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, — just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there? I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear. I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced,
But never quaked before. I fitted to the latch
My hand with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there. I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.

ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male

Posted: Jan 4, 2022 - 4:37pm

Returning

EMILY DICKINSON

I YEARS had been from home,
And now before the door,
I dare not open, lest a face
I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, â just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced,
But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch
My hand with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there.

I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female

Posted: Jan 1, 2022 - 7:24am

NEW YEAR'S DAY

by Billy Collins

Everyone has two birthdays

according to the English essayist Charles Lamb,

the day you were born and New Year’s Day—

a droll observation to mull over

as I wait for the tea water to boil in a kitchen

that is being transformed by the morning light

into one of those brilliant rooms of Matisse.

“No one ever regarded the First of January

with indifference,” writes Lamb,

for unlike Groundhog Day or the feast of the Annunciation,

this one marks nothing but the passage of time,

I realized, as I lowered a tin diving bell

of tea leaves into a little body of roiling water.

I admit to regarding my own birthday

as the joyous anniversary of my existence

probably because I was, and remain

to this day in late December, an only child.

And as an only child—

a tea-sipping, toast-nibbling only child

in a colorful room this morning—

I would welcome an extra birthday,

one more opportunity to stop what we are doing

for a moment and reflect on my being here on earth.

And one more birthday might be a consolation

to us all for having to face a death-day, too,

an X in a square

on some kitchen calendar of the future,

the day when each of us is thrown off the train of time

by a burly, heartless conductor

as it roars through the months and years,

party hats, candles, confetti, and horoscopes

billowing up in the turbulent storm of its wake.

. from the book, "Ballistics," © Random House 2008

ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male

Posted: Jan 1, 2022 - 5:53am

Another Year

by Gary Johnson

Another year gone and the old man with the scythe

Is mowing closer. He hasn’t been subtle, has he.
Too many good people gone, and I could sit and cry
For them except that you look exceptionally snazzy
Despite the miles on your odometer,
As if you have a few more aces up your sleeve,
Maybe you were born under a lucky comet or
Maybe it’s the wine, but I do believe
When I look at you and take your hand you’re
Positively glowing. Maybe we’ve been sorry a
Long enough time and now we get some grandeur
And do our dance and sing our aria.
May this year bring us before it has flown
All we would have wished for had we only known.

GeneP59

GeneP59 Avatar

Location: On the edge of tomorrow looking back at yesterday.
Gender: Male

Posted: Dec 20, 2021 - 5:15pm
Tomorrow the winter solstice creeps up upon us Wearing wings of fractal flakes made of fluffy white snow It says that it needs to trust those of us To make all those worthy a happy warm glow

Manbird

Manbird Avatar

Location: Owl Creek Bridge
Gender: Male

Posted: Dec 20, 2021 - 2:31pm
Antigone wrote: Winterâs long shadows Creep up the hills, lit briefly As if by springâs fire.

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female

Posted: Dec 20, 2021 - 2:15pm
Winter’s long shadows Creep up the hills, lit briefly As if by spring’s fire.

ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male

Posted: Dec 10, 2021 - 6:21am
Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson My life closed twice before its close by Emily Dickinson My life closed twice before its close - It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female

Posted: Dec 7, 2021 - 2:56pm

The Thing Is

By Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female

Posted: Dec 7, 2021 - 2:56pm

Manbird wrote:

Mad Girl's Love Song
By Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Manbird

Manbird Avatar

Location: Owl Creek Bridge
Gender: Male

Posted: Dec 3, 2021 - 12:13pm

miamizsun

miamizsun Avatar

Location: (3261.3 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male

Posted: Dec 1, 2021 - 3:19pm

cptbuz wrote:

Fading gaze - W. LeTendre I see you sitting there
staring out that dirty window
Are you lost in the past
in a muddied cloud of memories
Faces without names
places just out of reach
Time is not your friend
when confusion sets in
I'll sit with you
make up conversations
I could talk the same talk
day after day
Your gaze treats me
like a stranger at your door
After 57 years together
I am still here for you
though you left some time ago.

dude

oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male

Posted: Dec 1, 2021 - 2:27pm

cptbuz wrote:

cptbuz

cptbuz Avatar

Location: Sacramento CA
Gender: Male

Posted: Dec 1, 2021 - 11:47am

Fading gaze - W. LeTendre

I see you sitting there
staring out that dirty window
Are you lost in the past
in a muddied cloud of memories
Faces without names
places just out of reach
Time is not your friend
when confusion sets in
I'll sit with you
make up conversations
I could talk the same talk
day after day
Your gaze treats me
like a stranger at your door
After 57 years together
I am still here for you
though you left some time ago.

R_P

Posted: Nov 21, 2021 - 1:37pm
Officer Prodigy

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female

Posted: Nov 19, 2021 - 5:22pm

Self-Compassion
by James Crews

My friend and I snickered the first time
we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man,
call himself honey, with a hand placed
over his heart to illustrate how we too
might become more gentle with ourselves
and our runaway minds. Itâs been years
since we sat with legs twisted on cushions,
holding back our laughter, but today
I found myself crouched on the floor again,
not meditating exactly, just agreeing
to be still, saying honey to myself each time
I thought about my husband splayed
on the couch with aching joints and fever
from a tick biteâwhat if he never gets better?â
or considered the threat of more wildfires,
the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream,
then remembered that in a few more minutes,
Iâd have to climb down to the cellar and empty
the bucket I placed beneath a leaky pipe
that canât be fixed until next week. How long
do any of us really have before the body
begins to break down and empty its mysteries
into the air? Oh honey, I saidâfor once
without a trace of irony or blush of shameâ
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.

Page: 1, 2, 3 ... 206, 207, 208 Next

Good Bones

Good Bones

Good Bones

Returning

Returning

My life closed twice before its close

by Emily Dickinson

The Thing Is