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Tift
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flecti non frangi


« #60 : February 28, 2021, 02:24:45 AM »



Room with a View
By Stephen Swinburne


I live in a room by the sea,
where the view is great and the food is free.
Some of the tenants come and go.
Some I eat, if they're too slow.
One end of me is firmly locked.
The other end just gently rocks.
I live in a room by the sea.
It's perfect for an anemone.




Soniaslut
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« #61 : February 28, 2021, 09:57:55 PM »


                                                           Darraðarljóð
                                                      (Song of Darraðar)

                                               




From the Icelandic Njal's Saga.
A man called Darraðar has a vision:
Twelve Valkyries are weaving the fate of an ongoing battle on a grisly loom...



                                              Blood rains from the cloudy web
                                              On the broad loom of slaughter.
                                              The web of man grey as armour
                                              Is now being woven; the Valkyries
                                              Will cross it with a crimson weft.

                                              The warp is made of human entrails;
                                              Human heads are used as heddle-weights;
                                              The heddle rods are blood-wet spears;
                                              The shafts are iron-bound and arrows are the shuttles.
                                              With swords we will weave this web of battle.

                                              The Valkyries go weaving with drawn swords,
                                              Hildr and Hjörþrimul, Sangríðr and Svipul.
                                              Spears will shatter shields will splinter,
                                              Swords will gnaw like wolves through armour.

                                              Let us now wind the web of war
                                              Which the young king once waged.
                                              Let us advance and wade through the ranks,
                                              Where friends of ours are exchanging blows.

                                              Let us now wind the web of war
                                              And then follow the king to battle
                                              Gunnr and Göndul can see there
                                              The blood-spattered shields that guarded the king.

                                              Let us now wind the web of war
                                              Where the sacred banner is forging forward
                                              Let his life not be taken;
                                              Only the Valkyries can choose the slain.

                                             Lands will be ruled by new peoples
                                             Who once inhabited outlying headlands.
                                             We pronounce a great king destined to die;
                                             Now an earl is felled by spears.

                                            The men of Ireland will suffer a grief
                                            That will never grow old in the minds of men.
                                            The web is now woven and the battlefield reddened;
                                            The news of disaster will spread through lands.

                                            It is horrible now to look around
                                            As a blood-red cloud darkens the sky.
                                            The heavens are stained with the blood of men,
                                            As the Valkyries sing their song.

                                            We sang well victory songs
                                            For the young king; hail to our singing!
                                            Let him who listens to our Valkyrie song
                                            Learn it well and tell it to others.

                                            Let us ride our horses hard on bare backs,
                                            With swords unsheathed away from here!



..."And then they tore the woven cloth from the loom and ripped it to pieces,
each keeping the shred she held in her hands...
The women mounted their horses and rode away, six to the south and six to the north."






With thanks to Michaela Macha and her brilliant website.








Tift
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« #62 : March 02, 2021, 04:59:34 PM »




By Emily Bronte


Long neglect has worn away
Half the sweet enchanting smile;
Time has turned the bloom to gray;
Mold and damp the face defile.

But that lock of silky hair,
Still beneath the picture twined,
Tells what once those features were,
Paints their image on the mind.

Fair the hand that traced that line,
“Dearest, ever deem me true”;
Swiftly flew the fingers fine
When the pen that motto drew.



Soniaslut
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« #63 : March 03, 2021, 03:19:02 PM »


I am an incurable romantic
I believe in hope, dreams and decency

     I believe in love,
     Tenderness and kindness.

I believe in mankind.

     I believe in goodness,
     Mercy and charity
     I believe in a universal spirit
     I believe in casting bread
     Upon the waters.

          I am awed by the snow-capped mountains
          By the vastness of oceans.

               I am moved by a couple
               Of any age – holding hands
               As they walk through city streets.

          A living creature in pain
          Makes me shudder with sorrow
          A seagull’s cry fills me
          With a sense of mystery.

               A river or stream
               Can move me to tears
               A lake nestling in a valley
               Can bring me peace.

I wish for all mankind
The sweet simple joy
That we have found together.

I know that it will be.
And we shall celebrate
We shall taste the wine
And the fruit.

Celebrate the sunset and the sunrise
              the cold and the warmth
              the sounds and the silences
              the voices of the children.

Celebrate the dreams and hopes
Which have filled the souls of
All decent men and women.

              We shall lift our glasses and toast
              With tears of joy.


Leonard Nimoy

Soniaslut
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« #64 : March 05, 2021, 12:45:06 PM »

Hi Kelly    ;D

Good to see you found the Forum at last.
It's always good to have fresh, new input.
(Anticipating "The Chronicles", by the way).



Ode To Spot
Lieutenant Commander Data : USS Enterprise

Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses,
contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications,
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection,
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents.
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance,
and when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.

Oh Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display,
connote a fairly well developed cognitive array,
and though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.

DayDrinker
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« #65 : March 06, 2021, 09:17:34 PM »

More Often Than Sometimes - Shane Koyczan




If I knew what I know now then,
way back when we first met,
I'd point to the sunset and say,
“I drew that for you.
Every now and then you can catch it wrinkling in the rain.”
See, I can talk a good game from the stage,
but if you want to gauge the romantic things said when we're messing up the bed,
the best I can give you is,
“Oh my god,
we're totally humping.”
Regardless,
there's something beautiful about stating the obvious.

All of us do it in those moments when we can't believe it we have to say it.
It's like pinching yourself to make sure you're awake.
Take for example something as simple as touching someone;
we so often say, “You're so soft”.
And the person that touched them last may have said it for the twenty-eighth time;
but today,
I'm number twenty-nine.
And I'm not saying it for her benefit; I'm saying it for mine.
Because there's almost seven billion people in the world,
half of which are men, the number of them is 3.5 billion…
Pretty fucking cool that I was number twenty-nine.
And once upon a time I was first in line for a girl with freckles and strawberry blonde hair.
We loved like an electric chair hooked up to a nuclear power plant and plugged into the sun,
and everything we did had never been done.
I woke up with a smile the next morning that told the world
“I'm number one.”

I think of her more often than sometimes.
And if she ever hears this,
I want her to know that our first kiss tasted like pepper.
I met her on June 27th.
That year it was Yellowknife's first day of continual light
and despite the sun not setting that night we each went home alone,
Even though our parents told us, “Be home before dark.”
We could've stayed out for weeks.
Could've watched the way the sun leaks like liquid over the horizon, casting shadows over all the right places of a bargain bin where love was 75% off, and we were collectively 25 cents away from forever.
There are times in the North
when the sun never sets.
And it gets confusing when we ask ourselves questions like,
“Is it too late,
or too early?”
More often than sometimes we didn't care.
We loved like two games of solitaire waiting to be played by one another.
Her mother once asked me, “do you love her?”
And I told her if there were one million teachers breathing down my neck telling me that the answer is no,
I would say yes.
I guess that was enough for her,
because that girl's father palmed me a condom and wished me a happy birthday.
Even now there's no way to tell… was that awkward, or creepy?


We loved like two hit-men hell-bent on assassinating regret.
Her orgasm a wet gremlin multiplying itself into another.
Her younger brother knocked on the door asking, “What are you guys doing in there?”
And somewhere amid the awesome and the amazing we replied in unison,
“Studying.”
And technically we were.
I wrote notes on her skin in flesh toned permanent ink that would sink and set inside as I tried to underline the important parts of her:
Bellybutton,
birthmark,
collarbone.
Wrote notes explaining that hers felt like silk stretched over stone.
I said, “You're so soft.”
She smiled and said, “Duh.”
Followed by, “my bellybutton is not an erogenous zone.”
And I said, “I hate that word,” and she asked, “Which one?” and I said, “Erogenous.”
I told her, “There's beauty in the obvious, and your bellybutton,
that's where you started, it's where cells divided and grew into you
So let me do what students do best, you can test me later but right now let me study.”
She smiled and said,
“You're lucky this is a take-home test, boy.”

I think of the beauty in the obvious,
the way it forces us to admit how it exists.
The way it insists on being pointed out like a bloody nose, or how every time it snows there's always someone around to say,
“It's snowing.”
But the obvious isn't showing off,
it's simply reminding us that time passes,
and somewhere along the way we grow up.
Not perfect,
but up and out.
It teaches us something about time, that we are all ticking and tocking.
Walking the fine line between days and weeks, as if each second speaks of years, and each month has ears listening to forever, but never hearing anything beyond centuries swallowed up by millenniums, as if time was calculating the sums needed to fill the empty belly of eternity.
We so seldom
understand each other.
But if understanding is neither here nor there, and the universe is infinite,
understand that no matter where we go we will always be smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

All we can do is share some piece of ourselves,
and hope that it's remembered.
Hope that we meant something to someone.
My chest is a cannon that I have used to take aim and shoot my heart upon this world.
I love the way an uncurled fist becomes a hand again,
because when I take notes, I need it to underline the important parts of you:
Happy,
sad,
lovely.

Battle cry ballistic like a disaster, a lipstick earth-quaking and taking out the monuments of my hollow yesterdays.
We'll always have the obvious.
It reminds us who and where we are, it lives like a heart shape, like a jar that we hand to others and ask, “Can you open this for me?”
We always get the same answer:
“Not without breaking it.”
More often than sometimes, I say go for it.


« : March 08, 2021, 08:43:04 AM DayDrinker »
Tift
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« #66 : March 08, 2021, 08:40:31 AM »



The Armadillo
By Elizabeth Bishop

for Robert Lowell


This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars—
planets, that is—the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,

or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.

Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair

of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.

The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!—a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!




Tift
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« #67 : March 11, 2021, 01:20:38 AM »



A Woman Speaks
By Audre Lorde


Moon marked and touched by sun   
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.   
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love   
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus   
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities   
who am ageless and half-grown   
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths   
as our mother did
mourning.

I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic   
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures   
promised
I am
woman
and not white.





Audre Lord 1934-1992
self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,”

Tift
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« #68 : March 15, 2021, 02:48:04 AM »


By The Sea
By Emily Dickinson



I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –

And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands –
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground – upon the Sands –

But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt
And past my Boddice – too –

And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Upon a Dandelion's Sleeve –
And then – I started – too –

And He – He followed – close behind –
I felt His Silver Heel
Upon my Ancle – Then My Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl –

Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing – with a Mighty look –
At me – The Sea withdrew –



« : March 15, 2021, 03:20:52 AM Tift »

Tift
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« #69 : March 16, 2021, 08:00:28 AM »



After An Illness, Walking the Dog
By Jane Kenyon


Wet things smell stronger,
and I suppose his main regret is that
he can sniff just one at a time.
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

When I whistle he halts abruptly
and steps in a circle,
swings his extravagant tail.
Then he rolls and rubs his muzzle
in a particular place, while the drizzle
falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace
and Goldenrod bend low.

The top of the logging road stands open
and light. Another day, before
hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,
leaving word first at home.
The footing is ambiguous.

Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,
panting, and looks up with what amounts
to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,
nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

A sound commences in my left ear
like the sound of the sea in a shell;
a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—
imagines to the end that he is free.


 

 

Tift
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« #70 : March 18, 2021, 01:45:47 AM »



The Late Wisconsin Spring
By John Koethe



Snow melts into the earth and a gentle breeze   
Loosens the damp gum wrappers, the stale leaves   
Left over from autumn, and the dead brown grass.   
The sky shakes itself out. And the invisible birds   
Winter put away somewhere return, the air relaxes,   
People start to circulate again in twos and threes.   
The dominant feelings are the blue sky, and the year.   
—Memories of other seasons and the billowing wind;   
The light gradually altering from difficult to clear
As a page melts and a photograph develops in the backyard.   
When some men came to tear down the garage across the way   
The light was still clear, but the salt intoxication   
Was already dissipating into the atmosphere of constant day   
April brings, between the isolation and the flowers.   
Now the clouds are lighter, the branches are frosted green,   
And suddenly the season that had seemed so tentative before   
Becomes immediate, so clear the heart breaks and the vibrant   
Air is laced with crystal wires leading back from hell.   
Only the distraction, and the exaggerated sense of care   
Here at the heart of spring—all year long these feelings
Alternately wither and bloom, while a dense abstraction   
Hides them. But now the mental dance of solitude resumes,   
And life seems smaller, placed against the background   
Of this story with the empty, moral quality of an expansive   
Gesture made up out of trees and clouds and air.

The loneliness comes and goes, but the blue holds,   
Permeating the early leaves that flutter in the sunlight   
As the air dances up and down the street. Some kids yell.   
A white dog rolls over on the grass and barks once. And   
Although the incidents vary and the principal figures change,   
Once established, the essential tone and character of a season   
Stays inwardly the same day after day, like a person’s.   
The clouds are frantic. Shadows sweep across the lawn   
And up the side of the house. A dappled sky, a mild blue   
Watercolor light that floats the tense particulars away   
As the distraction starts. Spring here is at first so wary,   
And then so spare that even the birds act like strangers,   
Trying out the strange air with a hesitant chirp or two,   
And then subsiding. But the season intensifies by degrees,   
Imperceptibly, while the colors deepen out of memory,   
The flowers bloom and the thick leaves gleam in the sunlight   
Of another city, in a past which has almost faded into heaven.   
And even though memory always gives back so much more of   
What was there than the mind initially thought it could hold,   
Where will the separation and the ache between the isolated   
Moments go when summer comes and turns this all into a garden?   
Spring here is too subdued: the air is clear with anticipation,   
But its real strength lies in the quiet tension of isolation   
And living patiently, without atonement or regret,
In the eternity of the plain moments, the nest of care   
—Until suddenly, all alone, the mind is lifted upward into   
Light and air and the nothingness of the sky,   
Held there in that vacant, circumstantial blue until,
In the vehemence of a landscape where all the colors disappear,   
The quiet absolution of the spirit quickens into fact,   
And then, into death. But the wind is cool.   
The buds are starting to open on the trees.
Somewhere up in the sky an airplane drones.


Tift
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« #71 : March 22, 2021, 10:10:19 AM »


The True Born Englishman is a satirical poem published in 1701 by Daniel Defoe
defending the then King of England William, who was Dutch-born, against xenophobic attacks
by his political enemies, and ridiculing the notion of English racial purity



from The True Born Englishman
By Daniel Defoe


Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend’ring off-spring quickly learn’d to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus’d betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv’d all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen.

Which medly canton’d in a heptarchy,
A rhapsody of nations to supply,
Among themselves maintain’d eternal wars,
And still the ladies lov’d the conquerors.

The western Angles all the rest subdu’d;
A bloody nation, barbarous and rude:
Who by the tenure of the sword possest
One part of Britain, and subdu’d the rest
And as great things denominate the small,
The conqu’ring part gave title to the whole.
The Scot, Pict, Britain, Roman, Dane, submit,
And with the English-Saxon all unite:
And these the mixture have so close pursu’d,
The very name and memory’s subdu’d:
No Roman now, no Britain does remain;
Wales strove to separate, but strove in vain:
The silent nations undistinguish’d fall,
And Englishman’s the common name for all.
Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;
What e’er they were they’re true-born English now.

The wonder which remains is at our pride,
To value that which all wise men deride.
For Englishmen to boast of generation,
Cancels their knowledge, and lampoons the nation.
A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
A banter made to be a test of fools,
Which those that use it justly ridicules.
A metaphor invented to express
A man a-kin to all the universe.

For as the Scots, as learned men ha’ said,
Throughout the world their wand’ring seed ha’ spread;
So open-handed England, ’tis believ’d,
Has all the gleanings of the world receiv’d.

Some think of England ’twas our Saviour meant,
The Gospel should to all the world be sent:
Since, when the blessed sound did hither reach,
They to all nations might be said to preach.

’Tis well that virtue gives nobility,
How shall we else the want of birth and blood supply?
Since scarce one family is left alive,
Which does not from some foreigner derive.



Tift
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« #72 : March 23, 2021, 01:24:24 AM »



On Stella's Birth-day
By Jonathan Swift (c.1727)


     Stella this Day is thirty four,
(We won't dispute a Year or more)
However Stella, be not troubled,
Although thy Size and Years are doubled,
Since first I saw Thee at Sixteen
The brightest Virgin of the Green,
So little is thy Form declin'd
Made up so largely in thy Mind.
Oh, would it please the Gods to split
Thy Beauty, Size, and Years, and Wit,
No Age could furnish out a Pair
Of Nymphs so gracefull, Wise and fair
With half the Lustre of Your Eyes,
With half thy Wit, thy Years and Size:
And then before it grew too late,
How should I beg of gentle Fate,
(That either Nymph might have her Swain,)
To split my Worship too in twain.


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« #73 : March 23, 2021, 01:36:05 AM »



Phenomenal Woman
By Maya Angelou



Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,   
The stride of my step,   
The curl of my lips.   
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,   
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,   
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.   
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.   
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,   
And the flash of my teeth,   
The swing in my waist,   
And the joy in my feet.   
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered   
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,   
They say they still can’t see.   
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,   
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.   
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.   
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,   
The bend of my hair,   
the palm of my hand,   
The need for my care.   
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.



Vaughan
Hero Member
*****
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Reborn by her Master like larva to a Butterfly...


« #74 : March 23, 2021, 09:23:21 AM »

Bullies don't rule - Simon Hamill

Can you remember when we were at school,
There was always a bully or two.
Hiding behind their so called friends
Just waiting to pick on you.
Things haven't really changed that much,
Bullies still out there being mean.
But they haven't got friends to back them up
They hide behind a computer screen.
How sad their lives must really be,
When it's trolling that gives them their kick.
Cowards and bullies are what they are,
What they do,just makes me feel sick.
When we write,we write for fun,
And we know what we write,
Doesn't suit everyone.
But we won't put up with ridicule and doubt
From some sad bully,
Who doesn't know what their talking about.


Her kisses left something to be desired ... mmm ... the rest of her.
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