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weezy
climber
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Jan 30, 2013 - 02:33am PT
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i love bad grammer
no dots or dashes for me
teachers are too smart
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
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Jan 31, 2013 - 11:50am PT
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AFS: gratitude for those two gems above. You added something to the world that matters!
Eric
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
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Jan 31, 2013 - 11:51am PT
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Nice take on another Greek who made a huge impact:
Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
~ C.P. Cavafy ~
(Collected Poems, Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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When you poets are caught in the flow of creation
All too often you yield to the siren temptation
Of structureless symbolic representation.
And though you’re avoiding versification
We’d be grateful if there were no need for translation.
We would love it if you could eschew obfuscation.
WM
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
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Love it Fossil!
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
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Apparently, owls are not vegan!
White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field
Coming down out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,
it was beautiful, and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —
and the grabbing thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys of the snow —
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes
to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows —
so I thought:
maybe death isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —
as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(House of Light)
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Majid_S
Mountain climber
Bay Area , California
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From Sohrab Sepehri , a Persian poet
Life is an apple, you bite it with skin
you must search for friend under rain
you found love under rain
You have to see all people under rain
I went to end of love.......saw things
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Cobfuscation.
Take a swan dive off the Diving Board and clarity comes quickly.
Take a look at the poor remains and you may feel sickly.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Pollock Pines, California
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no one reads this shite,
only the author admires
the stroke of his own pen,
it's absurd,
and our ridiculous is
massive enough
to require a two to one
approach to move it thru,
two deaths for every eerie life.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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And no one smells this shite, either.
Pen-pushers, ink-daubers, & thought-mongers all smell alike when they are dead. Period.
Never/always question longevity.
Never/always believe in eternity.
Always/never tie your shoes.
Always/never wear slippers.
Always look at Lovers' Leap.
Never go by without a peep.
It's one of your many gifts.
It's one of your many curses.
Like your unconvincing scorn
for all these silly verses.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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First pages of Wanderings from the Line of Duty by Chester F. Mattson.
He was a naval officer in charge of a battalion, beginning with its training during WWII and ordered the poems in a narrative manner, from the earliest days of the group to the last ones.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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The Sickness Unto Death
God went out of me
as if the sea dried up like sandpaper,
as if the sun became a latrine.
God went out of my fingers.
They became stone.
My body became a side of mutton
and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.
Someone brought me oranges in my despair
but I could not eat a one
for God was in that orange.
I could not touch what did not belong to me.
The priest came,
he said God was even in Hitler.
I did not believe him
for if God were in Hitler
then God would be in me.
I did not hear the bird sounds.
they had left.
I did not see the speechless clouds,
I saw only the little white dish of my faith
breaking in the crater.
I kept sayng:
I've got to have something to hold on to.
People gave me Bibles, crucifixes,
a yellow daisy,
but I could not touch them,
I who was a house full of bowel movement,
I who was a defaced altar,
I who wanted to crawl toward God
could not move nor eat bread.
So I ate myself,
bite by bite, and the tears washed me,
wave after cowardly wave,
swallowing canker after canker
and Jesus stood over me looking down
and He laughed to find me gone,
and put His mouth to mine
and gave me His air.
My kindred, my brother, I said
and gave the yellow daisy
to the crazy woman in the next bed.
--Anne Sexton/The Awful Rowing Toward God
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Feb 10, 2013 - 02:13am PT
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTrQ58vHBkw
Working on the New Railroad
ROWING
A story, a story!
(Let it go. Let it come.)
I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world.
First came the crib
with its glacial bars.
Then dolls
and the devotion to their plastic mouths.
Then there was school,
the little straight rows of chairs,
blotting my name over and over,
but undersea all the time,
a stranger whose elbows wouldn’t work.
Then there was life
with its cruel houses
and people who seldom touched--
though touch is all--
but I grew,
like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew,
and then there were many strange apparitions,
the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison
and all of that, saws working through my heart, but I grew, I grew,
and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I’d say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyeball,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that the island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat inside of me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it.
As the African says:
This is my tale which I have told,
if it be sweet, if it be not sweet,
take somewhere else and let some return to me.
This story ends with me still rowing.
THE ROWING ENDETH
I’m mooring my rowboat
at the dock of the island called God.
This dock is made in the shape of a fish
and there are many boats moored
at many different docks.
“It’s okay,” I say to myself,
with blisters that broke and healed
and broke and healed--
saving themselves over and over.
And salt sticking to my face and arms like
a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca.
I empty myself from my wooden boat
and onto the flesh of The Island.
“On with it!” He says and thus
we squat on the rocks by the sea
and play—can it be true--
a game of poker.
He calls me.
I win because I hold a royal straight flush.
He wins because He holds five aces.
A wild card had been announced
but I had not heard it
being in such a state of awe
when He took out the cards and dealt.
As He plunks down His five aces
and I sit grinning at my royal flush,
He starts to laugh,
the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth
and into mine,
and such laughter that He doubles right over me
laughing a Rejoice-Chorus at our two triumphs.
Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs
the sea laughs. The Island laughs.
The Absurd laughs.
Dearest dealer,
I with my royal straight flush,
love you so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha
and lucky love.
--Anne Sexton
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Feb 10, 2013 - 02:39am PT
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weezy
this goes with the poem at the top o' this page
THE WALL
Nature is full of teeth
that come in one by one, then
decay, fall out.
In nature nothing is stable,
all is change, bears, dogs, peas, the willow,
all disappear. Only to be reborn.
rocks crumble, make new forms,
ocians move the continents,
mountains rise up and down like ghosts
yet all is natural, all is change.
As I write this sentence
about one hundred and four generations
since Christ, nothing has changed
except knowledge, the test tube.
Man still falls into the dirt
and is covered.
As I write this sentence one thousand are going
and one thousand are coming.
It is like the well that never dries up.
It is like the sea which is the ditchen of God.
We are all earthworms,
digging into our wrinkles.
We live beneath the ground a
and if Christ should come in the form of a plow
and dig a furrow and push us up into the day
we earthworms would be blinded by the sudden light
and writhe in our distress.
As I write this sentence I too writhe.
For all you who are going,
and there are many who are climbing their pain,
many who will be painted out with a black ink
suddenly and before it is time,
for those many I say,
awkwardly, clumsily,
take off your life like trousers,
your shoes, your underwear,
then take off your flesh,
unpick the lock of you bones.
In other workd,take off the wall
that separates you from God.
--Anne Sexton
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Feb 15, 2013 - 12:23am PT
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Heart of Stone
Jagger & richards
There've been so many girls that I've known,
I've made so many cry and still I wonder why
Here comes the little girl,
I see her walking down the street.
She's all by herself,
Trying so hard to please, but
She'll never break, nerver break, never break, never break
This heart of stone. Oh, no, no, this heart of stone.
What's different about her?
I don't really know. No matter how I try
I just can't maker her cry.
But she'll never break, never break, never break, never break
This heart of stone. Oh, no, no, no, this heart of stone.
Don't keep on looking that some old way.
If you try acting sad, you'll only make me glad.
Better listen little girl,
You go on walking down the street,
I ain't got no love, I ain't the kind to meet.
But you'll never break, never break, never break, never break
This heart of stone. Oh, no, no, this heart of stone,
You'll never break this heart of stone.
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
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Feb 15, 2013 - 02:35am PT
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Girl from the North Country
By some guy named Dylan [Rosanne Cash's cover is particularly beautiful]
If you're traveling in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
For she was once a true love of mine.
Well, if you go when the snowflakes storm
When the rivers freeze and summer ends
Please see for me if she's wearing a coat so warm
To keep her from the howlin' winds.
Please see from me if her hair hanging down
If it curls and flows all down her breast
Please see from me if her hair hanging down
That's the way I remember her best.
Well, if you're traveling in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Please say hello to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine.
If you're travelin' in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine.
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
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Feb 15, 2013 - 02:35am PT
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Ann Sexton... Also the Aweful Rowing Towards God.
There goes my pal Odysseus again!
Eric
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Feb 15, 2013 - 04:52pm PT
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Jason: Here now! What's the row?
Odysseus: Oh wow! Then is now!
Jason: And how! Take a bow!
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weezy
climber
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Feb 15, 2013 - 05:08pm PT
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wow, mouse i've never read that anne sexton poem. wierd how the first stanza is so similar. i was reading a lot of cormac mcarthy when i wrote that purple prose at the top of the last page, hence the run on n on sentences.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Feb 15, 2013 - 09:21pm PT
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Weezy,--
How do you like my "Serrations," huh? It's a good rhyme for constellations.
I'm just trying to suggest that Wayne could be right, about rhyming and understanding the message. I'm not saying restructure. The ability to create is countered by the ability to control how and what you create. Daubs can't really paint. Poetasters can't rhyme and inspire at the same time. But it's easier to accomplish a poetic "do-over" than an artistic one.
It's a big challenge to use your noggin, sometimes. And noboby's got you on the clock.
Think of how Locker is challenged with that big head? He must have to go miles to get a memory, bring it back to central, and so on....
And the echoes in there must be horrbly distracting.
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