Dead Poets and Dark Caves

While this poet is not dead, as all the poets here are, she is talented. From the first line I was captured. Read and I think you'll see what I'm talking about.

A twitter friend, a fellow writer and a coffee obsessive buddy. And they said nothing good would come of Twitter.

A Sense of Absence

by Blue Summer



The moment’s full
of nearly dead deceptions,
and they are slick like glass, sharp
as shame in the morning, busy
lapping up their own intentions,
struggling to sustain
what cannot be salvaged.

Every word spoken
leaves a hole, a vacancy,
a thick absence.
And you stood—
And I stood—
but we were both
in different places, tangled
in that tight wire
neither of us could see—
but it’s the feeling that counts,
isn’t it?

In the end, it doesn’t matter,
not as I once thought. These openings
dissolve too quickly, and feelings
are inflamed, shut out, and shut off,
half their old size, bent
into nothing and beyond it.

Something’s slid shut, convincingly
uprooting things that were never there,
and I’m left
in the cold blue moonlight, eyes full
of deep faults and blooming ice,
stuck in a rift
of apprehensive disappointment,
heartsick with these dwindling promises
and raging indifference.

At last,
I am made of terror, but the red, wincing fear,
clawed and bloody, is as untouchable
as a myth, but as abrupt
as a broken sentence. We have been
stripped out
of ourselves and each other,
and there’s no untangling
the bright monster who killed us both.






"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."- William Shakespeare

Le globe lumineux et frêle
Prend un grand essor,
Crève et crache son âme grêle
Comme un songe d'or.


J'entends le crâne à chaque bulle
Prier et gémir:—
«Ce jeu féroce et ridicule,
Quand doit-il finir?

Car ce que ta bouche cruelle

Eparpille en l'air,

Monstre assassin, c'est ma cervelle,

Mon sang et ma chair!»

Et maintenant dans l'anglais pour mes amis qui ne lisent pas Français!






Cupid and the Skull
by Charles Baudelaire and translated by William Aggeler




An Old Lamp Base

Cupid is seated on the skull
Of Humanity;
On this throne the impious one
With the shameless laugh

Is gaily blowing round bubbles
That rise in the air
As if they would rejoin the globes
At the ether's end.

The sphere, fragile and luminous,
Takes flight rapidly,
Bursts and spits out its flimsy soul
Like a golden dream.

I hear the skull groan and entreat
At every bubble:
"When is this fierce, ludicrous game
To come to an end?

Because what your pitiless mouth
Scatters in the air,
Monstrous murderer — is my brain,
My flesh and my blood!"




"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."- William Shakespeare

Venus and Adonis

I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my dear;
Feed where thou wilt, on the mountians or in dale;
Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

Yes, that Shakespeare class turned me from a girl who kind of got what he was saying to the girl who reads his words and thinks 'If only he were alive today, I'd so make that man mine!'

Happy sunday my friends!

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."- William Shakespeare

To A STRANGER
by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.



"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."- William Shakespeare

AND THOU ART DEAD, AS YOUNG AND FAIR
by Lord Byron

AND thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return'd to Earth!
Though Earth receiv'd them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor gaze upon the spot;
There flowers or weeds at will may grow,
So I behold them not:
It is enough for me to prove
That what I lov'd, and long must love,
Like common earth can rot;
To me there needs no stone to tell,
'T is Nothing that I lov'd so well.

Yet did I love thee to the last
As fervently as thou,
Who didst not change through all the past,
And canst not alter now.
The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow:
And, what were worse, thou canst not see
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

The better days of life were ours;
The worst can be but mine:
The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,
Shall never more be thine.
The silence of that dreamless sleep
I envy now too much to weep;
Nor need I to repine
That all those charms have pass'd away,
I might have watch'd through long decay.

The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd
Must fall the earliest prey;
Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,
The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it pluck'd to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.

I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade;
The night that follow'd such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:
Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd,
And thou wert lovely to the last,
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.

As once I wept, if I could weep,
My tears might well be shed,
To think I was not near to keep
One vigil o'er thy bed;
To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
To fold thee in a faint embrace,
Uphold thy drooping head;
And show that love, however vain,
Nor thou nor I can feel again.

Yet how much less it were to gain,
Though thou hast left me free,
The loveliest things that still remain,
Than thus remember thee!
The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread Eternity
Returns again to me,
And more thy buried love endears
Than aught except its living years.


"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."- William Shakespeare