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Waiting for the Barbarians
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
quote by Thomas Sowell
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.
quote by Matthew Arnold
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Emperor Of The Highway
I am the emperor of the highway
I wield the universal will
One might chance to overlook on my divineness
Unless Im sitting in the imperial poupe de ville
I am the emperor of the highway
Strapped with foolish mortals such as these
I need never indicate my intentions
I can stop and go and turn just as I please
For I am the emperor of the highway
Hold!
Methinks that thou hast driven too far
I am the royal prince of foreign sports cars
Better that I should drive a wheelchair or jog
Than to be blown off by a regal road hog
I am the emperor of the highway
(where did you ever get that gas sucking pig of a car? )
This time my friend, you are outclassed
(any real man would drive a stick shift)
For my uncle is the duke of the state police
(cut me off again and I will punch your lights out)
And he will place his royal boot upon your ass
(this is my exit, we shall meet another day)
Dont forget whos emperor of the highway
For I am the emperor of the highway!
song performed by by Todd Rundgren
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Best Emperor!
Besides poet, people birds, animals too love freedom;
Lion may be king of jungle but elephant is emperor!
This big, best emperor called gentle giant is humble
And accepts to bless devotes, escort Temple deities!
This huge animal emperor is kept as van in temple slot,
A humiliating sight to see, yet it humbly accepts the role!
For stomach satisfying food emperor surrenders, serves
And sustains with faith and gratitude to men and God!
A wonder to see freedom loving natural animal living so!
Is it a fate or destiny for the best emperor to live so here?
Child like and divine looking elephant is chiseled as God
Called as Lord Ganesha is animal, man and divine in one!
When will this big, best emperor get freedom from man
Know not, think I, whenever I see standing before Temple?
poem by Ramesh T A
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The Emperor Of Ice-Cream
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
poem by Wallace Stevens
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It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.
Neil Gaiman in Sandman
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.
quote by Neil Gaiman
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Hiroshima
Oh! The mushroom cloud
Oppenhiemer takes solace
In my Bhagwad Gita and
Quotes Lord Krishna
I have become death
The destroyer of Universe
The Emperor when told -
The old wooden palace
Reduced to cinders- Asks
What about my old Elm tree
For a palace can be built in a month
It takes a hundred years for
An Elm to fully grow
We will surrender says the Emperor
Why - asks the Diet
I cannot see the slaughter of -
My people.
Young army hotheads-thinking
Emperor has been ill advised
Ask the General to follow -
The Code of the Japanese Soldier
And overthrow the Emperor and the Diet
Sayeth the General-
You talk of the Code of the Japanese Soldier
The Japanese Soldier has but one code -
'He always obeys his Emperor'.
And commits
Harakiri
poem by Satbir Bakshi
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They do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races.
quote by Emperor Hirohito
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I am the Roman Emperor, and am above grammar.
quote by Emperor Sigismund
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
quote by Wallace Stevens
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Like A Sticky Phlegm
life gets too sticky
to my throat, and like a cough
i insist to expel it,
but life has its own rules,
you cannot expel it
like phlegm
there are consequences
causes and effects
there are dogmas that
fence the wild imagination
there are metaphors
that can be forgiven
these guilty feelings
of abandon and welcomes
fear the skies
and know the wisdom of the
burying grounds
listen to the wind
it speaks in madness
hear the song of the solo leaf
this one must be
for you, lonesome fellow.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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A Decision To Be Up
i have thrown the same
question to him
but the usual answer
had always been
his silence,
i guess he works
by the principle that the
emperor does not
talk to his subject
this time
i am the emperor
and he cannot
talk without my
permission
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Untitled Poem - I
Once, one of my students read a book we had.
She was doing a history assignment on
the decline and fall of the Roman Empire
and crying. When I asked her why
she said Because. All those people died.
I said that if you start to cry for the dead
You won’t have much time for anything else.
Besides, after all the city people were killed
or died off, because their cultures got too high,
the barbarians kept some peasants alive
for their food value. Some barbarian raped
some peasant woman who produced
a child who ultimately produced you
and me, so there is this family continuity,
so don’t cry, it’s obvious, look around!
This is the reason why we Americans
are a nation of peasants and barbarians,
poem by Alan Dugan
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Bystander
I am a bystander, a spectacle myself,
Who harms only when desired, fully desired;
I keep a stout opinion, after the love of another,
Minor opinions are aroused, after the love of people.
I lead and you expel, from the fountain that springs
From the earth so hot and angry, a bath has shaped
From my authority to celebrate the young nation.
By itself, a well has grown to expel and expulsion
Is wrong, too incorrect, for the water is not dirty.
A bath is my conjecture, the factor of worship,
Opinion after ideas fashions us afterwards.
poem by Naveed Akram
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Ben Franklin
Not a hero to revere,
like Washington or Paul Revere,
he made the French join in our spat
with George III, a diplomat.
The world prefers the men who fight
to those with intellect, who write.
The myths that we most love to tell
describe the men who made life hell
for those we hate, and don't delight
in helping us to fly our kite.
I only know one leader, Nero,
who died, he thought, an artist hero.
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Little Miss Emperor
you're not giving an inch you're not strung like wire your open arms they flinch joan crawford style treated like a towel inside you howl on some dark concrete midnight street you've built an altar that's quite complete your self control is damned amazing you're trying hard and i want you little miss emperor you really want to grow and you're alert, i know but babies mostly drown it's a company town cheat gods and joke attack your noble ghost i saw the best minds of my generation learn how to crawl across our nation conformity falls like one wet blanket look how we live and i want you little miss emperor little miss emperor trying to open doors
song performed by by Iggy Pop
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Frontiers
Oh yeah
Progress flys, into our lives
Got to find time, find time
Talk digit talk
Youre doin find
Machines never mind
They never mind
Out on the border
Of a changing skyline
We put hope in front of fear
And all the heroes
Have gone east of eden
We all need new frontiers
Ooh its a 3d rise
All tech-na-ca-jive
Talk a video dive
War is for fools
Crisis is cool
Barbarians play
(chorus)
New, new, frontiers
Barbarians play away, away, away...play
song performed by by Journey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Ballades III - Of Blue China
THERE’S a joy without canker or cark,
There ’s a pleasure eternally new,
’T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark
Of china that ’s ancient and blue;
Unchipp’d, all the centuries through
It has pass’d, since the chime of it rang,
And they fashion’d it, figure and hue,
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
These dragons (their tails, you remark,
Into bunches of gillyflowers grew),—
When Noah came out of the ark,
Did these lie in wait for his crew?
They snorted, they snapp’d, and they slew,
They were mighty of fin and of fang,
And their portraits Celestials drew
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
Here ’s a pot with a cot in a park,
In a park where the peach-blossoms blew,
Where the lovers eloped in the dark,
Lived, died, and were changed into two
Bright birds that eternally flew
Through the boughs of the may, as they sang;
’T is a tale was undoubtedly true
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
ENVOY
Come, snarl at my ecstasies, do,
Kind critic; your “tongue has a tang,”
But—a sage never heeded a shrew
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
poem by Andrew Lang
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