Related quotes: a slap in the face...

The Box!

a slap in the face of ignorance,
a small fire on a cold, cold night.
the brush in the artist's hand,
the hand that empties the litter box.
the gun that jams,
the coffee that boils.
the prayer of a small child,
answered in his mother's arms.

all i ask, and ever want to be...
forgotten form, formless remembered,
the box that holds the gift!

poem by Eric Cockrell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes

Music Box

(Translation To: Spieluhr)

A small human only pretends to die
It wanted to be completely alone
The small heart stood still for hours
So they decided it was dead
It is being buried in wet sand
With a music box in its hand

The first snow covers the grave
It woke the child very softly
In a cold winter night
The small heart is awakened

As the frost flew into the child
It wound up the music box
A melody in the wind
And the child sings from the ground

Up and down

song performed by by Rammstein
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sometimes When I Kneel Down In Prayer

Sometimes when I kneel down for prayer in church
she comes with small tottering steps,
folds her two small arms around me
and for moments the prayer of the chief elder ends
when with Gert, Gert she gives a small cry
and her joy cuts through heart and soul.

It's with a pouted mouth that she sometimes kisses,
looking up with small angelic eyes into mine
when maybe even in heaven there is silence
and for moments I am amazed
when her hand reaches out to mine,
as a small girl sometimes do.

poem by Gert Strydom
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Jerome

Each day brings its toad, each night its dragon.
Der heilige Hieronymus--his lion is at the zoo--
Listens, listens. All the long, soft, summer day
Dreams affright his couch, the deep boils like a pot.
As the sun sets, the last patient rises,
Says to him, Father, trembles, turns away.

Often, to the lion, the saint said, Son.
To the man the saint says--but the man is gone.
Under a plaque of Gradiva, at gloaming.
The old man boils an egg. When he has eaten
He listens a while. The patients have not stopped.
At midnight, he lies down where his patients lay.

All night the old man whispers to the night.
It listens evenly. The great armored paws
Of its forelegs put together in reflection.
It thinks: Where Ego was, there Id shall be.
The world wrestles with it and is changed into it
And after a long time changes it. The dragon

Listens as the old man says, at dawn: I see
--There is an old man, naked in a desert, by a cliff.
He has set out his books, his hat, his ink, his shears
Among scorpions, toads, the wild beasts of the desert.
I lie beside him--I am a lion.
He kneels listening. He holds in his left hand

The stone with which he beats his breat, and holds
In his right hand, the pen with which he puts
Into his book, the words of the angel:
The angel up into whose face he looks.
But the angel does not speak. He looks into the face
Of the night, and the night says--but the night is gone.

He has slept. . . . At morning, when man's flesh is young
And man's soul thankful for it knows not what,
The air is washed, and smells of boiling coffee,
And the sun lights it. The old man walks placidly
To the grocer's; walks on, under leaves, in light,
To a lynx, a leopard--he has come;

The man holds out a lump of liver to the lion,
And the lion licks the man's hand with his tongue.

poem by Randall Jarrell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Gift to Proceed

In the sky there are stars
Each one represents someone
Big, small, but alike
Hold the same love and the same light

A bond that will never end, but grow stronger
Is the bond of a child and the mother
Innocence is a gift He has given
A child is a gift that has that burden

Vulnerability is an emotion that takes its course
That bond, between mother and child, is the source
The door ahead holds the future and the key
This gift we speak of is the strength to proceed

This loss is not a loss to hurt you
This loss is the loss to look over you
The bond between child and the mother
Is the bond that never ends, but grows stronger

In the sky there are stars
Each one represents someone
Big, small, but alike
Hold the same love and the same light

Though they have the same love and light
One is stronger with all its might
The one that watches you while you sleep
Is the gift we speak of that will let you proceed

poem by Chatara Conway
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Dementia

My mother forgot how to swallow.

Before that, she lost my face and my name,
erased from her memory by sickness and age.
Her nurses complained she took too long to feed
They wanted a peg and a tube for the deed

My mother forgot how to swallow

She forgot her late spouse, disremembered her vow.
With the loss of the past there is no here and now.
Once she read to my child, then my girl read to her-
Until all the sounds were a meaningless blur

My mother forgot how to swallow

Jesus and Mary and her patron saint
would loved to have helped her, so weak and so faint,
but she had forgotten the simplest prayer -
the beads in her hand little use to her here.

My mother forgot how to swallow

The night nurses found her while making their round
She was cold to the touch, no pulse to be found
She stared, eyes wide open, at the cross on the wall
Perhaps the Messiah had come after all.

poem by John F. McCullagh
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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