En.Citatepedia^®.ro

Forgotten Accommodation

We climbed the narrow attic stair,
And entered rooms established there.
Thick grey dust lay across the gloom,
Many years spent without a broom.
Cobwebs hung in every place,
New occupants had filled the space.

On a shelf sat an old birdcage,
Tenanted in another age.
Chills swept in from a broken pane,
Small window letting in the rain.
A rickety stained brocade chair,
Seat and back were now threadbare.

Curtains frayed along their edges,
Hanging crooked. Also ledges
Nailed up on the damp crumbling walls,
Odour of abandoned mothballs.
Wallpaper, once with roses pink,
Now gave off a horrendous stink.

Forgotten accommodation,
In this lonely bleak location.
Empty now of occupation,
Who slept here, what was their station.
Just how hard was their daily grind,
So much history we could find.

Something scuttled along the floor,
Down the steps to the corridor.
A resident we had no doubt,
Some little local layabout
Who we had unkindly disturbed,
Leaving so quickly quite perturbed.

We climbed back down the attic stair,
Away from this poor mouse’s lair,
Back to the present and fresh air,
Off down a pleasant thoroughfare.
Happy that we wouldn’t have to see,
What their life turned out to be.

poem by Ernestine Northover
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A Memory Of Love

I came upon a house so bare.
I knew there could be no one there.
I wished to enter so I knocked.
No one answered. The door was locked.
I saw a window through which I peered
and saw it looked just as I feared,
lonely, deserted, cold and musty
cobwebs hanging, everything dusty.

The need to go inside
was an urgency I could not hide.
Should I break the door or shatter the pane?
Encouragement came when I felt the rain.
I entered slowly and looked around
amazed and astounded at what I found.
Every room was empty but for one,
a bedroom with chair facing towards sun.

Beside the chair was a frame
holding the picture of a girl with no name.
Curiosity got the best of me
so I turned it over and I did see
her name scribbled hastily.
'Janette, my love I give to you
this picture I love to sit and view.'
and then I placed it back.

The house was no longer cold to me
for it housed a loving memory.
I left it right beside the chair
as if the lover still was there.
Upon leaving the bedroom I closed the door
so it would stay as it was before.
My intrusion on this private place
as I exited left a smile on my face.

poem by Edwina Reizer
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North Infinity Street

The alarm clocks tick in a thousand furnished rooms,
tick and are wound for a thousand separate dooms;
all down both sides of North Infinity Street
you hear that contrapuntal pawnshop beat.

Hall bedrooms, attic rooms, where the gas-ring sings,
rooms in the basement where the loud doorbell rings;
carpeted or bare, by the rail at the head of the stair,
the curtains drawn, a mirror, a bed, and a chair,

in midnight darkness, when the last footfall creaks,
in northeast rain, when the broken window leaks,
at dawn, to the sound of dishes, the kitchen steam,
at dusk, when the muted radio croons a dream,

there, amid combs and the waiting shoes and socks,
and the bathrobes hung in closets, tick the clocks:
on the chest of drawers, on the table beside the bed,
facing the pillow, facing the recumbent head:

yes, from here to forever, from here to never,
one long sidereal curve of ticking fever,
all down both sides of North Infinity Street
you hear that contrapuntal pawnshop beat.

poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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Lonesome Farewell...

lonesome farewell...
wind blown dust,
cardboard boxes in the rain.
the doorknob broken,
the window nailed shut.

empty fields, briars and thorns.
a dead rabbit rotting
on the side of the road.
signs falling down,
tree limbs on the ground.

silence screams, waves of grief!
the smell of want, forgotten lips.
words cling like cobwebs
to the empty walls...
where are you now?

where are you now?

poem by Eric Cockrell
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The Garret

Within a London garret high,
Above the roofs and near the sky,
My ill-rewarding pen I ply
To win me bread.
This little chamber, six by four,
Is castle, study, den, and more,--
Altho' no carpet decks the floor,
Nor down, the bed.

My room is rather bleak and bare;
I only have one broken chair,
But then, there's plenty of fresh air,--
Some light, beside.
What tho' I cannot ask my friends
To share with me my odds and ends,
A liberty my aerie lends,
To most denied.

The bore who falters at the stair
No more shall be my curse and care,
And duns shall fail to find my lair
With beastly bills.
When debts have grown and funds are short,
I find it rather pleasant sport
To live 'above the common sort'
With all their ills.

I write my rhymes and sing away,
And dawn may come or dusk or day:
Tho' fare be poor, my heart is gay.
And full of glee.
Though chimney-pots be all my views;
'T is nearer for the winging Muse,
So I am sure she 'll not refuse
To visit me.

poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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Rain Keeps Fallin

I remember the night so well.
The rain was fallin but I just couldnt tell,
If it was you that was callin to my love-sick brain.
But the rain kept fallin on my window pane.
Out of the night the thunder rang in my ear.
I cant fight the feelin, lord, that brings forth my fears.
I wish it was over, lord, please stop the rain.
The rain thats fallin on my window pane.
The rain thats fallin on my window pane.
Every night the rains on time, I can feel it in this heart of mine.
But I dont know what to do.
Well, I guess I could go back home, cause you know back home is where I belong.
But it just aint home without you.
And I dont know what to do, baby.
Well, I guess Im a looser but it just dont seem fair.
I lost all my life so tell me, why should I care?
The night that you left me is the night that it came.
And the rains still fallin on my window pane.
The rain keeps fallin on my window pane.
The rain keeps fallin on my window pane.
You know the rain.
The rain keeps fallin on my window pane.
I said the rain.
The rain keeps fallin on my window pane.
You know the rain.
The rain keeps fallin on my window pane.
I said the rain.
The rain keeps fallin on my window pane.
You know the rain ...
The rain keeps fallin on my window pane.
... keeps right on fallin.
The rain keeps fallin on my window pane.
I said, the rain keeps fallin ...

song performed by by Grand Funk Railroad
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Hiding

—to my sister

Because the moon in late October made landmarks glow: the broken
gate, our yard

full of stones, the attic window

suddenly foreign, across its face
a blue dissolve. In spite of that, the farm

remained an arrangement (barn
behind the house, pond
across the road) and a girl sometimes

feels torn. We turned our dresses inside out,
ran into a grove. We played

you're blind, Molly, try to find me.
It was a family game: get left

in darkness. I climbed
up into the oak, listened for your voice
until my name became

a sound from the other side, from the poor
order of the world. I came back

because I had to. And believe me, you who are fragile
and so faithful, I hated to return

materializing through trees.

poem by Kate Northrop
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A Night in Their Attic

From this attic, the ceiling is
Almost kissing the floor
And the hapless heart is
No too far from a plethora of slumber
As I lay here, pensively wafting
In the smoldering rail tracks of oblivion
Darting to the final station: an abeyance

My sodden eyes swept the parameter
And it measured the expanse;
Everything was closer.
My emaciated chest
Can even rise to graze
The creamy phosphors of the ceiling
But there was a backdoor
Where everything slewed
Because in their attic
I was still
Bleak
Rolling in the gutters.

The clock didn't shifted
Its gears and triggered
A blacker serration of cinders
Plummeting with the pillars
Of my constitutions
Yet, I engulfed the humming air
Like I never tasted it
Because I wanted more life
And there could be one,
Stashed in these corners.

The moon didn't sprawled on her divan,
The sun didn't grind his maws,
And the crowd didn't fill
The maladroit patios,
But I was breathing
Between the floors
And the ceilings,
Restless from a revelry
And a lack of slumber
As how I wanted to be
Benumb from
Bereavement:
A life cloyed
By genial walls.

poem by Norman Santos
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Mother to Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

poem by Langston Hughes
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Up In The Attic

I took a room in a boarding house
In a seedy part of town,
I hadn't worked for a month or so
And was feeling rather down,
My girl had left with another guy
Who promised her thrills and rings,
While I could offer her take-away
Among other boring things.

I really felt I was down and out,
The insurance wasn't through,
I'd caught my arm in a roller, and
You know what that can do.
With plaster up to my elbow, I
Could get no sort of work,
So had to exist on the government,
And I felt like a prime jerk.

I'd always been independent
So my pride had taken a hit,
The landlord hurried me out
As soon as the rent was behind a bit,
The boarding house, it was ancient,
A Victorian red brick,
A mansion once, but converted
Into rooms, for the broke, and sick.

I sank in a deep depression,
I could barely go out the door,
Fish and chips was the staple meal
That I bought from the corner store,
I'd slink back in to my tiny room
And eat from the daily news,
The only things of the world outside
That I learned, were the column views.

I'd thought Denise was my passion,
My charm in a mundane life,
I'd thought she'd always be there for me
And asked her to be my wife,
But that was before the accident,
She'd hummed and hah'd, ‘We'll see! '
But set her star on the shiny car
Of the guy who came after me.

I lay and thought of her often,
I thought she was most unkind,
And tried to maintain my anger, but
Could not get her out of my mind.
What made it worse, as a sort of curse
Were the sounds from up above,
The guy, up there in the attic,
Laughing, joking and making love!

The girls tripped up in the evening,
Up the stairs, right past my room,
I heard them giggle and whispering
As I lay there, deep in gloom.
I wondered about the attraction,
Was he rich, this guy, or what?
So why was he there in a boarding house
In an attic - what had he got?

The music came through the ceiling,
I could hear them dancing there,
They kept me awake to the early hours
As I slumped in an old armchair,
They'd come in pairs, or one at a time
And they'd leave, but just on dawn,
After I'd heard the bedsprings creak
And a low, but sultry moan!

He and the landlord were thick as thieves
But I never caught sight of him,
I asked him once, ‘Who's the guy up there?
It sounds like he's running a gym! '
‘Now don't you bother your head, my lad,
He's a friend, and an honoured guest,
He don't take kindly to strangers, so
Just keep to yourself, it's best! '

I started leaving an open door
So I'd see the girls who came,
Dressed to kill in their mini-skirts
They all looked much the same,
One evening, one came very late
When I'd thought I'd have some peace,
She stopped by the door and looked at me,
And I blurted out, ‘Denise! '

She caught her breath and she looked at me
Then hurried on up the stair,
Determined she wouldn't talk to me
As I sat in a mute despair,
I thought at first to follow her
But I slammed the door, said ‘No!
I'm not going to play her silly games, '
But listened from down below.

The music played and I heard her voice,
Her laugh, but soft and sweet,
She certainly had no thought for me
As I slumped there, in defeat.
I heard the bedsprings creak at last
And I knew it was over then,
But she never came down the stairs that night
And I woke, just after ten.

I wanted to turn the light on, but
It seemed to have blown the globe,
I climbed on a chair to change it, and
It flashed, just like a strobe,
Something was dripping along my arm
Sticky, the colour of mud,
I jumped off the chair, and opened the door
To the hallway, it was blood!

I ran up the stairs, two at a time
And I kicked in the attic door,
Denise was naked, such as she was,
She lay, spread out on the floor,
I took out the guy with a single hit
And I looked at the mantelpiece,
For there was a head on a metal spit,
And I cried out, ‘No! - Denise! '

poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Staircase Of Notre Dame, Paris

As one who, groping in a narrow stair,
Hath a strong sound of bells upon his ears,
Which, being at a distance off, appears
Quite close to him because of the pent air:
So with this France. She stumbles file and square
Darkling and without space for breath: each one
Who hears the thunder says: “It shall anon
Be in among her ranks to scatter her.”
This may be; and it may be that the storm
Is spent in rain upon the unscathed seas,
Or wasteth other countries ere it die:
Till she,—having climbed always through the swarm
Of darkness and of hurtling sound,—from these
Shall step forth on the light in a still sky.

poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Home Alone

I watched time crumble
On the brick floor's slumber
From its fated machinism
And the pallid light of summer
Leaning wearily on the walls
Escaped the frosted windows
With a somnolent opalescence
A wan and aimless escapade,
Such a dreamy afternoon
Where life pounces keeling out
Of gravity and vibrant hues
A slumbering dog, poignant from
The absence of barks and bones
An empty set of walls
Once a place called home

The house swooned over
From its winding knee
And struggling loop of
Tightrope heraldries,
Like the collapse of lungs
As a breath of verve escapes and
Heaves back with a titanic space
To accentuate the hollow break,
Topple and restore, filling emptiness
Without making a sound,
Without any motion, but
The absence of the souls
That became its constitutions
Floods the vivid light with gloom
And the summer is contained
Within a wintry solitude inside
The lone yearning bones

The curtains unruffled,
The floor spread wider,
The ceiling climbed loftier,
And the saudade croons
Played in the air waves
With laughs and simpers
Tinkering the static
And in this chamber,
For now, I'm home alone
Yet, soon, this place
Would be abandoned
By my trifle entity and
The company of my soliloquy
But not of my yearning
And shadows and shards
And lone feeling in the solitariness
That makes this place a home.

poem by Norman Santos
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The Attic

The door from the attic, with its darkness handle.
Eco's hand clutching his open
Breathing dust and cobwebs, tickle the face.

Of dark place of bricks and mortar
Those stairs incomplete, greyish, without any importance
Climb into the unknown, where the past is set apart, confined.
With the roof barely, resting on wall closets
That my head bends.

Days' ancestors, forgotten by the light
Of the window roof,
where the dust, like magic flying in the wind,
It mixes with reflections of glass.

And those sheets of bed, piled.
They have been sleeping for years, without bodies to keep them warm.
Only dust and spiders dreams

And just around the corner where light barely penetrates.
Boxes sealed with tape, expect to be open.
Ready to flee from their exile

Memories illuminate, that mute room.
Rich, locked to themselves.
Fled forgotten, until now, abandoned.

poem by Luca Menin
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Letting You Go

It ain't no fun lying down to sleep
And there ain't no secrets left for me to keep
I wish the stars up in the sky
Would all just call in sick
And the clouds would take the moon out
On some one-way trip
I drove all night down streets that wouldn't bend
But somehow they drove me back here once again
To the place i lost at love, and the place i lost my soul
I wish i'd just burn down this place that we called home
It would all have been so easy
If you'd only made me cry
And told me how you're leaving me
To some organ grinder's lullaby
It's hard, so hard - it's tearing out my heart
It's hard letting you go
Now the sky, it shines a different kind of blue
And the neighbor's dog don't bark like he used to
Well - me, these days
I just miss you - it's the nights that i go insane
Unless you're coming back for me
That's one thing i know that won't change
It's hard, so hard - it's tearing out my heart
It's hard letting you go
Now some tarot card shark said i'll draw you a heart
And we'll find you somebody else new
But i've made my last trip to those carnival lips
When i bet all that i had on you
It's hard, it's hard, it's hard, so hard
It's hard letting you go
It's hard, so hard, it's tearing out my heart
But it's hard letting you go

song performed by by Bon Jovi
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Wine And Joy

Wine and joy are completely forgotten,
As well as his armor and sword.
Alone he descends in the rotten
Mysterious dungeon. The door
Is squeaking with long drawn sound
For no one has entered inside.
The dark and the damp reign around.
The window is narrow and high.

His eyes grow accustomed to the gloom and
Through the dust and the web he explores
Some strange marks, emerging and looming
On the floor, on the vaults, on the walls.
He gazes at the marks’ interlacement
At those incomprehensible signs
And tarries for Death to embrace him
To enlighten his soul and eyes.

poem by Fyodor Sologub
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A Day on the Big Branch

Still half drunk, after a night at cards,
with the grey dawn taking us unaware
among our guilty kings and queens, we drove
far North in the morning, winners, losers,
to a stream in the high hills, to climb up to a place
one of us knew, with some vague view
of cutting losses or consolidating gains
by the old standard appeal to the wilderness,
the desert, the empty places of our exile,
bringing only the biblical bread and cheese
and cigarettes got from a grocer’s on the way,
expecting to drink only the clear cold water
among the stones, and remember, or forget.
Though no one said anything about atonement,
there was still some purgatorial idea
in all those aching heads and ageing hearts
as we climbed the giant stair of the stream,
reaching the place around noon.

It was as promised, a wonder, with granite walls
enclosing ledges, long and flat, of limestone,
or, rolling, of lava; within the ledges
the water, fast and still, pouring its yellow light,
and green, over the tilted slabs of the floor,
blackened at shady corners, falling in a foam
of crystal to a calm where the waterlight
dappled the ledges as they leaned
against the sun; big blue dragonflies hovered
and darted and dipped a wing, hovered again
against the low wind moving over the stream,
and shook the flakes of light from their clear wings.
This surely was it, was what we had come for,
was nature, though it looked like art with its
grey fortress walls and laminated benches
as in the waiting room of some petrified station.
But we believed; and what it was we believed
made of the place a paradise
for ruined poker players, win or lose,
who stripped naked and bathed and dried out on the rocks
like gasping trout (the water they drank
making them drunk again), lit cigarettes and lay back
waiting for nature to say the last word
—as though the stones were Memnon stones,
which, caught in a certain light, would sing.

The silence (and even the noise of the waters
was silence) grew pregnant; that is the phrase,
grew pregnant; but nothing else did.
The mountains brought forth not a mouse, and the rocks,
unlike the ones you would expect to find
on the slopes of Purgatory or near Helicon,
mollified by muses and with a little give to ’em,
were modern American rocks, and hard as rocks.
Our easy bones groaned, our flesh baked
on one side and shuddered on the other; and each man
thought bitterly about primitive simplicity
and decadence, and how he had been ruined
by civilization and forced by circumstances
to drink and smoke and sit up all night
inspecting those perfectly arbitrary cards
until he was broken-winded as a trout on a rock
and had no use for the doctrines of Jean Jacques
Rousseau, and could no longer afford
a savagery whether noble or not; some
would never batter that battered copy of Walden
again.

But all the same,
the water, the sunlight, and the wind
did something; even the dragonflies
did something to the minds full of telephone
numbers and flushes, to the flesh
sweating bourbon on one side and freezing on the other.
And the rocks, the old and tumbling boulders
which formed the giant stair of the stream,
induced (again) some purgatorial ideas
concerning humility, concerning patience
and enduring what had to be endured,
winning and losing and breaking even;
ideas of weathering in whatever weather,
being eroded, or broken, or ground down into pebbles
by the stream’s necessitous and grave currents.
But to these ideas did any purgatory
respond? Only this one: that in a world
where even the Memnon stones were carved in soap
one might at any rate wash with the soap.

After a time we talked about the War,
about what we had done in the War, and how near
some of us had been to being drowned, and burned,
and shot, and how many people we knew
who had been drowned, or burned, or shot;
and would it have been better to have died
in the War, the peaceful old War, where we were young?
But the mineral peace, or paralysis, of those
great stones, the moving stillness of the waters,
entered our speech; the ribs and blood
of the earth, from which all fables grow,
established poetry and truth in us,
so that at last one said, “I shall play cards
until the day I die,” and another said,
“in bourbon whisky are all the vitamins
and minerals needed to sustain man’s life,”
and still another, “I shall live on smoke
until my spirit has been cured of flesh.”

Climbing downstream again, on the way home
to the lives we had left empty for a day,
we noticed, as not before, how of three bridges
not one had held the stream, which in its floods
had twisted the girders, splintered the boards, hurled
boulder on boulder, and had broken into rubble,
smashed practically back to nature,
the massive masonry of span after span
with its indifferent rage; this was a sight
that sobered us considerably, and kept us quiet
both during the long drive home and after,
till it was time to deal the cards.

poem by Howard Nemerov
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O Stranger

I could not see you O stranger
You are permanent resident here.

I am wandering the poor traveller
For a purpose that I do not know
And also I could not hear you
For the ego that engulfed me.

I could not tell a word that has
Fragrance of truth and that is fair
The way that lead me is nor proper
On the stair and I do not care.

O stranger, Where are you I am here
Not matching with anything and
Going back and back in my thought
And action that has contradiction.

poem by Gajanan Mishra
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A Walk Within A Dream

I saw a building old as days
With countless rooms laid within
Walls with cracks and ivy rose
From the earth before me
Slowly I entered that place
Air ran heavy, thick to my lungs
With each taken step
I walked the rooms and halls
Some bare stripped of life
Others as though never touched
Some like a memory kept
Where instruments of music
Lay dust covered, silent
Still brought a song to thought
I saw paintings and pictures
Rich in a veil of colour
Like all the seasons held at once
A beauty found, celebrated
Then a sadness felt
In the shadowed halls
Empty with a loneliness
Another room had windows
Where a wind whistled through
I heard a birdsong carried
It passed in a second step
I thought no more of it
I descended and climbed stairs
Became lost and yet found
I knew this place well
However strange it came to me
Yes I knew this place
I felt the walls, ageless
I smelt the air, familiar
The ground beat to a pulse
A rhythm only I knew
On this my first visit
To that building which once rose
I felt at home, comforted
I looked back became held
As though I had never moved
The entrance still behind me
In spite of all the rooms and halls
Which I had walked
In spite of every step I counted
Numberless, countless, endless
I remained unmoved
Yet moved still moved
My eyes closed I felt myself pulled
Away from that old building
The rooms and walls
The cracks and the climbing ivy
That whistling wind
The music and colour
I awoke and thought
Had I walked a dream
Built upon my heart, soul, mind
Had I just walked myself
No answers came
I lay awake lost in thought

poem by Matthew Holloway
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Tonight I Climbed The Wall

(alan jackson)
Our room was filled with silence
I guess wed said it all
I dont when Id seen our bedroom
So long I cant recall
Wed built this thing between us
Im not sure whats the cause
So I sallowed all my pride
And tonight I climbed the wall
Tonight I climbed the wall
And took her by the hand
Wed come too far to fall
Couldnt stand to see it end
So tonight I climbed the wall
Makin love is so much sweeter
When you love the one you hold
After all these years of holdin her
Youd think by now Id know
Now as we lie here together
All our troubles seem so small
Just these satin sheets between us
Cause tonight I climbed the wall
Tonight I climbed the wall
And took her by the hand
Wed come too far to fall
Couldnt stand to see it end
So tonight I climbed the wall
Tonight I climbed the wall
Tonight I climbed the wall

song performed by by Alan Jackson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I Cant Hear You!

i cant hear you.....
she turned her head,
and he walked away...

leaving all the years
hanging like spider webs
in forgotten corners.

numb but walking,
he could taste her
in the cyanide rain.....

down to the corner
where nobody stood,
and strangers without faces

never spoke... to the
corner of hell and third,
never looking back....

nothing to look back to!

poem by Eric Cockrell
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When Will It Rain

No one ever sees you cry
You just keep it all inside
In a warm place, where you can hide
When will it rain
When will it rain
I saw you laugh the other day
But all too fast it went away
Now your skys cloudy n gray
Falling mainly on the plain
When will it rain
When will it rain
No water fallls
Down your window pane
And when I look into your eyes
That window to your soul cant lie
Theres water where the well went dry
So how long can there be a drought
When your dams filled with doubt
No place to build your house
Let your cup runneth over and out
I said for crying out loud
When will it rain
When will it rain
No water fallls
Down your window pane
When will it rain
When will it rain
A tear for fear is calling out your name
Rain on me

song performed by by Extreme
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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