Self-Portrait
After Adam Zagajewski
I am child to no one, mother to a few,
wife for the long haul.
On fall days I am happy
with my dying brethren, the leaves,
but in spring my head aches
from the flowery scents.
My husband fills a room with Mozart
which I turn off, embracing
the silence as if it were an empty page
waiting for me alone to fill it.
He digs in the black earth
with his bare hands. I scrub it
from the creases of his skin, longing
for the kind of perfection
that happens in books.
My house is my only heaven.
A red dog sleeps at my feet, dreaming
of the manic wings of flushed birds.
As the road shortens ahead of me
I look over my shoulder
to where it curves back
to childhood, its white line
bisecting the real and the imagined
the way the ridgepole of the spine
divides the two parts of the body, leaving
the soft belly in the center
vulnerable to anything.
As for my country, it blunders along
as well intentioned as Eve choosing
cider and windfalls, oblivious
to the famine soon to come.
I stir pots, bury my face in books, or hold
a telephone to my ear as if its cord
were the umbilicus of the world
whose voices still whisper to me
even after they have left their bodies.
poem by Linda Pastan
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Related quotes
A Jar's Story
from the start
the hands that shaped you
designed you to be empty
you were named
Jar,
someone so
beautiful and rich
takes you
away from your
maker
those hands
cannot hold you for long
because they are
empty and hungry
hands
and then she fills
you with perfume
and all those who attend
the parties of the
world
dip their fingers
in your scent
they crowd around you
and you are loved
not for what you are
but what you
can give
scents, scents,
all scents
you begin to miss
your original form
the beauty that you
possess
when you were
once empty
you miss the whisper
of space inside
your belly
the hush of the wind
that rests in
your heart
you forget the name
that was given to you
Jar is your name
but are not one of them
anymore
you are the scent
of their necks
hanging on their
jaws and navels
your contents
fill now their fantasies
your hollowness
they now discard
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Books
The universe (which others call the library). . .
-Jorge Luis Borges
Books which are stitched up the center with coarse white thread
Books on the beach with sunglass-colored pages
Books about food with pictures of weeping grapefruits
Books about baking bread with browned corners
Books about long-haired Frenchmen with uncut pages
Books of erotic engravings with pages that stick
Books about inns whose stars have sputtered out
Books of illuminations surrounded by darkness
Books with blank pages & printed margins
Books with fanatical footnotes in no-point type
Books with book lice
Books with rice-paper pastings
Books with book fungus blooming over their pages
Books with pages of skin with flesh-colored bindings
Books by men in love with the letter O
Books which smell of earth whose pages turn
poem by Erica Jong
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I'll Be Back
Messages come, and make us suffer
A letter comes, and keeps on asking…
When are you coming?
When are you coming?
Write me when you're coming home
Without you this house is empty
The one's I trust
A form of rose
Has written me this letter
And has asked me
Someone's breaths, Someone's heartbeat
Someone's desires, Someone's smile
Someone's dull mornings, sleepy evenings
Lonely nights, unsaid words
Longing arms
And have asked her
Longing eyes
That...
When are you coming?
When are you coming?
Write me when you're coming home
Without you this house is empty
The ones with love
My best friends
Have wrote and asked me
My village, my people
Old trees, White clouds
Green grass, my soil
My celebrations, my religion
My farms, my land
My parents and
My wife has asked
When are you coming?
When are you coming?
Write me when you're coming home
Without you this country is lonely and empty
Sometimes a motherly river's letter comes by
And brings along
My childhood days, my games in the backyard
My mother's support, being protected
My mother's lullaby, the softness of her hands
The desire in the eyes, the worries in her words
Hard on the outside, Lovely from the inside
Acts my mom
And asks me in each letter
When are you coming?
When are you coming?
Write me when you're coming home
Without you my lap is empty
Hey the passing wind tell me
Will u please do a little favor for me?
Go to my state and salute to my friends
In that state there's a road
Where my wife and kids live
Just tell them that I love them
Just tell them that I love them
Further down that road
Is my old mother
Just touch her feet and
Say my name in her ear
Hey the passing wind
Just to my friends
My wife and kids,
And my old mother
Send them this message
And tell them that…
I will come home
I will come home
The promise I made to…
My soil
To its colorful nature
To my mother lap
To my blossomed flowers
And to someone's heart…
I will fulfill it
I will come back one day
This war will be over one day
I will come back one day
This war will be over one day
I will come back one day
This war will be over one day
I will come back one day
This war will be over one day
I will come back one day
This war will be over one day
poem by Kiara Davar
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Half A World Away
This could be the saddest dusk
Ive ever seen
Turn to a miracle
High alive
My mind is racing
As it always will
My hand is tired my heart aches
Im half a world away here
My head sworn
To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
And hold it
Go it alone
Hold it along and hold, hold.
This lonely deep sit hollow
Im half a world
Half the world away
My shoes are gone
My life spent
I had too much to drink
I didnt think
And I i didnt think of you
I guess thats all I needed
To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
And hold it
Blackbirds backwards forwards and fall and hold hold.
Oh this lonely world is wasted
Pathetic eyes high alive
Blind to the tide that turns the sea
This storm it came up strong
It shook the trees
And blew away our fear
I couldnt even hear
To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
And hold it
To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
And hold it
Blackbirds backwards forwards and fall and hold hold.
This could be the saddest dusk
Ive ever seen
Turn to a miracle
High alive
My mind is racing
As it always will
My hands tired my heart aches
Im half a world away and go.
song performed by by REM
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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As I Wait For For You
and then our minds met at a point
of convergence
i waited for you in a room without a number
a place without a name
a space where only us know what & how to fill
i am naked
you want the whole truth and so i am naked
in this room without a number, a place without a name
a space, where only our self-manifested emptiness know how & what to fill
when you arrive do not call my name
be so soft and gentle with your feet
do not even say your name as
i have also left my name somewhere else
and it is only i who knows it
i lose my identity
that is how i want to spend my short moment with you
i am naked
i only have my face, my skin and my flesh my bones my whole body
not my soul
do not knock
just push the door
it is left open throughout the nights of my waiting
i have intended it that way
so when you arrive and i am still asleep with my dreams and desires
of you
do not disturb the silence and sweetness of my sleep
just whisper your desire for love so sweet to my ears
touch the surfaces of my skin and caress with your soft fingers the smooth lines of my face
place your head just beside my tight chest
for there you shall hear the sounds of all my desires
and then my love we begin the sharing of our hidden truths
we shall dance in our nakedness
we shall make love real
we shall open the shutters of this closed window
we let the slits of light from outside the night get inside us and put some
warmth on the empty pores of our skins
we bring light to the darkness of our lives
we put fire to those eyes that refuse to close and die
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Sequestered Writing
Horses were turned loose in the child's sorrow. Black and roan, cantering through snow.
The way light fills the hand with light, November with graves, infancy with white.
White. Given lilacs, lilacs disappear. Then low voices rising in walls.
The way they withdrew from the child's body and spoke as if it were not there.
What ghost comes to the bedside whispering You?
-- With its no one without its I --
A dwarf ghost? A closet of empty clothes?
Ours was a ghost who stole household goods. Nothing anyone would miss.
Supper plates. Apples. Barbed wire behind the house.
At the end of the hall, it sleepwalks into a mirror wearing mother's robe.
A bedsheet lifts from the bed and hovers. Face with no face. Come here.
The bookcase knows, and also the darkness of books. Long passages into,
Endless histories toward, sleeping pages about. Why else toss gloves into a grave?
A language that once sent ravens through firs. The open world from which it came.
Words holding the scent of an asylum fifty years. It is fifty years, then.
The child hears from within: Come here and know, below
And unbeknownst to us, what these fields had been.
poem by Carolyn Forché
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White Skin Black Heart
Yeah, whatcha gonna do now, now that you started?
Whatcha gonna do now, now that its done?
The words got out there, they float around and are coming right back down.
You gonna leave us lying here
Dealing with the consequences of a bad sound
Of a bad sound.
White skin black heart
White skin black heart
Whatcha gonna do now, that its spoken?
These words of a habit, have not faded away.
.................... it clear, conscious gets opened like a wound.
If you cant concieve a better line and better times,
Then let silence bury you, in the end.
When you feel it, when you feel it
Youre condemned.
You see, youve lost your strangle on the freedom road! you
Think ........................of something a long time ago! you
[spewed it out you were so] insecure! it was like ............. on
The toilet floor! youre a [nine seat] drunk, ............... and
You say you want something, .......... you heard the rednecks
Roaring for blood and then they wanted more! life was so small, you
Couldnt get enough. you made a start.
White skin black heart
Dripping,
White skin black heart
White skin black heart
White skin black heart
White skin black heart
Drag your eyes from [aurora] black heart!
White skin black heart
Drag your leg, get outta here [my sight]!
White skin black heart
White skin black heart
White skin black heart
White skin black heart
You didnt have to start
White skin black heart
White skin black heart
song performed by by Midnight Oil
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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As Girls Sleep
She sleeps as only girls sleep
dreaming of babies and diamonds
or how that rich guy got away.
She slumbers with lips pressed tight.
Her eyes flicker like flames of
a new touched fire. Her hands lay
like guardians over her womb,
beneath her dress. She dreams
of his lips. Pressed close, skin on skin.
Once upon a dream she made love
to her sister's husband. Once upon
a nightmare her husband kissed her
upon her vagina. In deep sleep she
smells of ashes from Auschwitz, her
mother's family perished amongst flames.
She rubs her nose in sleeps' hold,
scratches her head with unpainted
fingernails. Once upon a sleep she
counted aborted babes, the white
vacant coffins. She turns in her sleep,
her body moves in her favourite armchair,
too tired for bed. She has had nailed
her one Picasso print above her head.
Her husband is in Vienna, a floozy on
his arm, another between sheets,
never from love, always the lust.
She will have him back upon his return;
always his pupil, but never to learn.
poem by Terry Collett
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Unburdened.
It's not the sort of house
You'd want to go to again,
Mildred said, the smell hits
You first, the kind of smell
That climbed in your nose
And didn't leave for days.
She sipped her wine and
Sat down on the couch,
Carefully holding the glass
With her other ringed hand.
There was an unhappy
Feel About the place as
You entered in, a feel
Of neglect. She looked
At the black and white
Mat under the coffee
Table, at the books lying
There: Fashion books, art,
How to Dress for the Occasion.
We found the first child
Drowned in a bath, the hair
Was floating there on the
Water's skin. Someone sort
Of sobbed or maybe they
Didn't, seemed as though
They had. The second child
Was lying beneath a blanket
Where they'd suffocated.
That's where the main smell
Came from. She breathed in
And smelt pine air freshener
That Caser used in his house,
She wanted to smoke, pull
Out a cigarette and light up,
But didn't. The third child,
Baby really, was stiff in a cot.
Unfed, unwashed, a token of
Neglect. Someone pulled back
Curtains, light broke through
Darkness, lit up the sad scene;
Another nearby let out a cry,
The under the breath kind.
She pushed her knees together
As if about to give birth to a
Different tale, her hands played
With the glass, a finger tapped
The side. The mother was found
In a darkened room, wrists slit,
OD'd days back, slouched in a
Chair, dressed in death and black.
Had sleepless nights after, she
Said, ought to be used to, but
You never are, kind of gets
Under the radar. Caser looked
At her sitting there, her hair
Pulled in a bun, her eyes looking
Up at the Picasso print he'd bought.
She had told him at last. She had
Unburdened herself of the one
Last thing that she couldn't tell
Him at the psychiatric sessions
They'd had at his in town clinic.
Never did like Picasso, she said,
Turning away, putting down the
Glass, as of nothing more to say.
Caser watched her as she got up,
Brushed down her dress, sighed
And walked down the hall, left
His apartment, victim of the Fall.
poem by Terry Collett
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A Soldier Home From A War
Daymare demons spiral your head.
There is no rest in your soft bed.
Images of death reveal.
The guilt you hide, but feel.
A war of shadows.
Where you once fought.
In back gardens where children play
For only peace you wished and sought.
The grass green hills of your childhood remain.
But there, there was no death sign
Wife and kids you greet at garden gate.
They don’t see your inner hate.
They don’t see your embroiled conscience,
or know the infliction you bare.
They’re only too happy to have you home.
Home to love and share.
You are a soldier home.
A soldier home from a war,
Trying your guilt to hide.
Trying to forget the child you shot, that died.
The war was someone else’s.
Why should you really care?
It only really strikes home,
when you see a child dying there.
Visions cloud your mind of voices in despair.
Why did we have to die so young?
Why did our mother’s have to mourn?
Soldier from another land, please tell us why?
The soldier’s forehead frowns.
The answer he can not give.
He was only sent there.
So other have a chance to live.
Now his war is over.
Over his home he now resides.
But the voices of despair.
Still ring in his head.
He cries to himself in silence.
How can his conscience bare.
The purgatory it must go through.
Knowing he killed a child fair.
18 July 1978
poem by David Harris
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Farmer's unlettered wife laments
She lives in a remote village with her one and only daughter.
Her epileptic husband died a long ago,
Then the child was just completed five years.
'Oh! The University, it seems close to universe.
I have never seen such a place even in my faded dreams.
So my darling daughter you have already packed everything and leaves soon.
I am not worried about me.
While you learn many things of the cruel World, I am sure there won't be a single blank page in your heavy books for the orphan shepherd boy to make a pastel drawing.
He too run away like your kind father.
Though I am a simpleton my dear, that I could predict well.'
* To my loving deceased mother, her unaccomplished dream is that one of her children would be enrolled to an university some day. Mom! I am sorry but I learned to draw a black face with white paint and vice versa in the life-school.
poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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On My Shoulder
SHANE
Nah nahnah nah nahnah
All around the world
All around the world
Someone needs somebody
Let it be a shield
All around the world
All around the world
Someone's feeling lonely
But I know you never will
ALL
Cause when it all gets too much
Put your head down on my shoulder
A little warmth when it gets colder
Now I don't know the things that you're going through
But you can put your head down
On my shoulder
Where the storm is it blows over
I know you're there for me too
No I'll be there for you
BRYAN
You're waiting for a change
You're waiting for the day
When all that you remember is with you once again
There's a long road ahead
Stretches out for miles
And if you want some company
Walk with me a while
Ohh and when the road gets too rough
ALL
You can put your head down on my shoulder
A little warmth when it gets colder
I don't know the things that you're going through
But you can put your head down
On my shoulder
Where the storm is it blows over
I know you're there for me too
So I'll be there for you, for you, for you, yeah, oooh
SHANE
When it all..gets... too... much...
ALL
Put your head on my shoulder, on my shoulder
Your head on my shoulder, on my shoulder
Put your head on my shoulder, now
Oooh, you can put your head on my shoulder
Put your head on my shoulder
Put your head on my shoulder, now
Oooh, put your head on my shoulder
A little warmth when it gets colder, Put your head on my shoulder
I don't know the things that you're going through, Put your head on my shoulder
Baby, put your head on my shoulder
Where the storm is it blows over, Put your head on my shoulder
I know your there for me too, Put your head on my shoulder
So I'll be there for you
Nahnah nahh nah nahnaah nah nah nah
song performed by by Westlife
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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At The Time When Mother Left For Ozamis
i remember now
it was at that time when mother packed her clothes
and left my father for good
back in the little village where mother
was raised by grandmother
as a naive girl
keeping things to herself.
she dwells in a house of silence.
it was at that time when father said
that he loves her very much
that losing her would mean his death
but mother was no longer in the house
where we grew.
and of course, mother did not really believe him.
she died ahead of him, and he got drunk everyday, and
he put her picture on top of his chest and he cried all night long
staring at her face, black and white, her hair her mouth.
he died a year after and he was buried just beside her pantheon.
i still wonder if mother would believe him.
the silence is overwhelming. no one sweeps the heaps of leaves
and no wind is strong enough to clean the mounds filled with thick grass.
come summer time, i see white daisies blooming, and a black butterfly
hovers to stop a while. I watch closely this new turn of events.
it is like poetry. Some metaphors. Symbols, and hints. Love's mouth
wanting to say all over again, what the heart has constantly hidden.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Eighty Days
Staring down from this high window
At the faces in the line
Cold from hours of waiting
How many people can you love?
When you're black and blue with bruises
From collisions on the road
The friction grind of travelling
This is the never ending show
All over the world in eighty days
Head in a blur of information
What kind of a man could live this way
I do what I can
I do okay
But right now
All I want to do
Is get real
If that's all right with you
Woke up last night under the mountains
Driving from Zurich to Milan
I lay there listening to the echoes
Thinking of Iceland and Japan
So many smiles, so many faces
And my home so far away
I lose some of me in all these places
And I can't help the way I'm changed
All over the world in eighty days
Memories turn like magazine pages
What kind of a man could live this way
I do what I can
But I can't escape it
Right now
All I want to do
Is get real
If that's all right with you
Right now
All I want to do
Somehow
Be myself with you
All over the world in eighty days
Alcohol haze of information
What kind of a man could live this way
As long as I have
And stay the same
Right now
All I want to do
Is get real
If that's all right with you
Right now
All I want to do
Get real
If that's all right with you
For just one night with you
If that's all right with you
Get real
Get real right now
Somehow
song performed by by Marillion
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Under The Tree Beside The School Building
on a certain break
one sits alone under a shady tree
on an afternoon of
Saturday
they left for a certain purpose
filling up too
a certain emptiness of their
minds (& bodies)
somehow
the wind provides a joy to cool a face
calming a mind in chaos
the leaves fall
too gently on the grass
and they are too graceful
too simple
for any deeper analysis
the grass speak for themselves
always a busy day
spreading
expanding its territory
the pebbles as usual mute
but always with a desire to speak
to move away
there are cars
waiting as the rain begins to fall
some have to run
and escape being wet
these are everyday occurrences
and because i am too sheltered
inside the four corners of my study room
they have become too unfamiliar
and too new
there is a longing to belong again
to a world without thinking too much
something just
to occupy a place, the feet to walk
the hands to touch
it 's been a long time now
i have not seen the world to its practicability
like an axe to a firewood
mud to my shoes
rain on my shoulders
some birds over my head
a butterfly stopping on my hand
to rest is also an ability
i think, i have forgotten.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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White sparrow
white sparrow you see me standing
you could kill me without landing
your wing is just as long as a man
you are as cold as a snowy day
you have come here from heaven
you must of as you fight my devil's
your feathers turn slowly black with my sin
and yet you stay beautiful as always
my sin is like a ciggerate it will turn you black inside
but you cannot die as you are one in your own
you came from heaven so your holy arent you
god sent you for me so you must do what you must do
my heart was never red nor white but black
i was born with my sin and also that of my kin
but white sparrow you have taken that from me
and now you are dying you turned black whilst i change to white
oh my lord what a sight it must be to see
a boy like me clean of all carrying a bird of sin
i am carrying you white sparrow your heart is no longer cold
and your body no longer white nor wings large
but white sparrow you will not die, no you will not
for you white sparrow you came from heaven for me
when i picked my child's name people laughed you did not
you looked at my child in his cot and nodded now you cant
for white sparrow you dont belong with me not anymore
your must leave for heaven and recover to help others
so farewell white sparrow il missy you my saviour
now go to that sin filled woman and help her
for white sparrow i will look for you as you continue
for white sparrow i will see you in heaven....goodbye
poem by Daniel Laurence
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To Alison Cunningham, From Her Boy
For the long nights you lay awake
And watched for my unworthy sake:
For your most comfortable hand
That led me through the uneven land:
For all the story-books you read:
For all the pains you comforted:
For all you pitied, all you bore,
In sad and happy days of yore:-
My second Mother, my first Wife,
The angel of my infant life-
From the sick child, now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold!
And grant it, Heaven, that all who read
May find as dear a nurse at need,
And every child who lists my rhyme,
In the bright, fireside, nursery clime,
May hear it in as kind a voice
As made my childish days rejoice!
poem by Robert Louis Stevenson
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The White Room
(SpringfieldVallance)
I can see her at her windows watching,
locked away inside her skin,
I can see her but I can't get to her, she won't come out,
and she won't let me into
The white room (she's living in)
Lying alone til she comes undone
In the white room, she burns for the real thing.
But it won't come.
In her head is the same obsession
and all the bottles and pills won't heal her heart.
She heard his last confession
and every word just tears her apart
In the white room (locked away)
doing time till her time is done
In the white room there's so much to say
but the words won't come.
Come back to the land of the living,
when you gonna break the chain,
there's so much too much that you're leaving
and you're never gonna stop the rain
In the white room.
waiting for the call that never comes
in the white room, she awaits.
Look at something long enough you'll find,
that the splinters and the cracks begin to show,
I'll be the first in line when the walls start falling
and she lets go of
The white room (it's late)
living alone only makes you numb
In the white room she burns for the real thing
but it won't come
In the white room (she's living in) I think its time
that you're time is done,
In the white room she burns
In the white room (it's late)
lying alone till she comes undone
In the white room she awaits
In the white room
song performed by by Rick Springfield
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A ballad that we do not perish
Those who sailed at dawn
but will never return
left their trace on a wave--
a shell fell to the bottom of the sea
beautiful as lips turned to stone
those who walked on a sandy road
but could not reach the shuttered windows
though they already saw the roofs--
they have found shelter in a bell of air
but those who leave behind only
a room grown cold a few books
an empty inkwell white paper--
in truth they have not completely died
their whisper travels through thickets of wallpaper
their level head still lives in the ceiling
their paradise was made of air
of water lime and earth an angel of wind
will pulverize the body in its hand
they will be
carried over the meadows of this world
poem by Zbigniew Herbert
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Books up on books
Color in Black, color in white
And also in different colors
Colors were brushed in minds
Respectively be hard
Printed embossed letters
In books of epigraphy
Color in black
On Space of white
Told that is black
Black white and colors
Books up on books
Being closed near by
Dialogues having intercourse
Get soaked colors of minds
Smudged
Scabrous words
Boorish colors
In a content of
In a book
Wearing a strange cover
Not get closed
And be separated
Having filed up afar
At the library of old
On a table
Books up on books
Turn pages
Marking and conflicting
And also comparing
An empty paper
A pen
A hand with five fingers
An artist
poem by Udaya R. Tennakoon
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